Ten Universal Truths About Bullying!

This article talks, and explains 10 truths behind community violence involving bullying, and outlines how it is vital that the community as a whole needs to be very influential and active in children's lives.  Every paragraph discusses one issue and talks about how the truth plays a role in influencing a children.  

The ten truths are as follows:

"(1) Children need clear, consistent signals from home and school; (2) biology transcends culture; (3) schools mirror their communities; (4) bullying is a process, not a person; (5) when adults deny problems, children become targets; (6) children are developmentally similar across cultures; (7) all schools have a climate; (8) children need to feel safe to learn; (9) when children feel securely attached and valued, they grow; and (10) natural leaders and altruism are necessary for school and community change."

In order to counteract the effects of community violence, the article suggest that we take a psychoanalytical approach model towards cross-culture intervention in schools.  In doing so, it will create safer atmospheres for the children in the schools and also it will create better settled schools.  Hopefully, this will result in less community violence among children, thus less bullying would occur.  If parents and teachers can show children and biologically program students how to better behave, than there will much less bullying and violence our society.  This article suggest a way to fix community violence, but you could take this approach and apply it to a much vaster audience.  For example, (5) suggest children become targets when adults deny problems.  If you take that approach, a child will more likely become antisocial when he/she grows up, because childhood abuse can lead to antisocial personality disorder.  Also another outlook of (5) is that when elders/powerful/strong/etc... get angry they tend to take it out on people younger/less powerful/weaker/etc...  Thus creating a ying and yang or binary relationship that continues to be passed on through generations in relation to truths (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5).

Every truth can be related to a much larger issue other than just bullying, but the underlying meaning is that it starts with each and every person to do his/her part in order to raise their child(ren) the best the can regardless of their circumstances, thus creating a completely and utterly better environment for the child, which is create a better community resulting in less violence. 

Ryan L.

Find out for yourself at:

http://www.tandfonline.com.www.ubishops.ca:2048/doi/full/10.1080/07351690.2013.759484#.Upp5hcSsim4

This article by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC), it brings a couple of interesting statistics, definitions and prevention ideas regarding the close link with suicide and bullying.

It claims that suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 12-18. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 2007). It also says that in a typical 12-month period, 14% of American high school students seriously consider suicide, around 11% make plans and 6.3% actually attempt to kill themselves as of results of household problems and bullying at school. (CDC, 2010)

As of bullying itself, 32% of the students ages 12-18 reported being bullied during the years 2008-2009. Of these students, 21% said they were bullied once to twice a month; 10% reported being bullied once or twice a week and 7% reported being bullied daily. Around 9% reported being physically injured as a result of bullying. (Dinkes, Kemp, & Baum, 2009)

The study also explains that victims, perpetrators and those who are bully victims all three have more chances of being more depressive and, therefore, suicidal, as depression is extremely tightly linked with suicidal tendencies or ideas. Those who are more likely to be bullied have certain personal characteristics : internalization problems (withdrawal / anxiety/depression), low self-esteem, low assertiveness and aggressiveness in early childhood (by either peers or relatives & leads to social isolation and possible projection on fellows). Interestingly enough, it also explains that, usually, it is the suicidal kids who have a tendency to be even more bullied, increasing the chances for those to commit suicide. Child maltreatment, domestic violence and parental depression and all causes that pushes kids towards a more depressive state of mind and ideology. Also, as school lack adequate adult supervision (which can be a result of the physical layout of a school), bullies feel like they have more power in certain parts of the school, where they can bully without fear of being caught by an authoritative figure.

It also puts a great importance on the LGBT youth, as they are seen as overly deviant to the other kids, therefore more prone to being bullied. Some statistics included : "A 2005 survey of students ages 13–18 found that 65 percent reported being verbally or physically harassed or physically assaulted over the past year because of “their perceived or actual appearance, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression, race/ethnicity, disability, or religion.” In contrast, 90 percent of LGBT teens reported being verbally or physically harassed or assaulted based on one or more of these characteristics (Harris Interactive & Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, 2005)."

In conclusion, this organism recommends to :

• Start prevention early, so that younger kids have a way to counter bullies and also counter warning signs of suicide, especially when they are evident (when entering adolescence)
• Keep up with technology, which means that we should keep an idea at what happens online and keep in mind that it is a place where bullies can be as powerful as they see fit, therefore contributing to their delusion of grandeur and immunity. 
• Keep in mind that LGBT have an habit of being targeted as immediately as they are spotted in society, especially in school. When they do not conform to gender roles and expectations, they have an increased risk towards both bullying victimization and suicidal behaviour, it is important to keep a certain mind on this problem. 
• Using a comprehensive approach in order to reduce the risks of bullying and suicide. Therefore, empathy needs to prevail in order to understand what they are going through. 
• We need to focus on young people, during the phase where the seeds of bullying are planted. 

If you want to read more, you can see or download this document here.

Nicolas Q.

Studies of bullying

This article is an article that has been analysing studies made throughout the years and try to put a defined conclusion and those findings.

This article depicts that there are three types of people affected by bullying in school: the bullies, the victims and the bully victims. While "bully victims" is a term that has been used in some of our previous posts, it is interesting to see it used in a scholarly article, as it is very often something that most people do not take into consideration, the fact that some kids become bullies after having been victims for a long time. It could be seen as social learning from others, even though it is learned the wrong way. In the article, they claim that 10 to 30% of kids are involved in some forms of bullying, but it also admits that this changes from research to research, as backgrounds, school pedagogical help and states/provinces have a lot to do with the amount of bullying that is done in schools.

This article sums up bullying in a pretty neat way : "Bullying has been conceptualized as a distinct type of aggression characterized by a repeated and systematic abuse of power (Olweus, 1999; P.K Smith & Sharp, 1994). In addition to acts of deliberate physical aggression, bullying also includes verbal aggression (e.g. name calling and threats), relational aggression (e.g., social isolation and rumor spreading), and cyber-aggression (e.g.s, text messaging and e-mailing hurtful messages or images), a new venue for inflicting harm in an increasingly electronic youth culture (Williams & Guerra, 2007).". While this is an explanation that is rather thorough, the authors also claim that victims of bullying often suffer long-term psychological problems, which can go from diminishing self-esteem, suicidal ideas, or even attempts, problems with relationships and problems at concentrating at school, or sometimes dropping out, as well.

The article claims that intervention programs that try to prevent or mitigate bullying have not seen much important impact, as "the improvement appears to be in changing children's knowledge and perceptions, not bullying behaviour.". Therefore, it is pretty much comparable to smokers who know that smoking is terrible for yourself, or others, but keep doing it as the behaviour, habits, have not been changed, but only the conscience that it should.

In the end, out of 1622 articles that were found by the authors, only 153 articles were analysed thoroughly with independent sample, therefore unbiased, and represented valid statistics for the authors to make the conclusions that were explained above. One of the most important findings they have made is that bullies usually have worse grades than the victims, which seem to have a tendency at better academic performance. As of bully victims, they have been analysed and the conclusion claims that they are closer to bullies than victims when it comes to academic performance, most likely as they have been "transformed" by years of being bullied, focusing more on the externalization of information, rather than internalization.

If you want to read more, you can do so here.

Nicolas Q.

Teacher Attitudes Towards Bullying

This article talks about how teacher's have different attitudes with regards to the different types of bullying and how important each type is.  The three bullying types that were looked at in this study were, verbal, physical and relational.  405 elementary school teachers were studied to see how each individually, had a different attitude towards the various forms of bullying and concluded that the most looked at and sought out form of bullying was verbal.  Teachers were more likely to intervene when the bullying was either physical or verbal.  With regards to relational bullying, it is when students are socially excluded from peer groups, and teachers don't intervene as much as they should.  Teachers were more empathetic with regards to verbal and physical bullying, than relational, and this could be do to the fact that they bear witness to these forms more often, or maybe just because intervening is easier.  Is it a lack of empathy on the teacher's part? Or is it because teachers don't know how to deal with relational bullying?  Teachers are seen as the leaders of our schools, and as part of the educational community, they are there to teach us and aid us in life, but how are students suppose to do so when they are being bullied?

Depending on the gender, the results of the findings varied and the most highly repeated intervention action, was a talk with the bully, and informing them on what victimization is and the effects of victimization.  But in elementary schools, do kids actually understand what they are doing wrong and understand that it is hurting or damaging another students life?  Just how much will students in elementary school trust and listen to the teacher when they talk to them and not take for granted what the teacher said.  They are young, and sometimes are unable to know the differences between right and wrong therefore there must be another way other than having a serious talk to a bullying, to explain to them how they are affecting some poor child's life.

The study concluded that, teachers need to be better informed with regards to how to deal with bullying as similarly mentioned in my last post.  Teachers feel that they need to have more knowledge on the effects and consequences of bullying, and better practiced in intervention if they wish to make a difference.  Trent talks about bullying prevention programs and concluded that the "more time and dedication put into their program, the less bullying occurred. All programs have one specific purpose: to counter bullying. However, not all programs are followed through with. Once they are introduced they tend to be forgotten about."

Thus in order to prevent bullying, teachers need to be better educated in prevention tactics and need to enforce them more.  They are the leaders of the educational community for our children, thus the way bullying is going to be solved starts with them!

Ryan L.

Read More:
http://psycnet.apa.org.www.ubishops.ca:2048/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&id=97069EDE-D0E0-D60F-9C2B-BAE79C7E5E3B&resultID=2&page=1&dbTab=all&search=true

Teacher's and Educational Support Professionals

This article talks about how National Education Association performed a study with its members, teachers and educational support professionals, in order to try and figure out what their perceptions of bullying were and what they could do to try and reduce it.  Some of its findings included that teachers are more likely to witness bullying at their school, more likely for students to come to them to report the bullying thus making them more likely to notice how much of a problem bullying really is.  The study was conducted on 2,163 teachers and 2,901 educational professionals.  Among all of these included in the survey, teachers were more active in bulling policies, but yet both teachers and educational support professionals wanted to have more training that involved seeking out and helping students that have been bullied and to become more knowledgeable with regards to cyber-bullying.

There are many different reasons behind bullying that teachers bear witness to, such as bullying do to a stigma, sexual orientation, issues involving gender, racism, and ethnicity.  The teachers in this study, realized that they needed to be better informed on how to prevent bullying to actually make any impact what so ever to the bullying phenomenon.

Also, it's hard for the researchers understand the prevalence and significance of bullying in a school, when members of the school, staff, teachers, and professionals, don't all have the same perception of bullying. Some staff members feel that they have effective intervention programs and would intervene if they saw a student being bullied, yet at the same time, students don't always report being bullied to faculty but rather report it to friends or family members, making it even harder for teachers to be effective at all.

In this study, they hypothesis that both teachers and  ESP (Educational Support Professionals) would have less training and ability to prevent newer variations of bullying, and would require training in order to familiarize themselves with the technology behind it.  Phenomenons such as cyber-bullying and sexting, they would be unfamiliar with, and would need proper training to intervene.

To conclude, this rather lengthy article of a study done on the perceptions of Teachers and ESP's, is basically denoting the fact that our teachers and ESP's need to be better trained and seek more training and advanced training with regards to bullying in its many forms.  In order to prevent bullying we must all have a common perception of it, to be truly efficient in our desires to completely remove bullying from our society.

Ryan Lowry

More at!
http://web.ebscohost.com.www.ubishops.ca:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4278cd24-d125-456e-afbe-7b6bc8852a1c%40sessionmgr10&vid=6&hid=1

Ingredients of Effective Programs

This post will show similarities to my last post 'Evaluation of an Anti-Bullying Program'. Rather than evaluate a program, this article talks about what is needed to create a successful program.
This 25 page article written by the Canadian Society for the Study of Education gives a detailed description of the origins of bullying, how it varies from gender (boys are more aggressive physically, girls are more verbal), as well as the impact it has in schools. Due to the amount of speculation and suicide the media has touched on, bullying has become a moral panic in society. Although not all bullying can be stopped, government and its institutions (primarily schools) have begun to create programs that help counter bullying. But are these programs effective? This article relates to the 'ingredients' that are needed to have an effective program.
A survey was sent to principles of over 90 schools, about 9 pages long and 20-30 minutes in length. This survey's main purpose was to show the different tactics/programs these schools use to combat bullying, along with the characteristics of the school and student body and how prominent bullying was inside the school. Once all surveys were returned, the researchers were able to contrast all the schools and decipher reasons why certain schools performed better than the rest.
This was the basic of the researchers findings:
-The 'Needs' component showed the amount of indirect and direct bullying, the seriousness of it, as well as any changes in the past years. Generally, schools who had higher amounts of bullying had a lower percentage in change in the past years (if any at all).
-The 'Resources' applied by certain schools. Schools who had more anti-bullying programs as well as program funding had a lower amount of bullying that occurred in the school.
-Schools who had regular 'Activities' such as class-based discussions, anti-bullying committee, or peer-led interventions, had a lower amount of bullying.
-These components had an impact on the 'Outputs' and 'Outcome', which groups were targeted, the school atmosphere, and the impact of the programs put in place.
Researchers concluded that the more time and dedication put into their program, the less bullying occurred. All programs have one specific purpose: to counter bullying. However, not all programs are followed through with. Once they are introduced they tend to be forgotten about. One of the key aspects to a bully-free atmosphere is to make sure that the program is apparent across the school. Ways to keep these programs alive are to include activities among the student population. The more students participate-the more aware they are of the consequences of bullying-the less bullying occurs.

Here's the article:
http://www.jstor.org.www.ubishops.ca:2048/stable/pdfplus/4126453.pdf?&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true

Trent S.

Evaluation of an Anti-Bullying Program

This article published by the Canadian Society for the Study of Education evaluates the effectiveness of an anti-bullying program. The research consisted of surveying over 120 elementary school students and comparing their open-ended responses. The main purpose of the survey was to determine if the program achieved its goal, how useful the students found the program, strategies to manage it, along with whether students reported bullying because of this program. The students responses were examined over three different points in time as well as contrasted together to see if there were any correlation.
This 19 page document provides an in-depth analysis on many different areas in the field of bullying such as who is most likely to be bullied, environmental factors, and many other topics.
The program which was evaluated was the P4 program which consisted of a scripted puppet play which educated elementary school on the topic of bullying. The main point of the play was to show the '4 footsteps': ignoring, saying stop, walking away, and getting help. This ultimately showed students the effects of bullying as well as certain ways in how to prevent it.
After surveying the students researchers noted that students felt a heightened frequency of bullying after gaining more knowledge on the topic. After a pretest/posttest researchers concluded that the reason students felt that bullying appeared more was because they were easily able to identify the different forms of bullying, which they were unaware of before the program. In the end, researchers found that the program did not meet its goal of awareness and strategy, yet the students found that there was an increase in their confidence of managing bullying by themselves. When questioned on what they knew about bullying before the P4 program, students already had a large amount of knowledge on the topic. This could be because of the heightened media attention, or talks with/from a parent or guardian. One of the most important aspect of the program is to appeal to the audience, therefore the researchers suggest that the program should be based around what the students already know, rather than just give them another dose of the same knowledge. Rather than show a 45 minute puppet show, a more hands on experience (group activities or a teacher demonstration) would have a more critical impact on bullying.

Here's the article if you want to see for yourself:
http://www.jstor.org.www.ubishops.ca:2048/stable/pdfplus/4126451.pdf?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true&

Trent S.
 

The article of this week talks about cyber bullying, school bullying and psychological distress (also the name of the chosen scholarly article).

The article itself speaks about the high rate of cyber bullying amongst high school kids, where it states that 9% to 40% of students are victims of cyber bullying. It reflects unique characteristics that distinguishes it from school bullying, as cyber bullying is an easier way for the perpetrators to maintain anonymity and have a bigger audience, a bigger public for their actions. For those reasons, it also brings a bigger sense of agreement, therefore justifying their actions as some may publicly agree with what has been said, taking away any feeling of guilt. It also makes it harder for kids to get punished in that way, as anyone can change their names to anything, possibly deviating and using someone else's name in order to create an alibi.

However, this article also claims that the low amount of studies made regarding the links between cyber bullying and school bullying are too distant to be able to pull conclusions, as some studies claim one third of online bullied are also bullied at school, and others say that more than three quarters are bullied, possibly showing that it differs from areas or schools, but it is not mentioned in the article. Regarding gender differences, some studies also claim that males are more subjected to be victims of online bullying, rather than females. While this is a point I wouldn't be surprised to be true, other studies also claim that the invert is also the case, where females are more online bullied than males. 

In 2008, the authors used regional census from high school students in order to make up statistics that would provide a wider view of the problem of bullying. As a method, they used surveys regarding bullying victimization and psychological distress, including depressive symptoms, self-injury,and suicidality. A total of 20406 ninth- through twelfth-grade students in Metro West Massachusetts completed this survey, provide a numerous amount of statistics. The results go as follows : 

A total of 15.8% of students reported cyber bullying and 25.9% reported school bullying in the past 12 months. A majority (59.7%) of cyber bullying victims were also school bullying victims; 36.3% of school bullying victims were also cyber bullying victims. Victimization was higher among non-heterosexually identified youths. Victims report lower school performance and school attachment. Controlled analyses indicated that distress was highest among victims of both cyber bullying and school bullying. Victims of either form of bullying alone also reported elevated levels of distress. (Schneider, S., K., O'Donnell, L., Stueve, A., Coulter, R.,W., 2012)

As a result, they have been able to conclude that there needs to be more hands-on to the problem, therefore more government actions, as well as ground work with the students themselves. They also claimed that bullying has a direct impact on the actual and future mental stability of the students, possibly affecting school performance and feel of neediness to stay in school. 

While those are not necessarily surprising facts or studies, they are representatives of what thousands of students have claimed to be consequences of bullying and absence of strong friendship during growth. 

As a conclusion, here is a quote from another article, which may be the subject of my next blog post : 

In their review of the research literature Hartup and Stevens (1997) found that adolescents who did not develop friendships during the early years were more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, and were less likely than their more popular peers to cope successfully with upheavals such as changing schools. Similarly, Haugaard and Tilly (1988) have argued that the absence of friendships during middle childhood will result in later difficulties in forming and maintaining romantic relationships in adolescence as a result of low self-esteem and a lack of social confidence. (Rivers, I., Duncan, N., Besag, V., 2007)

Nicolas Q. 

Schneider, S., K., O'Donnell, L., Stueve, A., Coulter, R.,W., (2012), Cyberbullying, School Bullying, and Psychological Distress: A Regional Census of High School Students.
Rivers, I., Duncan, N., Besag, V., (2007), A handbook for Educators and Parents. 

Schools as Educational Communities for Bullying

The purpose of schools are to educated children, in order for them to further their lives and get a career.  Somethings seem to slip between the cracks of the highly policed educational system, such as bullying.  But research shows that, it's possible to identify would-be bullies and to engage them, in order to prevent them from becoming bullies in the future.  93% of teachers survey in Australia feel that they could identify certain characteristics of would be bullies. This article discusses how teachers in Australia feel that they can identify would-be bullies and help prevent bullying.  It identifies that teachers who take part in anti-bullying policies are more likely to intervene with bullying than teachers who don't take part.  These teachers, leaders of the children, must take the initiative and intervene as much as possible and as early as possible to prevent bullying.   From a sociological perspective, if the institution is able to prevent bullying earlier in a child's life, then there will be fewer cases of bullying.  Also, another benefit of intervening early with children, is that from a learning perspective, bullying is learned from others.  Edwin Sutherland's Differential Association Theory states that deviance emerges with the normalization of deviant friendship patterns.  If teachers can interrupt this deviant friendship pattern before youths are able to normalize it through frequency, duration, priority and intensity, then there will be significantly less bullies in the world.  This article suggests that the most important factor towards early childhood bullying is how involved teachers are with the anti-bullying policies and implementing their authority in situations concerning bullying.

Ryan L.

Read more at:
http://web.ebscohost.com.www.ubishops.ca:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=9fd079bf-5101-4634-bc5c-a91daf91224a%40sessionmgr4&vid=5&hid=12

Bullying Widespread Phenomena

This article written by Gerald Walton critically analyses the notion of bullying. The author contrasts different ideas from theorists, as well as programs and policies, and applies it to a more broader outline such as that of educational administration and social oppression.
In this article the author takes on different forms of tackling the 'bullying' topic. He mentions Coloroso's idealism of how the way to tackle bullying is for everyone to work together and create a more welcoming climate, or even the tragic play of bullying where 'the bully', 'the bullied', and 'the bystanders' each serve an important role. Closely linked to the labeling process. While accepting these insights from others, the author also includes insights of his own (sometimes contradicting what the audience just read) providing the readers with both sides of an opinion.
By reading this article you will gain a more in-depth understanding of 'bullying' as a whole (particularly in the field of education), as well as learn the different explanations from theorists and how they perceive the causes and solutions of bullying. This allows the audience to connect this topic with other sociological terms.
While reading this article one thing that could clearly be linked together was bullying and moral panic. This term refers to a problem which threatens the moral fabric of society and creates public anxiety or distress. This can often be brought on by the influence of the media. Doesn't this sound familiar with the case of bullying? Due to over-exposure from the media and displaying the 'worst of the worst', bullying has been classed as a problematic phenomenon forcing higher officials to take action. Could bullying be the moral panic of the 21st century?

Check the article and see for yourself:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1300/J202v04n01_06

Trent S.