Module on Bullying

Defining the Problem

Bullying is using power or strength to intimidate or persecute others. The victims of bullying are usually defenceless or unable to motivate others to defend them. Unfortunately it is a problem that affects our schools, communities and all societies.

School surveys show that bullying is to be found in schools in all countries of the world. The incidence of bullying therefore, shows a pattern that differs little from one country to another.

Though it is difficult to get clear statistics on the incidence of bullying (due to different ways of measuring, different definitions, social desirability of responses, etc.) there are some international findings worth mentioning. The table captures some of the better research on the topic:

Country Primary Secondary

Frequency Often bullied At least Often bullied At least

weekly weekly

England 27% 10% 10% 6%

New Zealand - - 15% 9%

Netherlands - 8% - 2%

International 23% 15% 10% 6%

Study

Surveys on the incidence of bullying

The data above only focus on the number of children who are bullied regularly. Research in the Netherlands, for instance, shows that more than 60% of all pupils at the primary school level and 30% at the secondary school level have been bullied at some point in time.

In the United Kingdom, the Kidscape Survey on Bullying between 1984 and 1986, involved 4,000 children aged 5 to26. It was found that 68% of them were bullied at least once and 38%, at least twice, experiencing a particularly bad incident. About 5% of the students felt that it had affected their lives. They had attempted suicide, refused to go to school or were chronically ill.

The Department for Education and Employment in England and Wales found that 27% of the students who took part in their project in Sheffield were bullied in Junior and Middle schools. About 10% were bullied once a week.

In the United States, where violence in schools has claimed many lives in the past decade, bullying rates seem to be much in line with the statistics cited above. Fear of becoming victimised, is quite high in the United States. Some 29% of elementary, 34 % of middle/junior high school, and 20 % of senior high school students admitted that they were worried about becoming a victim of violent crime at school.

Some children are more likely than others to be victimised. Dan Olweus is a Norwegian expert renowned throughout the world for his research into bullying. He found that one in seven students in Norwegian schools were involved in bullying, either as victims or bullies. He also concluded that bullying among boys tended to be physical. Bullying among girls, he thought, was inclined to take the form of cruel, verbal abuse, harassment, slander, or exclusion. As other researchers, have, he also noted that violence among girls also tended to be on the increase. Australian research shows clearly that in Australia indigenous children and children who do not speak English as a mother tongue are bullied considerably more often than children from the majority.

When bullying does take place too often it goes unreported. In the Dutch study almost 40% of both primary school students and secondary school students felt that there had been occasions when they felt they should have done something but failed to do so.

For further information on bullying in schools visit the following websites: http://www.nobully.org.nz/guidelines.htm

http://www.successunlimited.co.uk

http://www.labs.net/dixonm/raven.html

http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/Social/St/Psychology/PSY0003.html

http://www.uncg.edu/edu/ericcass/bullying/DOCS/beware.htm

Forms of Bullying

Before starting with the activities in this unit it is perhaps useful to examine the manner in which bullying is generally viewed. Most authors would distinguish the following types of bullying:

verbal abuse, swearing, cursing, insults, threatening

Verbal behaviour or violent posturing;

Emotional browbeating, foisting one’s opinions on others or imposing

Violence one’s will on them;

Physical physical assault, shoving, pushing, thumping, beating,

Violence threatening with weapons, murder;

Racial/Ethnic remarks, verbal abuse, insults, mental cruelty, threats, physical

Sexist assault, harassment, stalking, slander hatred, exclusion,

Religious ostracism, persecution, murder.

Homophobic

Length of module: part 1: one class period

part 2: one class period for group work

one class period for presentation and discussion

part 3: one class period

Module Objectives:

To remind teachers of the prevalence of bullying.

To help teachers to enhance their students’ awareness of the different forms that bullying takes.

To enable teachers to help their students to understand and accept the part they can play in eliminating bullying in their institutions.

To help teachers to support each other in extending the strategies they can use to combat bullying in their institutions.

To improve teachers’ capacity to draw up and implement classroom and whole institution policies on bullying.

Materials needed:

Flipchart paper or butcher paper, drawing materials, coloured markers, diagram of the internal layout of the school.

Activities

Part 1:

Before engaging in this activity teachers should consider the following for themselves:

(a) What are the most effective things you do at this moment in your school to prevent bullying?

(b) If you have an anti-bullying policy in your school, what makes it successful?

(d) What is there in your policy to support the victims of bullying?

(e) Reflect on any strategies that you have found effective for supporting victims of bullying or to counsel bullies.

Step 1:

Take an internal diagram of the school and make a copy for each pupil. The students are asked to individually and anonymously mark "unsafe" areas in the following way:

Colour areas yellow where you sometimes feel unsafe

Colour areas red where you always feel unsafe

The sheets are collected by the teacher.

Step 2:

The students are now given a brief questionnaire (again to be filled out individually and anonymously). Each student fills this out. Find the questionnaire in the resource section under "safety survey".

These completed questionnaires are also collected by the teacher.

Step 3

The teacher distributes the "responsibilities and rights" survey to each student. This is also done individually and anonymously. Find the survey in the resource section under "responsibilities and rights survey".

The completed surveys are also collected by the teacher.

Part 2:

During the next class period the teacher (who has examined the results in the meantime) creates four groups of students.

Step 1

The students are given the following roles (not all students will have a specific role - they will get a role later): facilitator, harmoniser, reporter, material manager (see the teacher's guide for a description of these roles). The groups work separately on the following tasks:

Group 1:

Group 1 receives all of the coloured maps filled out during the previous class period. Its task is to take all of them and to create one master map of the safe and unsafe areas in the school. They need to decide how to make this master map.

Group 2:

Group 2 receives all of the "safety surveys". Their task is to combine all the responses and make one large histogram with percentages. They also create a "safety thermometer" (see the "safety survey" in the resource section). The safety thermometer is hung on the wall.

The same survey can be done at a school-wide level on a regular basis and the thermometer can be recreated throughout the school year (e.g. four times a year). A question can be placed above the thermometer such as "How safe do we feel in our school?".

Group 3:

Group 3 receives the "responsibilities and rights survey". Their task is to combine all the information and list the most frequently given responses.

Group 4:

Group 4 takes a large sheet of paper and writes down the word "Bullying" in the middle. This word is circled. Each child takes a turn to think of a word they associate with the word bullying. As they mention a word they draw a line from the circle and write the word they came up with on the line. The group stops when nobody can come up with another word. After this is completed the group tries to arrive at three different definitions of Bullying, using the words coming from the centre. They then need to decide which of the three is the most accurate in their view, and which the least.

Each of the exercises in step 1 probably take one class period

Step 2

Each group presents its findings to the class. The teacher summarises the different presentations and leads a class discussion about the most striking results.

This should also take one class period

Part 3:

Step 1

Divide the students into pairs. Each pair discusses any incident of bullying that they remember most vividly, as a victim, witness or bully. The students should especially talk about what their feelings were when they heard about these incidents. They should also try to come up with the reasons that:

· people might not resist when they are bullied;

· people do not get involved when they know somebody has been bullied;

· a person would want to bully somebody else.

Step 2

Create groups of four students (the earlier pairs are spilt up). As was the case in part 2, step 1 the students are assigned roles. The students present the results from their previous discussion to the group of four (this does not need to be written down) and then discuss and list their thoughts on the following:

· What kinds of people are bullies?

· Are they all the same or are they different? Why?

· Are the victims of bullying also all the same? Or are they different?

Each of the groups presents its findings, and the teacher summarises in a wrap-up what the students have come up with.

Part 4:

The students are now going to spend a class period creating a "contract against bullying".

Step 1:

Each student (individually) is given the assignment to list three agreements (or rules) that they think should be part of any anti-bullying policy in their own classroom.

Step 2:

Groups of four are created, roles are given (as described before) and each group now discusses the three agreements that each student has written down. Each group must now decide on the five most important agreements that should be part of any anti-bullying policy. These are written on a large sheet of paper, presented to the entire class and hung on the wall. After all the groups have presented the teacher asks the students how they can best arrive at an anti-bullying policy for the classroom that consists of ten agreements (the teacher should decide whether voting is the best way, consensus or some other form of decision making).

Further Classroom Follow-up:

A. The class is divided into groups of two. The teacher provides the students with a real or fictitious bullying situation (e.g. by using one of the incidents that will come up in the earlier activities). Each group is assigned the task of writing a letter to one of the following individuals:

· the victim of the bullying;

· the bully (or bullies)

· the teacher

· the parents

· the principal of the school

· a bystander who chose not to get involved

Each group has a facilitator/reporter and a messenger (see the teacher's manual for a description of these roles)

Especially the messenger is important. This person need to see what kinds of arguments the other groups are using.

Each letter is read to the class and discussed, focusing on issues such as:

- Is the style of the letter appropriate?

- Are the arguments effective? Why?

- Is it clear what you would like the person to whom the letter is addressed to do?

- What do you want to accomplish with the letter.

following websites:

http://www.nobully.org.nz/

http://www.educate.co.uk/bullsug.htm

http://www.onthenet.com.au/~townsend/forparents.htm

B. Groups of four students are created. In this case the teacher first needs to ask which students like to draw. Those students that like to draw are placed in different groups. The following roles are given:

Facilitator: makes sure everybody is contributing, stimulates Cupertino and idea sharing among the students;

Reporter: Is responsible for organising the presentation.

Designer: This person will be responsible for drawing a cartoon.

Textwriter: This person is responsible for the captions and speech bubbles.

The students are read the two following scenarios:

Scenario 1: A group of boys play football every day in the park. On this day they are also playing. They take a short break in the middle of their playing field to drink some water. While they do this some older boys, who they recognise from school, approach them and demand that they leave so that they can play. The younger boys tell them that they are already playing and that they are taking a short break. One of the older boys threatens the younger boys with violence if they do not leave immediately.

Scenario 2: A girl is walking home from school and encounters three girls from another class in her school who demand money from her. If she doesn't pay she will not be allowed to pass and will be beaten. The girl tries to argue but is hit by one of the three girls, while her friend steals money out of the victim's purse. She is also told to keep her mouth shut or she will be hurt even worse next time.

The students now choose one of these scenarios. They next need to draw five frames in comic book style which depict this series of events (using speech bubbles and captions). After they have done this they need to draw another

10-15 frames that show a positive resolution to the bullying situation they chose. The solution should be one that they think would work best in reality.

The cartoons are presented to the class, and the students explain why they think their particular solution is the best.

C. Drama-in-education around experiences with bullying.

Step 1: Groups of six students are created. Roles are given to each of the students (see the teacher's manual for a description of possible roles).

Step 2: A large sheet of paper is placed between the students. The word "Bullying" is written in the middle of the sheet and a circle is drawn around it. Each student, in turn, lists a bullying situation that he/she is familiar with. These situations are very briefly summarized on lines drawn from the circle (the final image should look something like a sun).