The Omni staircase explains a community in negative development

Step 1 symbolizes the optimal children's environment, which is safe, good and inclusive. When the children's environment develops in a negative direction, one takes steps up the stairs, and the steps describe how the culture changes in an undesirable direction, step by step.

NB! All tools must be seen in context to ensure a holistic understanding. All video lectures can be freely used in the work of increasing knowledge and understanding.

The steps in the Omni staircase:

Step 1: A safe, good and inclusive learning environment

Stage 1 is characterized by safe and good relationships between everyone who belongs to the group. Good structures and routines that everyone follows, positive activities that everyone participates in, and adults who lead the group with clarity, care and warmth. Everyone has a positive and safe place in the community.

More about Step 1

Step 2: Norm-shifting tendencies

Stage 2 refers to the exploratory tendency of children and young people to test boundaries, to try and fail, and to challenge us adults. This tendency shows children and young people in growth and development – it is their way of orienting themselves in a complex world. At stage 2, children and young people clearly need adults who are present in reflections and guidance.

More about Step 2

Step 3: Normalization of norm-breaking behavior

At stage 3, norm-breaking behavior has become established as normal among several in the group. This can be recognized by children and adolescents who do not fully follow structures and routines as expected, and who say or do things that are not allowed. Children and adolescents may express that adults do not understand their world.

More about Step 3

Step 4: Bullying behavior and collective legitimization

At step 4, one or more people are exposed to bullying behavior. Bullying behavior is directed at individuals, and is behavior that violates what is allowed to be done to each other. Explanations are constructed for why one allows oneself to do it, even though one knows that it is not actually allowed. The behavior is legitimized.

More about Step 4

Step 5: Parents adopt the identification

Parents hear and experience stories about other children or young people who do not function like the others, or who lack social skills or competence. Parents understand the children's frustration with the challenges they face in meeting these others.

More about Step 5

Step 6: Employees adopt the identification

Employees see and experience children or young people who do not function like the others, who lack social skills, competence or have other challenging traits. They understand the children's frustration with the challenges they face. They see and experience the results of bullying behavior, but not the invisible social mechanisms that put the bullied person out of the game.

More about Step 6

Step 7: New norm-shifting tendency

The bullied person is socially marginalized and is now completely dependent on adults who see and understand how bullying behavior and legitimization are self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling. If the process is allowed to continue, the boundaries that were moved in step 2 can be moved again, and we are in a negatively reinforcing spiral.

More about Step 7

Omni staircase is based on social structures and cultural frameworks

Culture

Culture is something that arises between people who meet regularly over time (Bahn, 2013). It arises largely unconsciously and we do not think about it happening, it just happens. We meet and act, react to each other's actions, and then patterns and structures arise in the way we interact. These patterns and structures consist of a set of shared norms, values and perceptions of reality (Bahn, 2013). These influence the interaction and attitudes of everyone who belongs to the group.

Culture sets the framework for everything that happens in the group. When norm-breaking behavior, bullying behavior, and a tendency toward undesirable behavior occur in a group, something has happened to the culture of the group.

Norms

Norms are unwritten rules for action. Norms set guidelines for how we are expected to behave and act in given situations. They set guidelines for how we are expected to react to events or actions, and what is and is not allowed to do. Norms affect everything that happens in a group. For example, when there is a tendency for unwanted language in a group, with slurs and negative comments, something has happened to the norms that allows it.

If someone in a group has developed a tendency to gossip about others, there are norms that prevent us from reacting to it and allow it.

Social roles

Social roles are categories we use to understand each other. We give and receive social roles. Often social roles are broad, giving us a lot of room to be ourselves. We can try, fail, and be ourselves. Other times social roles are narrower. We understand each other in narrow categories. For example, as “easy-going”, “drama queen” or “rage kid”. We categorize someone as “this” or “that”.

Social roles affect the way we understand each other. They affect the way we interpret each other and meet each other. They affect what we expect from each other. Sometimes these interpretations and expectations can be so strong that they surpass what actually happens. Think of the person who always gets the blame for what goes wrong, even if he wasn't there. Think of the children who are referred to as "the bad one at kindergarten," and how that affects interaction and understanding of the child. Think of how the descriptions and stories about these children limit possibilities and are self-reinforcing, because we don't expect anything else.

Opinions

Reality perceptions are ways we understand and interpret the world around us. How we understand the world around us. Reality perceptions consist of constructs and concepts that give us an explanation of the world around us. For example, what is considered normal or what is socially accepted.

Perceptions of what is right and wrong are also part of the culture that arises between people who meet regularly over time. Perceptions of what is nice and not, what is important and not important, and what values we stand for, are also part of the culture creation that occurs between people.

These beliefs also affect everything that happens in the group. It affects the norms, the attitudes and the choices we make. It affects what we allow and what we don't, and our justifications for it.

Cultural mechanisms

When bullying behavior occurs in a group, something has happened to the norms, social roles, and our perceptions of each other and our surroundings. There are cultural mechanisms at work, as part of the group dynamics (Eriksen, 2018).

What is so difficult about culture is that it is largely an unconscious construct consisting of a series of invisible social mechanisms. Culture influences everything that happens in the group, without us being able to see it (Bahn, 2013). We only see the consequences or the result. To point out cultural structures or patterns, we have to interpret the interactions and events.

You need to understand in order to prevent

The name Omnimodel refers to this complex social system that surrounds a group of children and young people. The Omnimodel is intended to help us see, understand and work with this system. It is intended to help us understand how a growing-up environment works and what happens when tendencies towards undesirable behavior arise. The Omni staircase attempts to explain what happens when an environment develops in an undesirable direction.

When we understand how social structures and cultural frameworks influence individual behavior, understanding, and attitudes, we are able to promote safe, good, and health-promoting kindergarten, school, and upbringing environments. We are then able to prevent, detect, stop, and follow up on bullying and other offenses. When we understand how culture works, and how it influenced behavior and interaction in a group, we also understand more easily how to address challenging behavior and bullying.