Bullying and academic performance at Arthur County Schools

¶ … national phenomenon of bullying must be considered across individual, family, peer, school, and community contexts. Because bullying tends to perpetuate itself, formulating and implementing effective bullying prevention and intervention programs demands an understanding of the environment that establishes and maintains it. Based on reports of bullying at Arthur County Schools in Arthur, Nebraska, an ethnographic research of this problem will be conducted to identify causes and possible interventions. The participants in the study are 11 seventh grade students, five girls and six boys, who were involved with the bully/victim dyad during the previous year. The instruments used were a bullying questionnaire to compare victimization and emotional status of the participants and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to assess academic performance. A synthesis of the results of the interviews and statistical results of the Iowa Tests will be made to identify any relationship between bullying / victimization and academic performance.

Problem statement and research questions

Problem background

Definition of the problem

Proposed solution

Educational significance

Research questions

Literature Review

Statement of hypothesis and rationale

Methodology

Data analysis

Description of media and materials

Project timeline

Proposal: Identifying and Administering Effective Bullying Interventions Programs

Problem statement and research questions

Problem background

To date, just one large-scale study on bullying in the United States has been conducted; in this study by Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt (2001), 15,686 6th-through 10th-grade students were requested to complete surveys on bullying. Of these respondents, 29.9% reported moderate to frequent involvement in bullying when they were assessed in 1998. Of this 29.9% reporting bullying instances, 13% identified themselves as the bullies involved, 10.6% self-identified as victims, and 6.3% self-identified as bully-victims. These researchers determined that bullying behaviors typically took place more often in middle school than in high school, and boys were more likely than girls to be involved in bullying (Nansel et al., 2001). Further, the bully-victims identified in this study exhibited the most pervasive negative psychosocial outcomes and there were no differences in bullying across urban, suburban, and rural areas (Nansel et al., 2001). These same trends are evident even in small schools such as Arthur County Schools where bullying situations have become evident over the past several months within the seventh grade class. Two students, one male and one female have reported incidents of being bullied. The bullying thus far has been mostly verbal with taunting, teasing and some exclusion but "accidental" bumping and kicking under the table have also been reported.

Definition of the problem

The academic performance of one male victim in particular has dropped one grade equivalent. His teachers are reporting that he has become distracted and does not complete his work on time. He will often make remarks that are not pertinent to the discussion and has chosen to move to a seat in the back of the classroom away from the other students. In looking through his K. through 6 records it appears that this student has done above average work in the past and no significant problems were recorded. The female victim's academic performance has not declined but she has elected to not participate in athletic activities this semester. Her teachers report that she hurries through her work and sits quietly reading even when there are opportunities to interact with the other students at the end of the class.

Proposed solution

An ethnographic research of this problem will be conducted within a classroom at Arthur County Schools to identify possible interventions to the current incidence of bullying and to prevent recurrences in the future.

Introduction

The purpose of this literature review was to develop the background and statistical information required to help answer the above-stated research questions. The focus of the literature review will relate first to the general aspects of the problem under consideration, followed by an increasingly specific focus on the problem as at relates to the faculty and students at Arthur County Schools in Arthur, Nebraska. In this regard, Gratton and Jones (2003) emphasize that a critical review of the timely literature is an essential task in all types of research projects: "No matter how original you think the research question may be, it is almost certain that your work will be building on the work of others. It is here that the review of such existing work is important" (p. 51). For this purpose, the literature review will provide the background to the research because it is important to demonstrate a clear understanding of the relevant theories and concepts, the results of past research into the area, the types of methodologies and research designs employed in such research, and areas where the current body of scholarly knowledge is lacking (Gratton & Jones, 2003). According to Wood and Ellis (2003), the following are some of the important outcomes of a well conducted literature review:

It helps describe a topic of interest and refine either research questions or directions in which to look;

It presents a clear description and evaluation of the theories and concepts that have informed research into the topic of interest;

It clarifies the relationship to previous research and highlights where new research may contribute by identifying research possibilities which have been overlooked so far in the literature;

It provides insights into the topic of interest that are both methodological and substantive;

It demonstrates powers of critical analysis by, for instance, exposing taken for granted assumptions underpinning previous research and identifying the possibilities of replacing them with alternative assumptions;

It justifies any new research through a coherent critique of what has gone before and demonstrates why new research is both timely and important.

The literature review is organized in an inverted pyramid fashion, addressing general aspects of the bullying phenomenon first, then proceeding to narrow that research to address the specific types of problems historically experienced at Arthur County Schools. A summary of the literature review concludes this section.

Review of literature

Many students are not experiencing safe environments. The sense of safety for many children is being threatened by the bully/victim dyad. Research on bullying has come to the forefront with national media coverage of violent incidences in schools. It is the purpose of this literature review to investigate prior research and information that has been accumulated concerning victimization and bully prevention programs. The focus is on the victim regarding emotional stability and academic achievement as well as looking at the effectiveness of present bully prevention programs within the United States.

There are different degrees and types of bullying, and all of them can have an adverse effect on academic achievement. "Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior with an imbalance of power; the dominant person(s) intentionally and repeatedly causes distress by tormenting or harassing another less dominant person(s)" (Atlas & Pepler, 1998, p.86).

Students can become the victim of direct bullying, a term that describes open attacks on the victim (i.e., kicking, pushing, hitting, teasing, taunting, mocking, threatening and intimidating); by contrast, indirect bullying describes behaviors that promote the social isolation, ostracism, or exclusion of the intended victim, as well as rumors and gossip: "Indirect bullying involves manipulating the social status of an individual within his or her peer group by changing the way others perceive and respond to the individual" (Atlas & Pepler, 1998. p.86). Not surprisingly, then, students that become victims of bullying in school are not able to freely pursue their academic goals compared