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.
Resources Cited
Resources Cited
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