Emerging Issues in Bullying Research and Prevention: Classroom Practices and School Climate

• In Event: Recent Research on Classroom Management: Toward a New Edition of the Handbook of Classroom Management

Abstract

Recent youth suicides only highlight a persistent problem in US schools – bullying and sustained peer victimization. Being a target or victim of bullying has long been recognized has having short- and long-term psychological effects on children and adolescents. Recent studies are supporting what we have suspected for years. Being a target of bullying can have a major impact on school engagement, achievement, and test scores (Espelage, Low, Rao, & Hong, in press). For example, Glew and colleagues (2005) found an association between bullying victimization and low academic achievement. More recently, Glew and colleagues (2008) found that for each one-point rise in the grade point average of 7th, 9th, and 11th graders in an urban public school district, the odds of being a victim, versus a bystander, decreased by 10% (Glew, Fan, Katon, & Rivara, 2008). It stands to reason that the prevalent nature of bullying is preventing many very talented children and adolescents from achieving their full academic potential.

A tremendous amount of research has been conducted on school-based bullying within the past few decades. Results consistently indicate a wide array of risk and protective factors linked to bullying perpetration and victimization that include individual, peer, school, familial, and community variables (see Espelage & Swearer, 2010 for a review). These significant factors have informed to varying degrees prevention and intervention planning. Protective factors for perpetration and victimization include the ability to form strong attachments with peers, teachers, and school staff through supportive classroom practices and positive school environments.

Research findings from largely cross-sectional investigations suggest that classroom practices, teacher attitudes, and school environment play a critical role in understanding the rates of student reports of aggression, bullying, and victimization. Only recently have longitudinal and multilevel studies been conducted on the key aspects of classroom practices and school-wide environments that are associated with less peer aggression, bullying, and victimization. An exception in the literature is the few studies that have employed social network analysis to examine classroom structure and its impact on aggression that find when classrooms have rigid hierarchical social structures, victimization becomes more stable because there are few opportunities to maneuver into different roles or social positions (Schäfer et al., 2005). On the other hand, when classrooms are more democratic and the social power is more evenly distributed, a less hostile environment for students is created (Ahn, Garandeau, & Rodkin, 2010). When there are clear levels of power amongst students, victimized children may not have the resources or support to retaliate against bullies and bully behavior remains unchallenged. These are examples of the type of basic and applied studies that are informing classroom- and school-wide prevention efforts that attend to teacher practices, teacher-student relationships, and the larger classroom and school climate. In this paper, this research will be summarized and programs will be described that address classroom- and school-climate in efforts to reduce bullying and peer victimization.

Author

• Dorothy L. Espelage, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign