Bullying

How can bullying be prevented in schools?

What might children mean when they say they are being bullied? How can
schools help children who claim to be bullied?

Why do some children bully other children? Can knowledge of the causes of
bullying help teachers to support their students?

What is bullying? What, if anything, can teachers and educational psychologists

do to stop it?

Aims and objectives

 What is bullying?
 Principal theories of bullying
 Intervention approaches in schools

Bullying statistics (“Ditch the label” Annual Bullying Survey):

 1.5 million young people have been bullied in the past year, 19% bullied
every day
 57% of female respondents have been bullied, 44% male respondents and
59% who identified as trans
 44% of people who have been bullied experience depression
 41% experience anxiety, 33% experience suicidal thoughts
 Twice as many boys as girls bully (66% of males vs 31% of females)
 14% of young people admit to bullying
What’s happening?
 Increases in the number of children contacting ChildLine to report
incidents of racist bullying and cyberbullying
 More than half (55%) of LGBT students experience bullying (Guasp,
2012)
What is bullying?
 Repeated oppression, psychological or physical, of a less powerful person
by a more powerful person or group of persons (Rigby, 1996)
 A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time,
to negative actions on the part of one or more persons, and he or she has
difficulty defending him/herself (Olweus, 1993)
 Can be physical, verbal, or indirect (spreading rumours or cyberbullying)
Three components to bullying:
1. Bullying is aggressive behaviour that involves unwanted, negative actions
2. Bullying involves a pattern of repeated behaviour over time
3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength
IIR – Imbalance of power, Intentional, Repeated over time
Cyberbullying
 Gives anonymity
 Lack of immediate feedback for the victim – less opportunity for either
party to resolve the misunderstanding
  More likely to take place across different age groups (e.g. schoolchildren
targeting a teacher)
 Easy for bystanders to become perpetrators by passing on or showing
others
Social dominance theory (Hawker & Boulton, 2001)
 Physical bullying – resource-holding potential
 Verbal – social attention-holding power
 Indirect/relational – affiliative relationships/sense of belonging
Sub-types of bullies and victims (Juvonen & Graham, 2004)
 Bullies  proactive (making the choice to bully to get something) or
reactive (maybe bullies because of frustration, difficult background,
unable to regulate emotions)
 Victims  passive or provocative (have negative feelings about
themselves, often have been bullies themselves)
 Out of a sample of 1420 children, 4.5% were bully-victims. Bully-victims
have more significant mental health and social risks in the future
(Copeland et al., 2013)
Principal theories of bullying

Type of theory Theory

Intrapersonal Attribution theories
Social information processing model
Interpersonal Socio-cognitive theory
Attachment theory
Family systems theory
Social dominance theory
Developmental Social interactional model
Developmental pathways to violence
Macro Ecological model

Socio-cognitive deficit theories

 Within-child theories
 ToM, CU traits, conduct difficulties
Theories of family influence
 Children learning from experiencing/witnessing violence or bullying
behaviour at home
 Long-term experiences of poor early care
Group process theories
 Importance of the peer group, social dominance
 Shame
 Group identification and belonging
 E.g. Thornberg, 2015
An ecological systems analysis of factors (Hong & Espelage, 2012)
 Impact over time
Socio-cognitive deficit perspective (Shakoor et al., 2012)
 Poor Theory of Mind as a developmental marker for later victim or bully-
victim status through its impact on children’s social relationships
  Difficulty understanding others’ perspectives and decoding social cues, so
must rely on own direct experiences. Where these were negative, may
lead children to interpret ambiguous situations in a negative light, leading
to an aggressive response, rather than an accepting/neutral response
 However, proactive bullies may show skills in perceiving and interpreting
social cues (ToM), but may have different goals and means of achieving
these
 Proactive vs reactive bullies – may be due to differences in cognitive and
affective empathy (Van Noorden, Haselagar, Cillessen, & Bukowski, 2014)
Peer group theories: roles in bullying (Salmivalli, 2010)
 Bully: active, takes initiative, leader
 Assistant: active, but more of a follower than a leader
 Reinforcer: incites the bully, provides an audience
 Defender: sticks up for/consoles the victim
 Outsider: does nothing in bullying situation, stays away
 Victim: gets bullied
Implications of bullying
 Victimisation: significant mental health problem: depression, low self
esteem, somatic problems, poor attendance, social anxiety and isolation,
suicide
 Bullying: delinquency, psychosocial maladjustment, poor attainment
 Elevated rates of psychiatric disorders in young adulthood, controlling for
childhood disorders and family hardship (Copeland, 2013)
 Witnesses: perception of high levels of peers victimisation is associated
with negative perceptions of school climate (Astor et al., 2002)
Anti-bullying strategies
 Proactive strategies
 Peer support strategies
 Reactive strategies
Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of anti-bullying
 Overall programmes are effective
 Bullying decreased by 20-23% and victimization by 17-20%
 Effective programmes are more intense including parent meetings, firm
disciplinary methods, and improved playground supervision (Ttofi and
Farrington, 2011)
What works? According to a survey of 205 psychologists:
 96.7% said bullying was dealt with by disciplinary consequences such as
suspension and expulsion
 57% of psychologists said it was ineffective (Shere and Nicholson, 2010)
 Strategies that involve all students and early involvement of parents are
most effective. Follow-up checks are always needed (Sharp, 1999)
School social competence development and bullying prevention model (Orpinas
& Horne, 2006):
 Following factors surround the student: excellence in teaching, school
values, awareness of strengths and problems policies and accountability,
caring and respect, positive expectations, support for teachers, physical
environment
  Following factors must be addressed: Mental health and learning,
awareness, emotions, cognitions, character social skills
KiVa – anti-bullying programme (Finland)
 Based on the participant role approach
 Aim: to influence the peer group so that more students will express the
disapproval of bullying and stand up for victims, eliminating any
motivating social rewards.
o Target students’ attitudes to bullying, raising empathy for victims
and developing the effectiveness of bystanders in preventing
bullying
 RCT suggested effective in reducing bullying and victimization (Saarento,
Boulton, & Samivalli)
 Complementary components organized into two categories:
o Indicated actions: handle identified cases of bullying (discussion
with students involved & encouraged prosocial students to
support victimized peers)
o Universal actions: targeted whole school community, implemented
at the classroom level including a set of themed student lessons
and the use of VLE
 Hutching & Clarkson (2015) – UK pilot trial of a subcomponent of the
programme, in 17 schools (year 5 and 6 classrooms) reported positive
impact on levels of bullying and victimisation
o Teachers reported high levels of pupil acceptance and engagement
in lessons
KiVa’s impact on cyberbullying?
 Salmivalli et al. (2011) – frequency of victims bullied via the Internet
and/or mobile phone (using the criterion of being targeted 2-3 times or
more often) decreased by 36% in the intervention schools, where it
increased by 14% in the control school
 Reduction in the frequencies of cybervictimisation indicate that a generic
programme such as KiVa can be very effective in reducing cyberbullying
as well as other forms of peer-to-peer bullying
Support group approaches
 Victim, bully, and bystanders
 First aim: get bully to identify with victim
 Second aim: help resolve the problem
 The facilitator chats with victim
 A support group of 6-8 pupils set up
 Friend of victim can take part
 Victim’s feelings communicated to the group
 Facilitator makes it clear that purpose is to take joint responsibility
 Each group member interviewed individually a week later to review
progress and report back on contribution
No-blame approach
 Does not try to discover factual evidence about the bullying incident or
incidents
 Does not blame anyone and says no one is in trouble or going to be
punished
 “No-blame” approach originated in Sweden by Anatol Pikas (2002) and
called “shared concern”
 Unlikely to work if bullies are picking on children they don’t know or care
about or if the patterns of bullying are so well established that the
bullying itself is a reward for the bullies
 Kidscape does not subscribe to the “no-blame” approach – NOT
EFFECTIVE