One motivation in bullying is the social standing of an individual in a group. This triggers many policymakers to create anti-bullying policies targeted in peer group levels rather than on individual bullies and victims. This could be partly due to the reason that bullying happens when a person wants to be the superior or have a powerful standing in a group or a class.

In a group particularly, the one who has the stronger personality tends to become the leader. The bullying behavior can root from this as the supposed “leader” bosses around his or her group mates. The fact that also contributes is that bullies choose victims who are submissive, insecure, physically weak, and/or is in a rejected position in the group.

What happens during a bullying episode is that by standers would seldom intervene. Worse, bystanders would only aggravate the situation when they cheer on at the bully or laugh at the victim. Others would just silently watch on.

Bullies are often said to have problems within themselves. Because school children can have varied roles in a a bullying situation, like one can be the bully, one is the victim, another one is an associate, and another one is a defender of the victim, it could be really difficult for teachers to solve this problem all at once.

One strong recommendation is to try to direct solutions to each individual. Reinforce behaviors and make sure that the presence of the teacher is able to control children up to the moments when the teacher is not physically present. This can be very challenging but could be doable. Preventing and stopping bullying is a coordinated responsibility not only by school personnel and teachers but the parents and the students as well.

A clearly defined regulations on bullying incidents should be made right from the start and bullies identified and should be managed in a manner that is most helpful to modify the behavior.

References:

Hodges, E.V.E., & Perry, D.G. (1999). Personal and interpersonal antecedents and consequences of victimization by peers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 677-685.

Salmivalli, C., & Peets, K. (2005). Bullies, victims, and bully-victim relationships. In W. Bukowski, K. Rubin, & B. Laursen (Eds.), Handbook of Peer relations.

Vaillancourt, T., Hymel, S., McDougall, P. (2003). Bullying is power: Implications for school-based intervention strategies. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 19, 157-176.

By: Diana C. Punzalan | Teacher | Alauli Elementary School | Pilar, Bataan