Bullying in secondary schools : teachers' perspectives and experiences

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Bullying seems to be a pervasive problem in most secondary schools and teachers havethe daily task of dealing with it. Not only do teachers have to unravel the complexdynamics of bullying, they also often have to navigate a school climate and culture that isnot conducive to addressing bullying. In South Africa, there are many unique contextualfactors which impact on teachers' management of bullying, such as community violenceoverflowing into the school, increased administrative load and limited support fromschool management, parents and education authorities. Therefore, teachers' abilities toconceptualise bullying, recognise and respond to incidents of bullying, and theirknowledge of the nature and extent of bullying behaviour impact greatly on anti-bullyingstrategies.The theoretical framework which informed this study is the social context perspectivewhich drew on views from both social constructionism and the bio-ecological framework.The social context perspective emphasises the interactions between individuals and thesystems as delineated in the bio-ecological model. Furthermore, this study did not aim toreveal the 'truth about school bullying. The intention has rather been to provide acomprehensive picture as was portrayed by the participants in this study. This pictureincluded the nature and extent of bullying in their secondary school, the teachers'perspectives and experiences of bullying, and proposed prevention and interventionstrategies which they aim to implement at their school. In keeping with the constructionistnature of the process of inquiry, a qualitative, interpretivist research approach was used.Purposive sampling was used to identify potential participants who were then asked tovolunteer to be part of the study. Data was generated through semi-structured interviewswith individuals and focus groups. Furthermore, the constant comparative method wasused to analyse the data.The research findings indicated that the teachers experience and perceive a wide varietyof bullying behaviours which take place at various sites, both within and outside theschool grounds and that involve a diverse range of individuals within the schoolcommunity. Furthermore, the teachers conveyed several factors which they experiencedas maintaining bullying and highlighted their perceived effects thereof. In addition to this,the participants shared knowledge about their teaching practices and suggested a fewstrategies on how to deal with bullying more effectively in their school community.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University