FloridaLearns Foundation Featured Presenter - Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D.

Keynote:

School Climate 2.0: Fostering Positive Student Relationships Offline and Online

It remains critical that educators and other youth professionals marshal the powers of peer influence and organizational culture to curtail peer conflict, harassment, and other problem behaviors that occur offline and online. However, many are unsure what to implement. Based on our latest research assessing the impact of authoritative school climate on a nationally‐representative sample of US youth, we discuss practical school climate initiatives that are finding success across the nation and world. These not only can enhance student achievement, success, and connectedness, but produce students who are measurably more safe, smart, and responsible offline and online.


Breakout Session 1:

Bullying Prevention Through Empathy Building: Getting Students to Care

The relationship between empathy and healthy peer relationships has been studied at length over the years, and research suggests that building empathy can help reduce bullying and cyberbullying while simultaneously promoting tolerance, kindness, and peer respect in student interactions. While many teachers and administrators affirm its importance, they often do not have a toolbox of plug‐and‐play activities they can use in their classrooms and schools. This session first explains the key research findings in this area before providing concrete ideas for project‐

based and experiential learning to decrease peer aggression offline and online, and promote intervening behaviors from bystanders.


Breakout Session 2:

Resilience: Addressing Peer Conflict By Developing Social Competence

As more attention is given to the importance of cultivating social‐emotional learning skills among students, it seems vital to increasingly consider one often‐neglected component: resilience. As critical as it is to shape and improve the external around a child (e.g., school climate, peer behaviors, social norming, kindness initiatives, staff training, policies), it seems equally essential to focus on the internal ‐ the learned ability of youth to personally handle online conflict and other offenses in a way that leads to positive outcomes. Based on data collected from a large nationally‐representative sample of US youth, we share findings and strategies to develop emotionally‐healthy and resilient students who understand and embrace their own agency to deal with social and relational adversity.


Bio Sketch

Dr. Sameer Hinduja is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University and Co- Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. He is recognized internationally for his groundbreaking work on the subjects of cyberbullying and safe social media use, concerns that have paralleled the exponential growth in online communication by young people. He has written seven books, and his interdisciplinary research is widely published and cited in a number of peer-reviewed academic journals.

As a noted speaker and expert on teens and social media use, Dr. Hinduja also trains students, educators, parents, mental health professionals, and other youth workers how to promote the positive use of technology. In addition, he is frequently asked to provide expert commentary by news organizations, and his work has been featured in venues that include CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, NPR's All Things Considered, the BBC, and The New York Times. He has received Auburn University's Global Anti-Bullying Hero Award, won Florida Atlantic University's Researcher of the Year award, presented on cyberbullying at a Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill, testified in front of the Attorney General and the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, and served as a Fulbright Specialist Scholar at Dublin City University. Dr. Hinduja is also the Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Bullying Prevention, a new peer-reviewed journal from Springer.