Bullying III--Detection

This post will wrap up the topic of bullying, though we'll return in a future post that will address violence-prevention strategies.  Today’s topic involves strategies for detecting bullying behavior. Detecting bullying behavior can be difficult.  Bullying by its sinister nature is most effective when it is done out of sight of staff and faculty in schools.  How then can decision-makers and those who could intervene and provide services to student bullies and victims of bullies best ferret out the offenders and the victims?  Dewey Cornell and Karen Brokenbrough (2004) offered several strategies after examining data 23 United Kingdom (UK) primary schools.

Their study suggested collecting data from students who were instructed to self-report if they were victims of bullies.  In other words, one of their recommendations was to tell children it was okay to report when they were being bullied, and for school administrators and teachers to communicate to all students the process for reporting.  This seems on the surface to be too simple, or that it would involve coaching students to “tattle tale” on their classmates.  Intuitively, many believe (including myself until I read their findings) that self-reporting is a set-up for failure, but Cornell and Brokenbrough found otherwise. 

They also found that peer informants who were asked questions such as, “who is a person in this class who often gets hit or teased by other people?” could be a helpful source of intelligence.  What they found was that teachers often were surprised to learn who the real bullies in the classroom were.  Are you old enough to remember Eddie Haskell from the old Leave it To Beaver show?  Eddie often bullied and taunted young Beaver Cleaver and his young friends, yet he was an absolutely charming suck-up to Beaver’s parents, Ward and June.  This example illustrates part of the problem teachers face.  The children being ugliest to their peers may be the most helpful and affable in the eyes of school leadership. 

However, teacher appraisals of who might be a bully or who might be a victim of a bully in the classroom were often quite accurate (Furlong et al., 2004).  While the previous paragraph illustrates that teachers can be fooled when a child or adolescent puts in the effort to fool them, it should also be stressed that teachers don’t get duped nearly as often as we might imagine.  It’s hard for anyone, must less a child or teen, to keep two faces going all day every day throughout the period of a school year.  Eventually even the cleverest get caught, so asking pertinent and specific questions of teachers as to who the hidden trouble-makers are in the classroom has merit for school administrators intent on rooting out and eliminating such behavior. 

The UK study found that the best results in terms of identifying offenders or victims was a multifaceted approach utilizing the methods listed above. The study authors found success in models incorporating peer informants and teacher appraisals, but they took mild issue with self-reporting, pointing out that many students don’t see themselves as being the victims of a bully. This obviously constituted a significant flaw in any study relying solely on self-reporting measures. (Furlong et al., 2004).

The biggest challenge with doing peer review information surveys and/or teacher assessment surveys was in the fact that these types of questionnaires tended to take far more time than simple self-reporting techniques. Cornell and Brokenbrough acknowledged that there is a trade-off, and that schools must be invested in the objective of identifying the active players within a bullying spectrum. Their study conclusion recommended the multifaceted approach as being the most effective, despite the drawback of time resource management and the potential of some students not reporting accurately (Furlong et al., 2004).

This approach is supported by Zins, Elias and Maher (2007) in their book, Bullying, Victimization, and Peer Harassment: A Handbook of Prevention and Intervention.  These authors suggest a combination of detection and intervention measures to include peer intervention, self-reporting, peer informants, teacher awareness training, and the use of therapy in schools for both offenders and victims.  They contend there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to detecting bullies, helping “bullies” to find better ways to express their own unresolved anger, protecting victims, and creating pathways to success.  A multi-faceted approach seems the most efficacious strategy so as to avoid any student perpetrating or enduring bullying actions going unnoticed (Zins et al., 2007). 

The other challenge in detecting bullying involves a lack of involvement from bystanders who witness acts of bullying but take no action to stop that which is ongoing or prevent future offensive action.  Coloroso (2003) argues that a significant part of the problem involves “disengaged onlookers.” She contends that many times other children and teenagers are fully aware of the bullying behavior, yet do nothing to stand up or speak out against it. She provides a list of excuses typically used by children and teenagers in this event:

• ·         The bully is my friend
• ·         It is not my problem
• ·         The victim is not my friend
• ·         The victim is a loser
• ·         He deserved it or asked for it
• ·         He didn’t even stand up for himself, so why should anyone else stand up for him?
• ·         Bullying will toughen him up
• ·         It’s better to be in the in the group than to defend the outcasts
• ·         It’s too big a pain in the brain

·         Who wants to be called a snitch or a rat, blamed for getting someone else in trouble? (Coloroso, 2003, p. 163-4)

The last of those excuses may well be the most problematic in terms of making change. Being labeled a snitch or a rat can be tantamount to social suicide or even an actual death threat in some school settings (Coloroso, 2003). The challenge for schools and parents then is one of surmounting such social pressures in such a way as to empower otherwise ambivalent students to actively engage in change. 
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Bullying II--Let's Call it What is Is...

Before we go much further, I think it's important that we define bullying and outline some of the consequences.  This post is a tad longer than most, but this is a broad topic on which we must be clear from the outset.

So, what is “bullying?”  Dr. Ken Rigby (2003) laments the fact that the term “bullying” has become something of a catch-all.  He suggests the necessity of standardizing the definition, which can then be used to more reliably measure the nature and severity of victimization (Rigby, 2003).  Dr. Rigby expresses a reasonable concern.  What one parent might consider “boys being boys,” may be considered bullying by another. One teacher may see aggressive play on a soccer field as simply a byproduct of competition, whereas another might consider some acts as barbarous. 

 To that end, Dr. Cricket Meehan offers a reasonable definition in her 2011, The Right to be Safe:  Putting an End to Bullying Behavior:  “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 himself or herself” (Meehan, p. 6).  Further, Meehan points out that the definition of bullying has modified over time. She states that while the term bullying used to be utilized to describe physical or group violence against an individual, it now also encompasses verbal and indirect aggression.

Meehan describes three components of bullying:

·         Hurtful and purposeful aggressive behavior

·         Behavior that typically occurs repeatedly over a period of time

·         Behavior in which there is an imbalance of power and control between the parties involved (Meehan, 2011, p. 6)

Mass shootings in this country have not occurred in a prototypical urban gang violence environment (Fuentes, 2001). Instead, the profile of a school shooter is almost exclusively that of white males in suburban or rural areas who have endured long periods of growing rage. Much of this rage has stemmed from resentment, fear, and isolation related to bullying. Shooters of this class often spend months or even years planning their assault, all while compiling an arsenal of weapons (Fuentes, 2001).

Meehan (2011) takes issue with the old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” While she acknowledges that physical assault on another person has never been acceptable in our society, she is adamant that words can and do hurt children. She points out the short and long-term consequences of being bullied include impaired concentration, sleeping problems and nightmares, poor self-esteem, high rates of referral to psychological services, and suicide. Further, the effects of being bullied can include the inability to focus on schoolwork, lack of confidence, poor grades, and dropping out of school (Meehan, 2011).

While we have typically considered bullying to be of the physical-assault variety, bullying can take place via other channels including text messages, social media, and emails (Meehan, 2011).  Someone intent on hurting another is just as likely, if not more likely, to perpetrate that animosity through the internet as they are to personally confront their victim on the playground (Meehan, 2011). Therefore, for the purposes of this chapter, no distinction is made between physical bullying and cyberbullying.  It becomes clear from the literature that children and adolescents can be equally as marred by physical acts that occur on a playground as from the cruel postings and photo-shopped barbs delivered through the cyber world (Meehan, 2011). 

Rigby (2003) also speaks to the short and long-term consequences for those engaged in bullying behavior—the bullies themselves. These include anxiety, lack of empathy, and depression. Children perpetrating bullying behavior are more likely to display antisocial behavior, delinquency, carry weapons, use drugs and alcohol, engage in criminal activity, and grow up to be more likely to abuse their spouse.  A consistent message from studies on this subject is that bullying is often an act founded in pain that has been inflicted previously on the bully him/herself.  This results in a perpetuation of cruelty carrying from one victim to the next (Rigby, 2003).  A child or teenager acting aggressively toward others may have been bullied previously, either at school or at home, and now is acting out that pain on others.  This, of course, is counterproductive and destructive.  Where does it end?

What is equally clear from the literature is that bullying is not limited to mental anguish.  Clear correlations between bullying and physical health problems are consistently documented within the literature.  Illnesses such as asthma, obesity, gastrointestinal problems, and general malaise can be brought on by bullying, alongside or as manifestations of depression and other mental illnesses (Rigby, 2004, p. 588). 

What, then, of academic performance and socialization skills, the very cornerstone of public education?  Violence creates an atmosphere in which students cannot learn effectively.  Students being bullied are more excitable, less attentive, and less able to foster positive relationships. Bullies often develop deviant friendships (i.e.., dyads, a term we’ll discuss in detail), underachieve, or drop out of school.  Further, children exposed to social rejection (either as victims or perpetrators) are at a greater risk for future adjustment problems than children who are popular or average (Sexton-Radek, 2005, p. 95).  In other words, a whole host of other issues deserve exploration as it comes to the many facets and consequences of bullying including childhood disease, chemical depression and anxiety, poor academic performance, failed socialization, and more.  

That's it for this week.  Thanks for hanging in on a longer-than-usual post.  Next time we'll focus on detecting bullying behavior so that it can be stopped.  
Resources Cited