Text:
Bullying in American Schools – Editors: Espelage, D. L., Swearer, S. M. (2004)
Espelage – Univ. of Ill.
Swearer – Univ. of Nebraska
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Bullying v. Harassment
Harassment: sex, race, color, national origin/ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or disability
“protected categories” (verbal, written, graphic or physical conduct)
Bullying: Intentional electronic, written verbal, or physical act or series of acts by a student or groups of
students
1. Directed at another student or students who typically are less physically or socially powerful;
2. Which occurs in or outside a school setting; and
3. That is severe, persistent or pervasive; and
a. Substantially interfering with a student’s education
b. Creating a threatening environment; or
c. Substantially disrupting the orderly operation of the school
Overview
**p. 1 – Much of our knowledge about bullying behaviors comes from research conducted over the past
several decades in Europe, Australia, and Canada. Research in the US has lagged behind. The book
seeks to fill the void by forwarding research about bullying across contexts that has been conducted
with participants in the US.
The authors argue that bullying has to be understood across individual, family, peer, school, and
community contexts.
In order to develop and implement effective bullying prevention and intervention programs, we must
understand the social ecology that establishes and maintains bullying and victimization behaviors.
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Ecology
**p. 2 - The idea that multiple environments influence individuals is not a new concept.
p. 3 – In a nutshell, bullying does not occur in isolation. This phenomenon is encouraged and/or
inhibited as a result of the complex relationships between the individual, family, peer group, school,
community, and culture.
p. 4 – Interventions that do not target the multiple environments in which youth exist are likely less
effective than interventions that address the social ecology (Kerns & Prinz, 2002). This assertion is
related to the consistent findings that youth are who are involved in aggressive behaviors experience
problems in multiple areas, including the family, peer group, school, and community.
p. 4 – Thus, assessment of the bullying phenomenon must utilize multiple methods of assessment, use
multiple informants, and include assessments across contexts.
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Unique School Ecology
**p. 4 – There are over 300 published violence prevention school-based programs (Howard, Flora, &
Griffin, 1999); however, less than a quarter of these programs are empirically validated.
How are schools to choose which program may be best for their school ecology?
p. 2 – Only one large-scale study on bullying in the US has been conducted (Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla,
Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt, 2011). 15,686 students 6th -10th grader. Differences in bullying across
urban, suburban, and rural areas were not found.
p. 5 – Every school is defined by its own unique ecology. As has been previously articulated, schools
should conduct an individual needs assessment and then choose school-based interventions based on
the results of their own data (Boxer & Dubow, 2001).
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Gender Differences
p. 15 – Are boys more aggressive than girls? Although a tremendous amount of research over the last
several decades supports an answer of “yes” (Block, 1983; Parke & Slaby, 1983), more recent research
would also support an answer of “it depends” (Knight, Guthrie, Page, & Fabes, 2002). Contextual factors
such as the definition of aggression, the method of assessment employed, and the age of the
child/adolescent.
p. 16 – despite the remarkable increase in the percentage of female offenders in the US (Snyder &
Sickmund, 1999), the disparity in male and female offending is still very large; males offend at much
higher rates than females do.
p. 16 – some scholars argue that male aggression and offending should have a higher priority, based on
the higher rate, and therefore are included in more research endeavors than females, when studying
aggression and are therefore over-represented in samples.
p. 16 – a second trend in the empirical literature followed the semial work by Crick and Grtpeter (1995).
In this investigation, “relational aggression” emerged as a form of aggression thought to be more
characteristic of girls in which the goal is to hurt other by damaging their reputation or their
relationships.
p. 16 – The gender paradox postulates that although females have lower prevalence rates of aggression
and antisocial behavior than males, they are in fact at greater risk for psychological maladjustment.
Therefore, we argue that in order to continue moving forward with prevention and intervention efforts
to curb aggression and bulling in schools, we must attend to the social contexts that promote and
maintain gender differences in aggression.
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Depression
**p. 18 – depression has been found to be a common symptom experienced by male and female victims
of bullying (Callagan & Joseph 1995; Neary & Joseph, 1994). Furthermore, Craig (1998) found higher
depression levels for girls in comparison to boys who were victimized.
p. 18 – depression is not, however, unique to victims only. Clinically elevated depression levels have
been found for both male and female student who bully their peers. (Austin & Joseph, 1996; Slee, 1995).
p. 18 – Bully-victims, those students who bully and have been bullied, have also been found to have
higher rates of depression than bullies (Austin & Joseph, 1996), and in other studies, bully-victims report
higher depression levels than victims (Swearer, Song, Cary, Eagle, & Mickelson, 2001).
Anger
** p. 18 – Dodge, 1991; Price & Dodge, 1989) distinguished between reactive and proactive aggression.
Generally, reactive aggression reflects an angry and volatile approach to others, whereas proactive
aggression uses aggressive acts to meet a person’s goals and might not involve an angry reaction to a
specific precipitating event.
p. 18 – Some researchers have conceptualized bullying as proactive aggression because student who
bully do so to attain social position and maintain control over others.
p. 18 – However, in a more recent study of 558 middle school students, anger was found to be the
strongest predictor of bullying (Bosworth, Espelage, & Simon, 1999). The results were significant for
both males and females.
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Anxiety
** p. 19 –Anxiety is also a salient mental-health concern that should be considered in intervention
planning for bullies, victims, and bully-victims.
p. 19 – Little research has been conducted specifically on anxiety and bulling, the research that has been
conducted yielded inconsistent findings.
(Craig, 1998; Olweus, 1994; Slee, 1994) – victims of bullying have higher rates of anxiety than bullies.
(Duncan, 1999; Swearer et al., 1999) – found bully-victims have higher levels of anxiety when compared
to bullies or victims
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Empathy
** p. 20 – Many bullying programs include empathy training based on the extensive literature
documenting the role of empathy in suppressing aggression (Miller & Eisnberg, 1998).
p. 20 – research suggests that self-declared bullies sometimes report feeling sorry after bullying peers
(Borg, 1998); however, many bullying prevention program assume these students lack empathy.
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Social Skills Deficit vs. Theory of Mind
** p. 19 - One of the most influential explanatory models of aggression is based on social information
processing (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge & Coie, 1987). This model posits that impairment in social
problem-solving is implicated in the development of aggression.
p. 19 – research has found that aggressive individuals are more likely to show encoding problems such
as hostile attribution error, and deficits at the level of representation, such as poor understanding of
others’ mental states (Crick & Dodge, 1994).
However more recently, scholars have begun to question whether this model applies to all types of
aggression, such as lying and spreading rumors that lead to the victim’s exclusion from the group, and
that physical violence is in most cases carefully planned, it is plausible that at least some bullies have a
social understanding of their behavior.
p. 19 – following this logic Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, (1999) challenged the social skills deficit model
approach to bullying. They argue some bullies understand people very well and use this understanding
to their advantage.
p. 19 – These authors conceptualized their arguments using the framework of Theory of Mind, a concept
that refers to one’s ability to attribute mental states to other and oneself (Leslie, 1987). Using this
framework, the authors contend that some bullies may possess a theory of mind because they target
vulnerable children who will tolerate victimization and who are not likely to receive support from peers
(Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Kaukiainen, 1996).
There is preliminary evidence that not all bullies lack social skills.
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