A quick disclosure before I start: this piece began life as a thesis I wrote for a course I’m taking. It’s not something I usually publish here, but the topic sits so squarely in my Parenting & Education pillar, that I decided it deserved a second life on the blog. I’ve rewritten it from scratch in my usual voice, trimmed the academic scaffolding, and kept the substance. If you want the original citations, they’re at the bottom.
Bullying isn’t new, and Singapore isn’t spared from it. What’s struck me most, going through the research, is that we usually respond to bullying the same way: identify the victim, punish the bully, deal with it after the fact. That’s reactive. What I wanted to explore is something more useful: how do we get ahead of it?
The real problem isn’t awareness. It’s the gap between knowing and doing.
Here’s the finding that stopped me in my tracks. Singaporean students, for the most part, know bullying is wrong. That’s not the issue. The issue is that this knowledge doesn’t reliably translate into stepping in or standing back.
A study by Sim and Tan (2011) found something uncomfortable. Students often judged helping a bully, or cheering on a bully, as morally acceptable. Not just something they’d tolerate. Something they rated as “right”.
Part of this, I think, is cultural. In a Confucian-influenced environment like ours, respect for teachers might nudge a student toward reporting an incident. But an equally strong value, preserving group harmony, can just as easily push them toward silence. Those two instincts pull in opposite directions, and harmony often wins.
Age makes it worse. Research by Salmivalli and Voeten (2004) found that as children get older, they become less willing to defend a victim or report an incident, and more likely to slide into passive bystander behaviour. That’s a strong argument for intervening early, before those habits calcify.
My proposed fix: structured role-play
Given that gap, knowing right from wrong but not acting on it, I think the answer isn’t another assembly reminding kids that bullying is bad. They already know that. What they need is practice.
That’s where role-play comes in. Done properly, it walks students through the different roles that show up in a bullying situation:
- The bully. The one initiating the harm.
- The assistant. Actively helping the bully.
- The reinforcer. Egging it on, even just by laughing.
- The defender. Stepping in for the victim.
- The outsider. Seeing it happen and doing nothing.
In a fictional, low-stakes setting, students get to feel out the moment their own behaviour starts sliding, from bystander into reinforcer, say, or from silent observer into someone who could speak up.
Afterwards, the practitioner running the session debriefs with a few honest questions:
- How did it feel to play that role?
- What made you act, or hold back?
- What would you do differently next time?
Then, and I think this is the part people skip, the practitioner guides students to come up with their own strategies for a real bullying scenario, rather than just handing them a script.
Why role-play actually works
The advantage of role-play over a lecture is simple. It’s experiential, not one-directional. Students aren’t being told what’s right. They’re rehearsing it.
Specifically, it gives them practice moving away from the passive roles, outsider and reinforcer, and into the active ones, defender and reporter. It also helps a student who might be drifting toward becoming a bully, or being pulled in as a reinforcer, recognise that pull before it becomes a pattern.
The numbers back this up. Donohoe (2020) reports that role-play interventions reduced victimisation by 53%. Teachers in the same study said it was effective at managing bullying incidents on the ground, not just in theory.
That’s a meaningful number. But it’s not the whole story.
Where role-play falls short
I want to be upfront about the limitations here, because I think glossing over them does a disservice to anyone trying to actually implement this.
- Time and resourcing. Joronen et al. (2012) found that in settings with high teacher to student ratios and packed curricula, which describes a lot of Singapore schools, it’s genuinely hard to run role-play sessions often enough, and for long enough, to see a measurable effect. Donohoe (2020) found the same pattern. Teachers skip role-play because of time pressure, curriculum overload, or simply not being trained in how to run it well.
- The effect may not hold up statistically. This is the one that gave me pause. Joronen et al. (2012) saw victimisation drop on the surface, but once they ran a proper statistical test, that drop wasn’t significant. That doesn’t mean role-play doesn’t work. It means the evidence for it working on its own is thinner than the headline numbers suggest.
- It’s not a standalone fix. Vreeman and Carroll (2007) make the point clearly. Role-play works best embedded in a wider, whole-school approach: clear rules, consistent sanctions, teacher training, and proper counselling support. Used in isolation, it’s one tool, not the toolkit.
Where this leaves me
I’m not presenting role-play as a complete solution. The evidence doesn’t support that claim, and I’d rather be straight about that than oversell it.
What it does offer is a genuine starting point, a practical way to close the gap between what students already know and what they’re willing to do about it.
This matters to me beyond the theory. My children are still studying in primary school. That gives me an actual seat at the table to raise this, not as an academic exercise, but as something I can push for as part of a broader, whole-school approach to keeping students safe.
If you’ve read my earlier piece on the Right vs Kind matrix, you’ll recognise the throughline. Awareness of what’s “right” isn’t enough on its own. Kids, and honestly adults too, need practice translating that awareness into action when it counts. Role-play, imperfect as it is, gives them the rehearsal space to do that.
The research behind this piece:
- Donohoe, P. (2020). Teachers Using Role-play to Prevent Bullying. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 2(4), 264–279.
- Joronen, K., Konu, A., Rankin, H.S., & Åstedt-Kurki, P. (2012). An evaluation of a drama programme to enhance social relationships and anti-bullying at elementary school. Health Promotion International, 27(1), 5–14.
- Salmivalli, C., & Voeten, M. (2004). Connections between attitudes, group norms, and behaviour in bullying situations. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 28(3), 246–258.
- Sim, T.N., & Tan, M.M. (2011). Behavioural Norms, Moral Judgments, and Social Approval of Participant Roles in School Bullying in a Singapore Sample. Youth & Society, 45(2), 184–200.
- Vreeman, R.C., & Carroll, A.E. (2007). A Systematic Review of School-Based Interventions to Prevent Bullying.Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 161(1), 78–88.