Bullying in North American Schools

Dorothy L. Espelage, Susan M. Swearer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780415806558
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136908941
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

Bullying in North American Schools is an exciting compilation of research on bullying in school-aged youth by a representative group of researchers, including developmental, social, counseling, school, and clinical psychologists across North America.

This new edition:

• illustrates the complexity of bullying behaviors and offers suggestions for decision-making to intervene and work to reduce bullying behaviors
• provides empirical guidance for school personnel as they develop bullying prevention and intervention programs or evaluate existing programs
• uses a social-ecological perspective in which bullying is examined across multiple contexts including individual characteristics, peer and family influences, and classroom dynamics
• includes basic research data from leaders in the field of bullying and victimization in the United States and Canada
• teaches practical implications of various types of programs and how to choose and implement one that fits their school ecology.

This text will help your students understand how to prevent bullying behavior and how to select and manage intervention efforts in schools and school districts.

1
EXPANDING THE SOCIAL–ECOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF BULLYING AMONG YOUTH

Lessons Learned from the Past and Directions for the Future

SUSAN M. SWEARER AND DOROTHY L. ESPELAGE

Broad problems require broad hypotheses.

(Morse & Allport, 1952)

In 1952, an article was published in the Journal of Psychology that sought to unearth the causes of anti-Semitism (Morse & Allport, 1952). What the authors found was that the variables related to anti-Semitism included physical behaviors (i.e., discriminatory actions), verbal behavior (i.e., derogatory comments), and affective states (i.e., feelings of aversion). The authors also concluded that no one factor could be delineated as the only cause of anti-Semitism. The complexities of behaviors that comprise discrimination have been studied for over 60 years. When the first edition of this book was published in 2004, we argued that bullying had to be studied across individual, peer, family, school, community, and cultural contexts (see Figure 1.1). Like discrimination, bullying is a complex phenomenon, with multiple causal factors and multiple outcomes.

We and other authors (Espelage & Swearer, 2010; Garbarino & deLara, 2002; Newman, Horne, & Bartolomucci, 2000; Orpinas & Horne, 2006; Swearer & Doll, 2001; Swearer et al., 2006) have continued to frame bullying among school-aged youth from this social ecological perspective. Drawing a parallel to discriminatory behavior, research on bullying has established that bully perpetration includes physical and verbal behavior within an affective framework (i.e., the intent to harm) (Olweus, 1993; Swearer, Espelage, Vailliancourt, & Hymel, 2010). Bullying comprises a complex set of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. The reasons why children and adolescents bully one another are complex, multiply-determined, and differentially reinforced. In the next section we will explicate these factors and frame the content for the second edition of Bullying in North American Schools.

Figure 1.1 An expanded social–ecological framework of bullying among youth.

EQUIFINALITY OF BULLYING BEHAVIORS

In the mid-1900s, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist, developed a theory known as General System Theory (GST; von Bertalanffy, 1969) that posited that the same result may be achieved via many different paths. This concept is termed “equifinality.” Applied to the study of human behavior, equifinality refers to the fact that many different early experiences can lead to similar outcomes. In other words, there are many different early experiences that can lead to the same end result. Specific to the study of bullying behaviors, equifinality suggests that there are many different factors that can result in the bullying phenomenon.

Much has been written about the reciprocal interplay among the individual, family, peer group, school, community, and cultural influences on human behavior. Motivated by the writings of Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979), research on bullying and peer victimization has been influenced by the reality that human behavior is multiply-determined and multiply-influenced (Astor, Meyer, & Pitner, 2001; Espelage & Swearer, 2009; Espelage & Swearer, 2010; Swearer et al., 2006). Take for example the following scenario:

A child (we’ll call her Sarah) who is impulsive and who has a hostile attributional style lives in a family with a father who is a biologist who works in private industry and a mother who is a homemaker. Sarah’s mother is very concerned about her daughter’s social status and she wants her to have all the advantages that she didn’t have growing up. Sarah goes to school in a middle-class community with a high emphasis on athletics. She is one of the star athletes, playing soccer, soft ball, and club swimming. In the community in which Sarah lives, athletics are highly valued and the girls on her soccer team enjoy high social status. The girls all have Facebook accounts, cell phones, and are typical adolescents, spending about four hours per day on their computers and cell phones. A new girl (we’ll call her Beth) who is also a star athlete moves into the community. Sarah and her friends end up being relationally aggressive to Beth. As they tell the story, she “deserved” the bullying since her family bought the largest house in this community and she had an “attitude.” What they failed to mention was that Beth tried out for the soccer team and was awarded a starting position over one of Sarah’s friends, who had been on the team for three years. Sarah and her friend organized a Facebook campaign against Beth, who was devastated when she found out that her “friends” on the soccer team were spreading rumors that she was a lesbian. Her parents didn’t understand what happened since Beth was always well liked and had been a star athlete and student throughout junior high and in to her high school years.

If we change any variable in this example, the end result is that the bullying might not have happened. As the complexity of this example illustrates, the principle of equifinality can be applied to bullying behavior. There are no simple explanations for bullying—it is often the result of complex psychological and social interactions.

OVERVIEW OF BULLYING IN NORTH AMERICAN SCHOOLS

The second edition of this book is an exciting compilation of research conducted across North America by a representative group of psychological researchers, including developmental psychologists, social psychologists, counseling psychologists, school psychologists, and clinical psychologists who are studying bullying among school-aged youth. Thus, the contributors in this volume bring both research and clinical perspectives to the phenomena of bullying and peer victimization. As such, this book provides support for the complexity of bullying behaviors and offers suggestions for using databased decision-making to intervene and reduce bullying among school-aged youth. Given the complexity of bullying, it is our aim that this book will provide guidance for researchers, school personnel, parents, and students as they develop prevention and intervention programming to put an end to bullying in our nation’s schools. In the sections that follow, we will outline the chapters that comprise this exciting second edition of Bullying in North American Schools.

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH BULLYING

In this section, the chapters unearth individual factors that are associated with bullying among school-aged youth. As the example of Sarah and Beth illustrate, individual personality characteristics are part of the equifinality in resultant bullying behaviors. Swearer, Collins, Radliff, and Wang in their chapter “Internalizing Problems in Students Involved in Bullying and Victimization” review and demonstrate the important role of internalizing behaviors among bullies, victims, and bully-victims. They present data collected on a longitudinal sample of 5th through 9th graders and suggest that bullying prevention should include not only primary prevention approaches, but also more targeted one-on-one mental health treatment for bullies, victims, and bully-victims. These factors are further explicated in Vaillancourt, Hymel, and McDougall’s chapter “Why does being Bullied Hurt so Much?: Insights from Neuroscience” where they argue that being bullied causes significant social pain, which, over time, alters brain functioning. These insights from neuroscience have been notably missing from the bullying literature and Vaillancourt and colleagues make this important link. In addition to understanding these individual personality and neurological characteristics among youth involved in bullying and victimization, Rose reviews the literature on bullying among students with disabilities in his chapter “Bullying among Students with Disabilities: Impact and Implications,” and argues that interventions must target at-risk subgroups of students. Whole-school anti-bullying initiatives may not effectively address bullying by or toward students who are in special education.

Two chapters in this section deal with a growing concern for parents and educators— cyberbullying or technologically based aggression. Ybarra, Espelage, and Martin in their chapter “Unwanted Sexual and Harassing Experiences: From School to Text Messaging” examine the intersection of youth sexual and relational/physical harassment at school and through text messaging. Of children and adolescents between 10 and 18 years of age, 23% of youth reported some type of harassment both at school and via text messaging. Findings suggest that harassment both inside and outside of school may affect school safety perceptions. Underwood and Rosen in their literature review of gender Differences in bullying and cyberbullying, “Gender and Bullying: Moving Beyond Mean Differences to Consider Conceptions of Bullying, Processes by which Bullying Unfolds, and Cyberbullying,” encourage the field to more carefully consider boys’ and girls’ experiences in the development of prevention programs. More specifically, girls who are often victims of bullying experience bullying in the form of sexual harassment and these authors urge scholars to call these experiences sexual harassment rather than bullying. They also urge scholars and educators to consider the different peer victimization experiences in school and in cyberspace for boys and girls.

PEER CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH BULLYING

The idea that similarities are more salient than Differences in peer group membership is called the homophily hypothesis (Kandel, 1978) and has been empirically linked to bullying by both boys and girls (Espelage, Holt, & Henkel, 2003). Espelage and colleagues demonstrated that students tended to affiliate with other students who perpetrated bullying at similar frequencies and students who hung out in bullying peer groups increased in their amount of self-reported bullying over the course of a school year. Certainly individual characteristics are influenced by the peer group and the chapters in this section illustrate the complexity of the role of peers in bullying and victimization.

Hawley, Stump, and Ratliff in their chapter “Sidestepping the Jingle Fallacy: Bullying, Aggression, and the Importance of Knowing the Difference” remind readers that “the jingle fallacy,” which was coined in the early 1900s by educational researcher Edward L. Thorndike to illustrate the danger of referring to two different psychological constructs using the same label (i.e., “bullying” and “aggression”), may be a factor in understanding the function that bullying holds in peer groups. These authors draw from self-determination theory and resource control theory to understand the function that bullying and aggression serve in the peer group. Pellegrini and Van Ryzin in their chapter “Part of the Problem and Part of the Solution: The Role of Peers in Bullying, Dominance, and Victimization during the Transition from Primary School to Secondary School” demonstrate in greater detail the powerful role of peers over the transition from elementary to middle school. These authors provide some important guidance in how positive peer relations can be promoted in educational interventions, such as peer mentoring. Rodkin and Gest in their chapter “Teaching Practices, Classroom Peer Ecologies, and Bullying Behaviors among Schoolchildren” propose a peer ecological approach to understanding bullying among school-aged youth. This model examines social structures in the classroom setting and examines the influence of teacher–student interactions. Collectively, these chapters set the stage for examining bullying in the contexts in which these behaviors occur.

CLASSROOM CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH BULLYING

A discussion of gender Differences in bullying and peer victimization experiences continues in the chapter entitled “Girls, Boys, and Bullying in Preschool: The Role of Gender in the Development of Bullying” by Hanish, Hill, Gosney, Fabes, and Martin who review the empirical data on the prevalence of bullying among preschool children. Their data suggest that preschool children who are exposed to aggressive youth are at risk for engaging in aggression themselves. This effect appears to be most relevant for boys in preschool, given the tendency for preschoolers to play in gender-segregated groups. This chapter includes a discussion of a population—preschoolers—that are often not included in bully investigations and also includes data from several studies that employ cutting-edge observational methods.

Doll, Song, Champion, and Jones in their chapter “Classroom Ecologies that Support or Discourage Bullying” consider the ways in which classrooms and teachers encourage or inhibit bullying behaviors. In their chapter, we learn that classrooms with positive teacher–student relationships have less bullying and peer aggression than classrooms where the teacher–student relations are strained. Individual students and peers also play a role in minimizing bullying in the classroom. We learn in this chapter how classrooms can promote self-determination in individual students and how peers who are bystanders can be encouraged to contribute to the development of prosocial behaviors. Teachers are encouraged to have consistently reinforced rules and routines, and to maintain open dialogue with students. In the chapter “Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Bullying” Holt, Keyes, and Koenig tackle the important function of school culture and explicate the link between school personnel attitudes and school culture. Specifically, equity, hostile climate, openness to diversity, and willingness to intervene are school climate factors con...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction
• 1 EXPANDING THE SOCIAL–ECOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF BULLYING AMONG YOUTH
• Part I Individual Characteristics Associated With Bullying
• Part II Peer Characteristics Associated With Bullying
• Part III Classroom Characteristics Associated With Bullying
• Part IV Beyond the Classroom
• Part V Effective Prevention and Intervention Programs
• INDEX