Select the Best Intervention for Your
Participants and Develop Appropriate
Materials
The intervention selected for a given school or school system—
and the activities and curriculum that comprise it—will depend
largely on participants’ ages and whether the goal is to change
the behaviors and attitudes of all students or those of aggressive
or violent students only. However, all social-cognitive
interventions typically address the beliefs and attitudes that
support aggressive behavior and teach the following skills
(Greene 1998):
• negotiation, critical thinking, and decision making
• identifying, managing, and coping with feelings,
including anger
• anticipating the consequences of one’s aggressive verbal
and nonverbal behavior
• finding nonviolent alternatives to conflict
• moral reasoning