Bullying

Bullying

1. Definitions of Bullying

   • behaviour by an individual or group, usually repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group physically or emotionally (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007).
   • Farrington (1993): bullying is repeated oppression of a less powerful person, physical or psychological, by a more powerful person.
   • Smith & Sharp (1994): the systematic abuse of power
   • Rigby (2002): bullying involves a desire to hurt + a harmful action + a power imbalance + (typically) repetition + an unjust use of power +evident enjoyment by the aggressor and generally a sense of being oppressed on the part of the victim

2. Issues of Threshold

   • deciding at what level does something become bullying
   • how series does the harm have to be? every day most of us experience minor hurt, should bullying be limited to describing quite series blows, or insults or social provocations?

3. Types of Violence and bullying

   • direct physical attack
   • indirect physical attack (e.g. property)
   • direct verbal attack (oral, text, social media)
   • indirect verbal attack (spreading rumours)
   • Social exclusion from the normal group activities
   • institutional aggression/manipulation (setting unrealistic goals)

4. Cyberbullying

   • through email, instant messaging, chat rooms on websites or gaming sites or through digital messages or images sent to mobile
   • peer victimisation is precursor to children loneliness and school avoidance
   • skipping school may no longer make things easier for victim of bullying
   • goes beyond playground and school day
   • long-term effects of bullying may be worse than those of traditional bullying
     • much more difficult to escape - must cease electronic communication
     • may disconnect from social network
     • Public nature of cyberbullying - can be potentially humiliated in front of thousands of individuals
   • important characteristic of cyberbullying is anonymity - disinhibition
     • half of electronic victims unlikely know identity of the perpetrator
     • separation of online activities from in-person identity
     • also individual to each other, bully cannot see emotional reaction of victum

5. Assessing incidence of Bullying

   • Adult (teacher and parents) reports - limited value as adults are only aware of fraction of whats going on
   • Self reports - widely used in anonymous questionnaires e/g/ Olweus
   • Peer nominations - maybe most reliable method of class-based work
   • Direct observation - avoid reporting bias but difficult and time consuming
   • other methods - in-depth interviews, focus groups, incident reports etc

6. Involvement in bullying

   • may think of stereotypes - quiet/shy/academic victim, popular/physically developed/less academic bully
   • reality - more complex
   • weaknesses - research findings can be contradictory and often individuals can be unwilling to participate
   • all those involved in bullying have lower levels of self esteem than those not involved
   • Gender and bullying
     • both boys and girls are involved in bullying
     • boys more likely to be physically bullied by other boys are rarely girls
     • girls more likely to be victimised indirectly by both goys and girls (where actions not necessarily observed by victim)

7. Bullying in Pre-school

   • tend to use the word aggression rather than bullying
   • pre schoolers can be perpetrators and victims of behaviour that would be called bullying among older children
   • often episodes over contested toy or object - instrumental aggression
   • Characteristics of bully victims
     • difficulties with social skills/social competence and self esteem
     • lack of social support systems
     • children with special educational needs

8. Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

   • children with autism are at greater risk than other children of being bullied
   • the more socially isolated the more at risk children are of being bullied (Humphrey & Symes, 2010)
   • likely to reflect ASD childrens increased gullibility, lack of social support and friendship, low self confidence, less developed social and communication skills, motor and coodination difficulties, odd behaviours and obsessive interests, emotional meltdowns

9. Attribution Theory

   • Graham and Juvonen (2001) considered how victims of bullying explain the fact that they are being bullied
   • describe causes in terms of locus (internal/external), stability and controllability
   • Attributing cause of bullying to external factors (lack of supervision by teachers) is less damaging to self esteem than something that is internal
   • Attribution type:
     • Chracterological self blame: internal uncontrollabie, stable over time. (if i were a cooler kid this wouldn't have happened to me)
     • Behavioural self blame: internal, personal control, can change (i shouldn't have been there)
     • Threat from others: external (these kids pick on everyone)
     • Passivity: not reported (i feel helpless)
   • Characteristics of bullies
     • being victimised/bullied
     • two groups: socially skilled vs socially unskilled
     • more aggressive, lack of empathy
     • home backgrounds less affection, more violence

10. Bullying and theory of mind

    • being an effective bully involves manipulating internal mental stages (belief, thoughts and feelings)
    • sutton et al., (1999) gave 193 7-10 year olds the Participant Role Scale
      • children were classified as bully, assistant to bully, reinforcer, defender, outsider or victim
      • Teacher assessed what type of bullying (physical, verbal or indirect)
        • children asked series of questions and responses scored from 0 (fail) to 1 (pass but without reference to mental state) 2 (pass included references to mental state or belief)
        • findings: bullies have higher social cognition, those who bully verbally scored highest on theory of mind stories, skills may be helpful in teasing someone effectively (knowing what taunts will be most hurtful)
          • potential weakness - theorestical position contradicts Crick and Dodge who propose bullies suffer from social deficit

11. Crick and Dodge (2002)

    • physically aggressive children display hostile attributional bias when interpreting social cues
    • presented hypothetical stories to aggressive and non aggressive children aged 9-12
      • children asked to rate whether individual in each story was acting with intent or whether behaviour was accidental
        • children rated as high on physical aggression showed more hostile explanations

12. Bystander Behaviour

    • bullying occurs in groups
    • Bystanders are key in either sustaining or preventing bullying
    • bystanders often afraid of becoming involved
    • Assistants, reinforcers, outsiders, defenders (Salmivali, 1996, 1999)
    • 9% - bystanders supported victim 6% - bystanders attempted resolution 55% - bystanders made no response to help 7% - bystanders smiled/laughed 24% - bystanders supported bully (Tapper & Boulton, 2005)

13. Anti-bullying stategies

    • Role of parents: assist children to develop social competence, remain alert to possibility of bullying, be aware of schools anti bullying policy, attend training workshop for parents/carers
    • Peer support: co-operative group work, circle time, befriending/buddy system, circles of friends, conflict resolution/meditation, peer tutoring, peer counselling, peer mentoring
    • Pikas method of shared concern: Stage 1 - meeting with group members. Stage 2 - meeting with person who has been bullied. Stage 3 - Further meetings with group members. Stage 4 - further meeting with all group members (Pikas, 1987)
    • The No-Blame Approach: interview bullied pupil, arrange meeting for all pupils involved, explain problem, share responsibility, identify solution, let pupils take action themselves, meet them again (Maines & Robinson, 1992)
    • Assertiveness training for bullied pupils: body language and eye contact, assertive statements, resisting manipulation and threats, responding to name calling, enlisting support (Sharp et al., 1994)
    • Assertiveness training for bystanders: developing a whole-school anti bulling policy, government initiatives used in schools: dont suffer in silence (DfEE, 1994), promoting emotional health and wellbeing (Healthy schools, 2004), SEAL materials - social and emotional aspects of learning

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