Aggression Replacement Training is a program designed to help children and teens learn to deal more effectively with anger, improve social skills, and manage aggressive behavior.
It was originally designed for use in juvenile detention facilities, but has since been modified for use in schools and mental health programs. ART has also been modified for use in adults. Currently, ART is used in schools as part of a bullying prevention program.
ART uses a combination of role playing, talk sessions, group therapy, and other techniques to teach social skills, moral reasoning, and anger management. Over a period of ten weeks, students are taught social rules, encouraged to develop empathy for others, and given assignments to help them learn to change their reactions to situations and people that make them angry or upset.
Whether Aggression Replacement Training is effective or not is largely determined by the students’ willingness to change their own behavior. Most students learn to be more aware of social norms, which will reduce some aggressive behavior.
However, ART will not completely eliminate all aggressive behavior, nor is it effective for most students with antisocial personality disorders. In large group settings such as schools, ART has been shown to reduce aggression by an average of about twenty percent.
Skills taught during the ten week program include basic social skills, such as learning to politely ask for things, thank others, accept others’ opinions, and dealing with rejection. Students are taught to express their emotions in less harmful ways, introduce themselves to others, and lay the groundwork for developing friendships.
Socially awkward students in particular benefit from learning the skills taught by ART, as do those with Asperger’s syndrome.
One of the most important benefits of ART is that it teaches empathy. Students are taught to consider others’ feelings, stand up for others, help other students avoid conflict, and respect others’ rights as well as their own. Empathy is an important tool to avoid aggression, and helps students see the effect of their actions on others.
ART also teaches students to negotiate, compromise to resolve conflicts, stay out of fights, respond to teasing and bullying, and develop self control. While these techniques reduce aggressive behavior by teaching students to respond differently to others’ actions, they do not stop bullying.
However, they are very effective at teaching students to handle bullying and teasing from others. continue reading more
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