Addressing Structural Power for Bullying Prevention: A Critical Content Analysis of the Olweus Program

• In Event: 453 - Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Paper Session. Practicing Public Sociology

Abstract

Dominant conceptions of school bullying are infused with an individualistic ideology, resulting in only a partial understanding of school bullying as a social phenomenon. This conception has been challenged by research revealing the sociocultural production of school bullying. This structural understanding of bullying has direct implications for effectively addressing bullying. A critical content analysis of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program reveals that this popular program fails to sufficiently address the network of social boundaries that create and maintain school bullying. Effectively addressing school bullying necessarily entails sociological work – recognizing the role of broad social context in everyday phenomena and acting on that knowledge to confront structural power. School efforts to reduce peer aggression would benefit from incorporating both individualistic and structural determinants of school bullying.

Author

• Ezra Joseph Temko, University of New Hampshire