Chapter 14:
School Violence and Bullying

Cyberbullying is repeated harassment of individuals
using indirect or electronic means.

Occurs mostly with text messaging, chat rooms, email, and websites.

Sexting - peers distribute photos or videos of people
participating in sexual acts.

Depersonalization of electronic media - lack of inhibition for agression that might be present if face-face situation.

Bullies often use masquerading - pretend to be someone else

Faking - lying about one's age

Risk factors for cyberbullying

The more time spent online

Lack of parental supervision

manipulating one's identity

Posting or sending personal information

Combination with face-to-face conflicts

Females experience cyberbullying more frequently

Online etiquette is not firmly set into society yet,
making this a hard problem to tackle.

Caregivers need to teach expectations for online behavior and safety.

Families should contracts with children to specify expectations for use of electronic communication media.

Parents need to be aware of the terminology and uses of the Internet and other technology.

New frontier with regards to court cases protecting Internet users.

Participating in online media a big part of life now; more markeing to young children and parents regarding technology, too.

Intrusive-overprotective parenting

Generally associated with victimization status.

Receive so much protection at home that cannot tolerate other children's rough behaviors.

Children of these parents often don't get to learn conflict-resolution, negoationa and other social skills.

Parental overcontrol

Generally associated with victimization status.

Children's feelings are invalidated.

Children of these parents lose confidence in the validity of their emotions.

Parental coercion

Most often predicts bullying behavior.

Heated physical and verbal violence in the home.

Coercion includes "direct verbal attacks, bossiness, sarcasm, and power-assertive discipline."

Their children learn to approach relationships aggressively.

All the roles can come from any of these parental styles.

Other factors for role in bullying include: individual temperament, results of first experiments with bullying, and resilience.

Olweus Bullying Prevention Program

School level

Collect data on school climate.

Increased supervision during lunch, hallway, and recess.

Large-scale assemblies about anti-bullying.

School mediation program

Classroom level

Classroom rules against bullying very clear.

Instruction on classroom rules and expectations.

Authoritative discipline works best.

Social skills instruction including role playing, classroom meetings, and instructive readings.

Individual level

Counseling

Intensive social skils instruction

Anger management for bullies

Friendship-making and assertive skills training for those at risk to be victims

Advice to educators

Understand that students' role in bullying oftgen related to overall tone of parent-child interactions.

Need to be aware of the child-rearing patterns of the student's caregivers.

View this information from a strengths-based perspective.

Believe and support parents of bullied children.

Important to help establish parent training and support models.

Teach media analysis lessons and critical thinking regarding technology use.

Use of one of the many widespread bullying prevention and treatment programs available.

Students may be up to 10 times safer
in school than anywhere else in our society.

Factors predictive of rates of school violence

Dropping out: literally and symbolically

Discipline problems: bullying and harassment

Drug and alcohol abuse

Gang membership

Easy availability of weapons

Bullying in school increases risk for more
serious forms on violence.

Failure to solve or intervene with low-level
interpersonal violence at schools can increase
risk for serious problems.

Families can also contribute to this.

Tolerating or encouraging domestic violence

Parenting in a cold or overly hostile manner

Permissiveness for sibling attacks

Educators must have cross-cultural knowledge
and understand families in school community.

This can help in promoting inclusive
school-parent partnerships.

Bullying is "the purposeful infliction of psychological
or physical pain on one individual by another
or by a group.

Perpetrators are physically or psychologically
more powerful than victims.

Prevalence research varies by definitions and research methods.

Bullying peaks during the middle-school years.

According to a 2001 study by Nansel and colleagues,
13% of U.S. students identified as aggressive bullies,
11% as passive victims, and another 6% as bully-victims.

Types of bullying participants

aggressive bullies - bully only

passive victims - victims only

bully-victims or provocative victims -
students who experience harassment and
pick on others

Bullying status can change over time.

Bullying behaviors

verbal

indirect or subtle bullying - social ostracism or friendship interference

physical attacks

No statistical relationship between bullying behavior and degree of trauma experienced.

Relationship aggression is another form - manipulating relationships in a way to purposely hurt someone else.

Bullying can have many negative long-term adjustment problems affecting physical and mental health (for bullies and victims).