Bullying

Q: What is school bullying?

A:School bullying can be described as a situation in which one or more students (the ‘bullies’) single out a child (the ‘victim’) and engage in behaviors intended to harm that child. A bully will frequently target the same victim repeatedly over time. A child who bullies can dominate the victim because the bully possesses more power than the victim. Compared to his or her victim, for example, the bully may be physically stronger or more intelligent, have a larger circle of friends, or possess a higher social standing. Bullying can inflict physical harm, emotional distress, and / or social embarrassment or humiliation.

Q: What conditions allow bullying to take place?

A: There are three essential components to any bullying situation. To start with, there must be a bully: an individual who voluntarily seeks out and attempts to victimize others. Another participant necessary for bullying to take place is a potential victim: a student who is substantially weaker than the bully in one or more significant ways. Bullying cannot happen, of course, unless there is also a location in which it can occur. School locations where bullying is common are often those with limited adult supervision, such as hallways, bathrooms, and playgrounds.

While not essential, student bystanders are a fourth important element that often impacts bullying: if witnesses are present when bullying occurs, these bystanders can play a pivotal role by choosing either to encourage the bully or to protect the victim.

Q: How big a problem is bullying in schools?

A: It is difficult to know precisely how widespread bullying is in any given school. Bullying tends to be a hidden activity, and both bullies and victims are usually reluctant to disclose to adults that it is taking place. The incidence of bullying also can vary greatly from school to school. Research suggests, though, that 7 percent or more of students may be bullies and perhaps 10-20 percent may be chronic victims of bullying. 

Q: What are the different types of bullying?

A: Bullying can be direct or indirect. When bullying takes a direct form, the bully confronts the victim face-to-face. Examples of direct bullying would include situations in which the victim is verbally harassed or threatened, physically attacked (e.g., punched, kicked, pushed down), or socially embarrassed (e.g., taunted, refused a seat on the school bus).

In the case of indirect bullying, the bully attacks the victim’s social standing or reputation-usually when the victim is not around. A student is engaging in indirect bullying if he or she spreads malicious gossip or writes insulting graffiti about a classmate, or organizes a peer group to ostracize that classmate. Victims are at a particular disadvantage in indirect bullying because they may never discover the identity of the person or group responsible for the bullying.

Q: Are there differences in bullying between boys and girls or at different age levels?

A: Some evidence suggests that a general shift from direct to indirect bullying takes place as children advance from elementary to middle and high school. At any grade level, boys are more likely than girls to report that they are victims of physical bullying. Schools may also tend to overlook the possibility that girls take part in bullying, both because of gender stereotypes (i.e., that girls are ‘less aggressive’ than boys) and because girls may prefer to bully using indirect means such as hurtful gossip that are difficult for adults to observe.

Q: Why do some children bully? What is the ‘payoff’ for them?

A: There are several reasons that a particular student may be motivated to bully. For instance, the bully may enjoy watching a weaker child suffer, like the increased social status that comes from bullying, or covet the money or personal property that he or she can steal or extort from a victim. Children who bully are likely to feel little empathy for their victims and may even feel justified in inflicting hurt because they believe that their victims ‘deserve it.’ A common myth about bullies is that they bully others to cover up their own sense of inadequacy or poor self-esteem. It appears that bullies actually possess levels of self-esteem that are about as positive as those of their nonbully peers.

Q: What are the characteristics of a child who is victimized by bullies?

A: There is no single descriptive profile to help schools to identify those
students who are at risk for being targeted by bullies. One important
indicator, though, is the presence or absence of friends in a child’s life.
Children who are socially isolated are easier targets for bullies because they
lack a friendship network to back them up and support them against a bully’s
attacks. A second factor that can predispose a child to be victimized is age.
Older children often bully younger children.

There are also two subgroups of bully victims that to present a clearer profile:
passive victims and provocative victims. Passive victims may be physically
weaker than most classmates, avoid violence and physical horseplay, and be
somewhat more anxious than their peers. Lacking friends, these children are
an easy target for bullying. Provocative victims may be both anxious and
aggressive. They may also have poor social skills and thus tend to irritate or
alienate their classmates. Bullies often take pleasure in provoking these
provocative victims into an outburst through taunts or teasing, then sit back
and watch as the teacher reprimands or punishes the victim for disrupting
the class.

Q: What impact does bullying have on its victims?

A: Victims of bullying may experience problems with academics, because
they are too preoccupied with the task of avoiding the bully to concentrate
the teacher’s lecture or school assignment. They may engage in specific
strategies to dodge the bully (e.g., feigning illness and being sent to the nurse to avoid gym class) and may even develop an apparent phobia about
attending school.

Bullying can also leave a lasting imprint on its victims. Victims of bullying
are often socially marginalized to start with, having few if any friends.
Unfortunately, as these children are bullied over time, they may experience
increased rejection by their peers-who blame the victims for the suffering
that they endure at the hands of the bully. In time, these victims too may
come to believe that they themselves are responsible for the bullying.
Individuals who were chronically bullied as children may show symptoms of
depression and poor self-esteem as adults.

Q: What role do bystanders play in helping or preventing bullying?

A: The term ‘bystander’ suggests that those children who stand on the
sidelines and witness incidents of bullying are neutral observers. In most
instances, though, bystanders are much more likely to provide
encouragement and support to the bully than they are to actively intercede to
help the victim (Snell, et al., 2002). Furthermore, in situations in which a
group of students is bullying a child, bystanders may actively join in by
taunting, teasing, or ostracizing the victim.

Teachers are often surprised when they see a group of otherwise-friendly
children egging on a bully or engaging in bullying behaviors themselves. One
explanation for why bystanders may cross the line to help bullies is that, as
part of a group, bystanders may feel less accountable for their individual
actions (Olweus, 1993). Another possibility is that bystanders feel justified in
bullying the victim because they have come to believe that he or she
‘deserves’ such treatment.

Q: Schools are supposed to be well-supervised settings. How could widespread bullying happen there?

A: Because bullying is a covert activity, adults seldom see it occurring.
There are other reasons why bullying can go unchallenged in school as well:

• School staff may misinterpret aggressive bullying as harmless physical
  horseplay and therefore fail to intervene.
• When questioned by adults, victims often deny that bullying is taking
  place. (Victims may lie about the bullying because the bully is present
  during the questioning or because they do not believe that the adults
  in the school will be able to intercede effectively to make the bullying
  stop.)

There may be too few supervising adults in those unstructured settings
where bullying is most likely to occur (e.g., gym class, lunch room,
playground). Or those supervising adults may not be trained to intervene
early and assertively whenever they see questionable behavior between
children.

Q: What can schools do to stop bullying?

A: All segments of the school community must work together to address the
problem of bullying. This means that teachers, administrators, parents, and
students need to cooperate as they assess the scope of the bullying problem in their school and come up with ways to respond to it effectively. While every
school will adopt an approach to bully prevention that meets its unique
needs, all schools would benefit from the following guidelines (Batsche &
Knoff, 1994):

• Conduct a thorough building-wide assessment to uncover the extent
  that bullying is a problem in your school. Use multiple methods to
  collect information. Consider administering staff surveys and
  anonymous student surveys, facilitating student and parent focus
  groups on the topic of bullying, analyzing the pattern of student
  disciplinary referrals to see if bullying patterns emerge, have adults
  observe and record bullying behaviors in less-supervised settings such
  as the cafeteria and on the playground, etc. Pool this information to
  identify significant patterns of bullying (for example, where and when
  bullying happens to occur most frequently; which students appear to
  engage in bullying behavior and which are victimized by bullies, etc.)
• Reach consensus as a staff about how your school defines bullying and
  when educators should intervene to prevent bullying from occurring.
  Rates of school bullying drop significantly when all staff members are
  able to identify the signs of bullying and agree to intervene
  consistently whenever they observe unsafe, disrespectful, or hurtful
  behaviors.
• Compile a ‘menu’ of appropriate consequences that educators can
  impose on students who bully. This menu should include lesser
  consequences that might be given for minor acts of bullying (e.g., mild
  teasing) and more stringent consequences for more serious or chronic
  bullying (e.g., inflicting physical harm, harassing a victim for weeks).
  Train staff to use the consequences-menu to ensure fairness and
  consistency when they intervene with bullies.
• Establish a policy for contacting the parent(s) of a student who has
  engaged in bullying. At the parent conference, school staff should
  attempt to enlist the parent to work with them to stop the student’s
  bullying. If the parent denies that a problem exists or refuses to
  cooperate to end the child’s bullying behavior, the parent should be
  told clearly that the school will monitor the child’s behavior closely and
  will take appropriate disciplinary steps if future bullying incidents
  occur.
• Monitor the school’s bully-prevention efforts on an ongoing basis to see
  if they have in fact reduced the amount of bullying among students
  and improved the emotional climate of the building. The school can use
  the same monitoring methods to track progress in bully-prevention as
  were first used to assess the initial seriousness of the bullying problem
  (e.g., focus groups, surveys, direct observation, tracking of disciplinary
  referrals). Share these results periodically in the form of a ‘progress
  report’ with school staff, parents, and students to build motivation
  throughout the school community for your building’s bully-prevention
  initiative.

Reprinted with permission from Jim Wright from
www.interventioncentral.org.

OTHER RESOURCES ON BULLYING

Do interventions work to reduce bullying in school?
www.education.unisa.edu.au/bullying/intervention.htm
This 66-page report from the the University of South Australia focuses
on reducing bullying in preschool and early primary grades. The
evaluation examined 13 studies from more than 8 countries.
Similarities were noted in how to stop and reduce bullying. The report
discusses the successes and failures of these different “reduce bullying”
attempts.

The lowdown on bullying.
www.nmha.org/pbedu/backtoschool/bullying.cfm What’s bullying, and what do we do about it? This article from the
National Mental Health Association tells the story, quick and to the
point.

Untangling the myths: What the research tells us.
www.nwrel.org/request/dec01/untangling.html
Find out what is and isn’t true about bullies. Learn how to identify a
bully and a bullying victim. Get suggestions on how to stop bullying.

Want to create an anti-bullying program at your school?
www.nwrel.org/request/dec01/choosingcreating.htm
Learn how to avoid potential pitfalls when starting a school-wide antibullying
program. Find out how to choose a bullying prevention
program that is right for your school. Print out the worksheet on
creating an anti-bullying plan.

Quick training aids for the prevention of bullying.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/qf/bully_qt
Planning on giving your staff training on bullying? Check out these
talking points for conducting an inservice workshop. You’ll find links to
various research studies and papers on bullying. Get overviews,
factsheets, tools, handouts, model programs, and additional resources.
You’ll also find overheads to use in your presentation.

What’s a parent to do?
www.pacer.org/premium-publications/bully.htm
Find out, and tell others, with “Is Your Child a Target of Bullying?
Intervention Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities,” a
publication of the PACER Center. It’s available on CD-ROM or on
overhead color transparencies with a printed script($15 CD-ROM /
$165 Color Transparencies with Script). The link above will tell you all
about it.

More on what parents can do.
www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=697&g=2
As a parent, would you recognize the signs that your child is being
bullied? Or that your child was a bully? This article will help you do
both and provides suggestions for what to do about each.

And when youth with disabilities are bullied…
www.ncset.org/premium-publications/viewdesc.asp?id=1332
Consult this Issue Brief from NCSET (National Center for Secondary
Education and Transition), called “Bullying and Teasing of Youth With
Disabilities: Creating Positive School Environments for Effective
Inclusion.”

Newsletter on bullying.
www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/parent_letter/ You won’t wont to miss this newsletter from New York University
(NYU) Child Study Center. The October 2003 issue is dedicated to
Bullies and Victims: What a Parent

NASETMembers: As always, we are interested in meeting your needs for information. If you have a topic suggestion for the Practical Teacher email us at membersresearch@naset.org