Clarene Jane V.

Aranas

“Bullying”

INTRODUCTION

Bullying is repetitive aggressive behavior with an imbalance of power. Research,

especially on school bullying, has increased massively in the last decade, fuelled in part

by the rise of cyber bullying. Prevalence rates vary greatly. This is in part because of

measurement issues, but some persons, and groups, are more at risk of involvement.

Victims suffer from bullying, but some of those who perpetrate bullying can be socially

skilled and get at least short-term benefits from their behavior. Individual, family, school

class, school and broader country factors can influence the chances of involvement.

Beyond individual coping strategies, there have been many anti-bullying interventions

developed over the last 30 years. Meta-analyses of these programmes show that they

have had some success. Further progress is needed in establishing the most effective

components and in tackling cyber bullying.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Bullying is not a new problem for schools, since it has been present for a long

time; however, only in recent years is its importance being recognized. We speak of a

specific phenomenon of school violence which affects schools around the world

regardless of national borders, geography or politics (Debarbieux, 2003). Ever since

the initial pioneer studies by Olweus in Scandinavian countries, many other studies

have followed. In the first phase of research, most studies focused on an attempt to

define the problem (Olweus, 1993; Rivers & Smith, 1994; Crick, Casas & Ku, 1999),

giving way to other studies addressing the incidence of the problem (Boulton, 1993;

Olweus, 1996; Smith, Morita, Junger-Tas, Olweus, Catalano & Slee, 1999; Defensor del

Pueblo, AA.VV., 1999), an aspect which still concerns us today and is reflected by

specific studies published in the last five years (Carney & Merrel, 2001; Solberg &

Olweus, 2003; Toldos, 2005; Avilés & Monjas, 2005; Cerezo & Ato, 2005; Ramírez,
2006). The detailed description of the phenomenon then encouraged the appearance

of studies concerned with describing the agents involved (Rigby, 1997; Monks, Smith &

Swettenham, 2003; Veenstra, Lindenberg, Oldehinkel, De Winter, Verhulst & Ormel,

2005; Camodeca & Goossens, 2005; Perren & Alsaker, 2006), with analyzing the

problem’s risk factors (Lahey, Waldman & McBurnett, 1999; Kokkinos & Panayiotou,

2004; Farrington, 2005), and analyzing the effects of the problem particularly among its

victims (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Perren & Alsaker, 2006). As a final result of all the

prior research as well as results from current studies, there is now an increase in

research focused on the design, development and systematic evaluation of intervention

programs (Cowie & Olaffson, 2000; Trianes & García, 2002; Elinoff, Chafouleas &

Sassu, 2004; Nordhagen, Nielsen, Stigum & Köhler, 2005; Benítez, Almeida & Justicia,

in press).

Bullying exists in all communities since long time. Bullying exists either in

developed or developing societies. Bullying starts in early age. Child starts to build an

initial concept of bullying. Then, it starts increasing and continues until it reaches its

peak in the basic phase stage (4, 5, and 6). It continues in higher basic stage, and then

started to decline at secondary level (Dickerson, 2005). Bullying is considered a

common form of violence in schools. Various studies indicated that bullying makes

schools to be unsafe places for schools’ students and it contributes in the belief that

some schools are become not safe anymore (Maliki et al., 2009). Shahria et al. (2015)

reported that bullying is deemed as a serious problem in academic settings in all parts

of the world. They found that bullying has negative impact on academic performance.

Females were more affected than males by bullying. Bullying constitute a complex

problem in school kids lives. It is a problem that affects all students, either bullies or

victims, and those who attended interpersonal violence. Bullying may involve many

sections verbal, physical assaults, threats, jokes or language, and criticizing. All of such

factors affect individually, or collectively, and contributes in child’s bullying. It is well

known that bullying is difficult to eliminate or to stop it in schools because it is used by

students. Alison (2016) stated that bullying is considered as global problem that affect

emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of school-age children worldwide Shafqat

(2015, p. 45) argued that bullying in schools occurs in any place either in school building

or around school building and may occur in bathrooms, school buses and during waiting

for school buses, and in classes which may require group work or after school activities.

School bullying is a widespread issue that affects school students in many parts of their

lives such as; psychologically, educationally and professionally.

Sekol and Farrington (2016) found that bullies, compared to non-bullies have

been bullied before, Bullying at school affects academic achievement since bullied

children feel fear and weak and in the same time it affects students’ personality traits

and self-confidence. Therefore such situation makes bullied students unable to follow or

to pay attention for their study well and even they might do not like to go to school.

Moreover they miss opportunities to participate with their colloquies or even enjoy

school activities. Many researchers found

Bullying: Bullying is defined as “repeated acts of unprovoked aggression that are

damaging psychologically or physically for the victim, and where the strength of the

aggressor/s and the victim is unequal” (Jankauskiene et al., 2008, p. 46). Bullying is a

form of aggression in which there is no imbalance of power between the bully and the

victim that occurs mostly in peer group context (Mishna, 2003). Bullying is one of the

most evident problems that children face in education system; in addition, it is one of the

most important health risks (Raskauskas & Modell, 2011, p. 64). Bullying is perceived

as serious problem in schools in these days (Rose & Monda-Amaya, 2011, p. 4).

Educators understand bullring’s dynamics and consequences in addition to what they

can do to support students in such situations (Allen, 2010). Bauman (2006) indicated

that bullying phenomenon has three components: as follows: first, there must be an

intention to harm; second, it is necessary that it happens many times; and finally, it

needs to be no balance power between perpetrator and the victim. School bullying is

defined as a form of violence that harms others and it occurs at school or during various

activities when a student or group of students uses their strength in hurting other
individuals or other groups. The basis of bully’s strength is either physical strength or

their age or financial situation, or social level or technological skills (Quiroz et al., 2006).

School bullying is considered as “aggressive behavior which mostly usually contains no

equivalent power between the bully and the victim, and occurs many times over the

time”. There are many forms of bullying such as physical abuse, verbal abuse and

threats of non-verbal communication. Bullying also includes the use of modern

communication means for sending various messages of confusing and threatening.

Bullying is referred to frequent aggressive behaviour made by one bully or more bullies.

Bullying also in occurred when a student is teased frequently in a way student does not

like (Omoteso, 2010).

Bullying is deemed as common increasing problem in every society and schools.

Bullying occurs in any time and it has negative impacts mainly on students’ academic,

emotional and social development during school period (Kartal & Asude, 2009). Bullying

in schools has many and different causes, in this regard Omoteso (2010) indicated that

characteristics of personality and typical reaction patterns, all together combined with

physical strength or weakness level in boys, can help in explaining bullying problems

development in individual students. In addition to environment impacts, such as

teachers’ attitudes, behaviours and supervisory routines which play an important role in

determining such problems in school? In addition parents have great impact in this

concern so if they use aggression as a way of meeting their needs, or use harsh or

aggressive methods of discipline shall have children who engage in aggression or

bullying Omoteso (2010).

Beginning with this common characteristic, we find the definition offered by

Olweus (1993), where bullying is the set of physical and/or verbal behaviors that a

person or group of persons directs against a peer, in hostile, repetitive and ongoing

fashion, abusing real or fictitious power, with the intent to cause harm to the victim.

However, Olweus’s definition must be expanded with regard to the nature of the

behaviors exhibited. Some authors, including Olweus himself, distinguish between

direct and indirect aggressions of the bullying phenomenon (Bjorkqvist, Lagerspetz &
Kaukianen, 1992; Olweus, 1993) or overt as compared to covert aggressions (Crick,

Casas & Ku, 1999). Among direct or overt aggressions, we find both physical (kicks,

punches, pushes, threats with weapons, etc.) and verbal (insults, blackmail, etc.).

Similarly, among indirect or covert aggressions we find those of a physical nature

(hiding property, damaging materials, stealing, etc.) and those of a verbal nature (name-

calling, spreading rumors). Nonetheless, we have yet to include within the range of

bullying behaviors those relational aggressions which are only indirect or covert. These

aggressions seek to socially discredit the victims, provoking their isolation from the peer

group and a progressive social exclusion (Griffin & Gross, 2004).

Many studies have focused on the incidence and prevalence of bullying (see

Smith, Morita, Junger-Tas, Olweus, Catalana & Slee, 1999). Incidence and prevalence

rates indicated by such studies reveal two aspects: (a) that the phenomenon of bullying

is not more important today than some years ago, since incidence figures are similar;

and (b) incidence rates, despite being similar in many studies, do show differences

(Table I), though these differences may be due to factors relating to the definition of

bullying accepted by the authors, the heterogeneity of instruments used to collect data,

characteristics of the sample, etc. Nonetheless, despite differences with respect to the

incidence rates found, the differences are not significant, leading one to think that the

incidence of bullying is similar in different countries regardless of their culture or

educational system (Carney & Merrel, 2001). Olweus (1991) .

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