School bullying : the process of unequal peer relations : "a child's perspective"

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Sociology
Degree name
Master of Arts
Publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
English
Date
2003
Authors
Spencer, Andrew
Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to give children a 'voice' in relation to school bullying. Most of the literature on school bullying to date has focused on an adult perspective of school bullying. That is, the literature has been developed to help parents and teachers combat bullying within the school environment. The setting for this thesis is Hillside Primary (fictitious name), a full Primary school situated in Christchurch. Two classes of children participated in this research, 51 year-7 students aged between 11 and 12. I began this research in 1998, completing the field work, and two thirds of the written thesis. In 2000 I suspended this thesis, incomplete, in order to attend teachers college to train as a Primary School Teacher. In 2002, I resumed work on the thesis. The methods used in this research are qualitative. Three months of participant observation, focus group interviews, and semi structured interviews were included within this case study. A grounded theory model was used in order to allow the participants of this study to formulate questions and topics for focus groups. These methods helped to produce a rich body of data with which to draw major themes and issues. The major conclusions drawn from this research include: redefining school bullying to include general bullying behaviour; that the difference between bullying behaviour and other forms of anti-social behaviour are likely to be blurred if bullying is rife within a peer environment; that many schools will have their own unique set of issues to deal with in relation to school bullying; that it is often impossible to separate the bullies from the victims in a school setting because bullying behaviour is accepted as a normal part of peer interaction at school.

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Citation
Keywords
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
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All Rights Reserved