SUBJECT : MAED 603 (BIO – PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS)

PROFESSOR : LORNA D. CAPITO, Ed.D.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

TOPIC OF ARTICLE: The Impact of Bullying on Academic Success for Students

INTRODUCTION:
Bullying in schools is a worldwide problem that can have negative
consequences for the general school climate and for the right of students to learn in
a safe environment without fear (Banks, 1997). According to Olweus (1996), bullying
is when “a student is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the
part of one or more other students” (p. 275). The relationship is characterized by an
imbalance of power between the bully and the victim based on physical size,
strength, age or social status. Bullying is the intentional, repetitive harming or injury
by one’s peers; they are occurrences in which the victim is unable to avoid or stop
the victimization (Brank, Hoetger & Hazen, 2012). Bully and victimization have
emerged as persistent problems in our schools (Rose & Monda-Amaya, 2012). One
in three adolescent students in Canadian schools have reported being bullied
(Government of Canada, 2012). As educators, our job is to try to eliminate bullying
as much possible, while providing support for those experiencing it. Teachers see
the effects of bullying in many ways. They see it affect students emotionally,
physically, mentally, socially, and academically. While all of these aspects are
equally important to the well-being of a student, this research study is going to
specifically examine the impact that bullying has on academic success.
Simultaneously, it is going to take a look at the degree to which students with
exceptionalities are bullied and reasons as to why they are at a
disadvantage.
SUMMARY:
Bullying has been recognized as a serious problem in today’s schools (Rose &
Monda-Amaya, 2012). It is imperative that educators understand the dynamics and
consequences of bullying, as well as what they can do to support students in these
situations (Allen, 2010). This research study will explore the ways in which students
in mainstream and special education classrooms are affected academically by the
bullying they encounter. The purpose of the study is to understand how bullying
impacts a student’s ability to succeed academically so that educators can better
support children in their classrooms. Data for this research study was collected by
conducting face-to-face interviews with two teachers; one mainstream, one Special
Education. Findings show that students who are bullied have a fear of coming to
school because they feel unsafe; thus, they are unable to concentrate and their
academic success is hindered. Additionally, students with exceptionalities are bullied
more often than students without, which place them at a double disadvantage.
According to the participants, these students do not have the social skills to stand up
to bullies to protect themselves. Lastly, the findings inform understandings how
teachers, schools and parents can better support students who are experiencing
bullying.

ANALYSIS:

These types of result may lead to some assumptions; 1) most students might feel
reluctant to answer a direct question that contains the word “bullying”, like in “how
often have you bullied others?” simply because they did not want to be recognized
as bullies, or in bullying as something bad. The same can be said of the question
“how often have you been bullied”; some students might have been afraid to tell what
they have experienced to others, but in many cases to record themselves as victims
was much easier than to record themselves as bullies. 2) Students seemed to feel
free to answer when the questions contained direct forms of aggression, like in “how
often have you bullied others by calling names or teasing”. Thus, it was assumed
that students might have thought that calling names or teasing was just a common
daily practice among them, and not a serious problem, even if they did it now and
then. Alternatively, students probably did not identify all teasing and calling names as
bullying, although some students did identify it as so.

According to Rigby (2008) “perhaps the most consistently reported finding in the
literature on bullying is that boys tend to bully more often than girls” (p. 35). In
addition, Olweus (1993) have also argued that “it is evident that a considerably larger
percentage of boys than girls had participated in bullying…more than four times as
many boys as girls reported having bullied others students in secondary schools” (p.
19). It is interesting to note the evidence in my study that in general more boys than
girls were involved in bullying. However, in concrete forms of bullying (teasing and
calling names) more girls appeared to be involved than boys. Rigby (2008) regarded
teasing and calling names as direct bullying. Thus, this was surprising to me since
the previous findings (Rivers and smith 1994) have found that indirect bullying was
more evident in girls, but not direct bullying. Although Rigby (2008) and Remboldt
(1994) have found that verbal bullying such as calling names and teasing were
commonly reported forms of bullying, their findings still indicated that more boys than
girls
reported to be involved. Having said this, I have an interesting finding to show in
which girls were significantly more involved in calling names or teasing than were
boys.

In terms of grade level, there is a general trend that bullying seems to decrease in
the higher level of grade. Seals and Young (2003) argue that “in regard to grade
level, seventh graders were more involved in bullying than were eighth grades” (p.
744), indicating the general trend found by other researchers: That bullying
decreases with age. For example, Rigby (2008) argues that “with an increase in
maturity children appear to be less likely to seek to hurt each other” (p. 37).
However, it is important to note that there might be opposite findings from the
general trend. Olweus (1993) has drawn interesting findings from his study in
Scandinavia that there was a tendency that victims steadily declined in the higher
grade, in both boys and girls. However, bullies increased for boys in the higher level,
and not for girls.
Although not significant in numbers, however, the general trend was found in other
forms of bulling (isolating, shutting out, kicking and hitting) where boys in grade
seven were slightly higher than boys in grade eight. No girls were found to be
involved in these forms of bullying. Having looked at this, there is an indication that
my findings were slightly opposite to the general trend presented above in Seal and
Young (2003); Rigby (2008), and Olweus (1998).

In terms of victimization, generally I found boys in grade seven were slightly higher in
percentage (9.6% or n=3) than in grade eight (7.8% or n=4). However, a reverse was
found for girls where grade eight were significantly higher (20.9% or n=17) than
grade seven (8.4% or n=7). Both boys and girls in grade eight were suffering more
from being teased and called names than were in grade seven. Only one girl (1.2%)
was found to suffer from being isolated or shut out in grade seven, while two boys
(3.9%) and one girl (1.2%) was found to suffer from being kicked or hit in grade
eight.
These results demonstrated various patterns, where boys followed the general trend
in general victimization as above while girls were against the general trends.
However, in verbal victimization, both boys and girls were against the general trend.
Despite the differences, Olweus (2003, p. 15) has noted that it commonly happens
that the number of victims tends to decline with higher grades.

With regard to school differences, it seemed that the schools in my study tended to
differ much in the level of bullying occurrence. School two tended to be much higher
than school one in terms of bullying and victimization. However, there is a slight
difference in terms of gender. In bullying others by teasing and calling names, boys
in school two (18.3%, n=9) scored much higher than boys in school one (6.06%, n
=2). However, girls were found to score slightly higher in school one (17.02%, n=16)
than girls in school two (14.2%, n=10). While both boys and girls were involved in
kicking and hitting in school two, only boys were found to get involved in isolating
others in school two. No girl from school one had admitted having bullied others by
isolating, shutting out, kicking and hitting, and also no girl from school two had
admitted having bullied others by isolating and shutting out. In terms of victimization
by being called names and teased, the percentage of boys in school one was much
higher (33.3%, n=11) than that for boys in school two (12.2%, n=6). However, girls in
school two were much higher (34.2%, n=24) than were girls in school one (8.5%,
n=8). According to Rigby (2008) “this is true that in most studies some schools did
report much higher level of bullying than others” (p. 38).

Although the two observed schools were located in different places in the city of
Palu, where school one was in the middle of the city and school two was a bit on the
periphery of the city, it is too early to conclude that the differences of bullying
phenomena were due to the socio-economic statuses of the schools‟ catchment
area. Looking at what the two schools have been doing to address bullying
behavior, school one has its own regular program dealing with students‟ violent
behavior, while school two does not. Therefore, it can be assumed that the higher
level of bullying in school two was due to the lack of safety in comparison to school
one. In a general sense, the students felt secure enough to go to school if they felt
protected. The protection could be an awareness of any potential violent behavior
from deviant students. So, the effects of what a school has been doing about
students‟ malign behavior are extremely important aspects of predicting the degree
of bullying occurrence in the school.

Sometimes a claim is made that most bullying takes place on the way to school.
However, research shows that two to three times as many as students are bullied at
school compared to those who are bullied on the way to school. A result from the
present study has also confirmed the trend that bullying occurred much more
frequently in school than outside school. In the school, it was indicated that more
bullying occurred in the classroom than in the schoolyard. Also, more bullying
occurred in the schoolyard than in the corridors. However, very few bullying incidents
occurred in the restroom. If bullying occurs in places where students interact most
with each other, it might be possible that the classroom is the place where most
bullying occurs, rather than the schoolyard or corridor. However, how can most
bullying occur in a classroom where teachers are present? There is an assumption
that this could be a lighter form of bullying that might not be considered as a problem
among the students; as indicated earlier, this was the type of bullying done „just for
fun‟, although to some extent it was clearly identified as bullying behavior by some.
There is also speculation that since bullying mostly occurred in the school compared
to other places, there is an indication that students were likely to exercise their
aggressive behavior in order to be perceived as popular or tough or to get attention
from other students, or they might belong to a certain group of individuals in the
schools. Therefore, it is obvious why most of bullying behavior takes place in school,
because it is a place where the student interacts most with other individuals,
compared to other places.

CONCLUSION:
Although this research study uncovered many findings related to my research
questions and literature review, research for the study revealed a number of topics
that I feel should be explored further in future research opportunities. One topic that I
found particularly interesting was participants advocacy for anti-bullying intervention
programs as daily curriculum. Although this research study focuses on strategies
classroom teachers beliefs about student experiences and their practice, I would be
interested in investigating how intervention programs are conducted in schools and
the outcome of these programs on a school context or with a group of teachers.
Research on the various experiences of interventions could provide strategies and
new knowledge that could be valuable to teachers and administrators. Although
both participants had varied experiences with bullying, neither had any specific
training around bullying. I found this to be a limitation within the study. For future
study, I would conduct comparative research of participants with and without bullying
training to identify the differences in practice and strategies used within the
classroom. This would provide interesting insight into whether having specific
training around bullying is beneficial and whether there is a significant reduction in
instances of bullying within a classroom if the teacher has been trained. A final area
of interest that I believe requires further research are the differences in the forms of
and degree to which students with exceptionalities experiences, specifically students
who have received social skills training. I am curious to see the differences of
bullying between students who have exceptionalities who have received social skills
training and those who have not. I would expect there to be a large discrepancy. This
would be relevant when determining how students are doing academically, as we
know that the social/emotional factors plays a part in a student’s ability to succeed
academically.
In conclusion, this study is important to the education community because many of
our students are being academically affected by the bullying they are experiencing.
Teachers can act and help the students be successful in and outside the classroom.
School is a place that is meant to ensure safety, free from harm, and provide a well-
rounded education (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009). Unfortunately, those
experiences have been hindered for some, and it is important that educators have
the
capacities to help students get on the right track.

REFERENCE:
The Impact of Bullying on Academic Success for Students With and Without
Exceptionalities, Nadine Block 2014
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/
bitstream/1807/67006/1/
Block_Nadine_F_201406_MT_MTRP.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi6vpqGrKb0AhUfrlYBHbYhCKQQFnoECAsQA
Q&usg=AOvVaw1S5xPF_rI0b9bdTnXjPwts