The Gap between the Academic Performances of the Students Involved in School Bullying - Report Example

Project Title: The Gap between the Academic Performances of the Students Involved in School Bullying Project Description: This project will attempt to determine and explain the academic performance of school bullies and the students who were bullied. This paper will also identify and correlate academic performance with being a bully or being bullied in school. The paper will look at how academic performance is related to intellectual and academic superiority of the students and consequently, will attempt how to determine academic superiority or inferiority based on the student’s tendency to bully or be bullied. In order to do this, the paper will (a) identify the academic performance of frequent school bullies ad those who were bullied, (b) determine whether there is a gap in the academic performance between the students involved, (c) analyze the extent of the gap in the academic performance of those who are involved in school bullying, and (d) evaluate whether the gap (or the absence of the gap) in the academic performance is a determining factor for being a bully or for being bullied. Project Justification: Understanding the social, emotional, and psychological causes of bullying is very important. With this knowledge, educators, parents, and other stakeholders can intervene at the appropriate stage in order to avoid long-lasting adverse damages caused by school bullying to the individuals involved. However, understanding the not-so-obvious indicators of becoming a school bully or becoming the victim comes after bullying actually occurs. Social issues, emotional disturbances, and psychological problems associated with bullying are identified by teachers, parents, and other stakeholders only after bullying occurs. In most cases, the damage is already done to the students involved in the bullying process before intervention could be initiated. In this respect, there is a need to identify the key characteristics of student bullies in order to classify and categorize students even before school bullying happens. This paper will try to determine whether academic performance of students involved in bullying and the victims can be used to predict the tendency of the students to become a bully or the victim, respectively. Knowing the universal profiles of the school bullies and the victims will help educators, parents and other stakeholders involved to categorize individual students according to their tendency to bully fellow students or be a victim of bullying. This, however, does not mean that students will be stereotyped; rather, this knowledge will be used to prevent school bullying from actually occurring. By performing intervention programs even before the issues would occur, the negative long and short-term implications of bullying can be avoided. Topic Overview: The causes and effects of school bullying have already been established. Various researchers have looked into the social and environmental issues (Gastic, 2008), emotional factors (O’Brennan, Bradshaw Sawyer, 2009), and the concept of self perception (Finger et al, 2003) in order to attempt to explain what causes bullying and victimization. Other researches have looked into the complex psychology involved in becoming a bully (Marsh et al, 2001; Juvonen, Graham & Schuster, 2003) and in becoming a victim of bullying (Bernstein & Watson, 1997; Juvonen, Nishina & Graham, 2001). Age, culture, gender, and types of behaviors of both bullies and victims were thoroughly classified in various researches (Healey, 2003). However, very few researchers have established the relationship between bullying and victimization with the academic performance of the individuals involved. Bullying occurs when imbalance of strength –either real or perceived –exist (Olweus, 1994). More often than not, researches were directed towards the differences in the physical strengths, psychological and social issues, and emotional problems of the bully and the victims (Finger et al, 2003). Various researches showed that students who are physically strong are more prone to become bullies (Bernstein & Watson, 1997; Marsh et al, 2001). Consequently, students that stand out from the rest particularly because of some peculiar physical features are often subject to ridicule and bullying (Bernstein & Watson, 1997). Olweus proposed earlier that bullying is a result of low scholastic performance (Olweus, 1983) but was later disproved by more recent researchers. The research of Woods & Wolke (2003) on the relationship between bullying behavior in primary schools and academic achievement as this shows no significant correlations. A more recent result posted by Schwartz, Farver, Chang & Lee-Shin (2002) on the other hand was able to show that students with poor academic performance are often the targets of school bullying. In spite of these researches, there was no mention whether academic performance can be used as an indicator of bullying/victim tendency of students. Academic performance is linked to various social, emotional and psychological development and maturity of students (Healey, 2003; Gastic, 2008; O’Brennan, Bradshaw & Sawyer, 2009; Finger et al, 2003). Students with serious emotional and psychological issues either became bullies or the victims of bullying. In the same manner, students with strong anti-social tendencies are more likely to become either the bully or the victim of school bullying. There are also various researches that assert the relationship of academic achievement and adjustment in schools and behavior towards school (Ladd, 1990). Students with highly negative behaviors towards their studies are more likely to attain low academic performance. In the same manner, students that have difficulties adjusting to their school environments are more likely to be bullied by their classmates. Academic and scholastic performances do not indicate the students’ tendencies to become school bullies or victims (Woods & Wolke, 2003). Being a school bully or a victim also does not say anything about future academic performance as well (Healey, Dowson & Nelson, n.d). However, there is nothing about these previous works that says that academic performance can not be an indicator of behavioral tendencies of students to become bullies, victims, or bully/victims. As Wood & Wolke puts it, there is a need to establish whether poor academic performance can lead to bullying behavior (or victim behavior) and consequently, can bullying behavior (or victim behavior) can lead to poor academic performance. Evaluating behavioral patterns of various school children who have had experienced being bullies or being bullied may shed some important information about how academic performance can be used to indicate behavioral patterns. This is made possible by the wealth of information available on the effects of social, psychological, and emotional perspective of school children towards their academic performance. Project Method: In order to establish the proposed relationship or to disprove the existence of such relationship, this paper will perform two things. First, this paper will evaluate the available materials for overt and subtle hints that would establish the relationship between academic performance and tendencies to become bullies or victims. Drawing conclusive evidences on the works of other researches will establish the theoretical model that this paper pursues – that academic performance can be an indicator to bully and victim behaviors. In order to establish this even further, the paper will look for underlying theoretical models on social, psychological, mental and intellectual behaviors that would relate to the academic performance to bullying behaviors. In order to do this, the paper will evaluate other avenues that would relate to school bullying (and victimization) and poor performance. For example, factors that have strong influence on low academic performance like poor social skills, poor coping abilities, and low self esteem can also be evaluated and assessed whether these affect the behavioral tendencies of the students to become school bullies or victims. Another is to check whether the personal records of school children can be used to evaluate their tendencies to become school bullies or victims. Evaluating the available existing literature on school bullying will not only be cost-efficient but is also a time-efficient approach to finish the research. With a research that requires longitudinal approach, performing an extensive and exhaustive research on one’s own would be very impractical. This is the reason why a major part of the paper will be devoted in the evaluation and the critical analysis of the available literature on the subject. This paper will also restrict its analysis on the available literature in order to come up with conclusive theoretical and conceptual evidences of the possibility of academic performance as an indicator of bullying behavior. The second thing that the paper will perform is a cross-sectional research on the academic performance as an indicator of becoming a bully. This paper will conduct (a) a questionnaire survey on both primary and secondary school teachers, (b) subject randomly selected primary and secondary school students for structured questionnaires that would reveal their experience of being bullied or being a bully, (c) conduct structured interviews on the randomly selected secondary school students that would identify whether they have experienced being a bully or being bullied, expound their beliefs why they are being bullied highlighting the importance of the academic performance, and (d) use statistical analysis to draw conclusions. Using a quantitative method of analysis validates or disproves any of the evaluations made in the first tier of analysis. The questionnaire approach is the most efficient in terms of data generation while the interview approach would allow the researchers to draw and classify information that the questionnaire approach could not generate. By employing an objective analysis by statistical method –either descriptive measures of central tendency or using the student t-test to establish the statistical relatedness of academic performance and bullying/victim tendencies, the research can prove or disprove what the research goal aims to compare. This approach will also make the analysis valid and reliable. However, both approaches have their own limitations. The research is limited to a small number of sample sizes relative to the large number of students across the world that has experienced bullying behaviors. In addition to that, this paper will not consider cultural factors as well as other important factors in order to establish that academic performance indicates bullying behavior. The results that can be generated whether by evaluating the existing literature or by employing statistical analysis may not represent a global fact. This difficulty can be addressed by bounding the scope of the research as well as defining its limitations. References Bernstein, J. Y., & Watson, M. W. (1997). Children who are targets of bullying: a victim pattern. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 12(4), 483-499. Finger, L., Parada, R., Marsh, H. & Craven, R. (2003). Do My self-Beliefs Lead Me to Bully or be Bullied? An Investigation into the Causal Relations Between Bullying, Victimisation and Self Concept. NZARE AARE. PAR03780 Gastic, B. (2008). School Truancy and the Disciplinary Problems of Bullying Victims. Educational Review. Vol 60, No.4; Pp 391-404. Grunseit, A., Weatherburn, D. & Donnely, N. (2005). School Violence and its Antecedents: Interviews with High School Students. New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Healey, J. (2003). New Theoretical Perspectives in Bullying: Broadening our Understanding of the Psychology of Peer Abuse. NZAARE AARE HEA03769 Healey, J., Dowson, M. & Nelson, G. (n.d.). Adolescents’ Experiences, Perception and Attitudes Towards Bullying. HEA05443 Juvonen, J., S. Graham, and M.A. Schuster. 2003. Bullying among young adolescents: The strong, the weak, and the troubled. Pediatrics 112, no. 6: 1231–7. Juvonen, J., Nishina, A., & Graham, S. (2001). Self views vs. peer perception of victim status among early adolescents. In J. Juvonen, A. Nishina, & S. Graham (Eds.), Peer harassment in school: the plight of the vulnerable and victimized (pp. 105-124). New York: Guilford. Ladd, G. W. (1990). Having friends, keeping friends, making friends, and being liked by peers in the classroom: Predictors of children’s early school adjustment. Child Development, 61, 1081 – 1100. Marsh, H. W., Parada, R. H., Yeung, A. S. & Healey, J. (2001). Aggressive School Troublemakers and Victims: A Longitudinal Model Examining the Pivotal Role of Self concept. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 411-419. Olweus, D. (1983). Low school achievement and aggressive behaviour in adolescent boys. In D. Magnusson, & V. Allen (Eds.), Human development. An interactional perspective. New York: Academic Press. Olweus, D. (1994). Annotation: Bullying at School: Basic Facts and Effects of a School Based Intervention Program. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 35, 1171 – 1190. O’Brennan, L., Bradshaw, C & Sawyer, A. (2009). Examining Developmental Differences in the Social-Emotional Problems among Frequent Bullies, Victimes, and Bully/Victims. Psychology in the Schools. Vol 46, No.2, DOI 10.1002/pits.20357 Phillips, D. (2007). Punking and Bullying: Strategies in Middle School, High School and Beyond. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Vol 22, No 2, Pp 158 -78 Schwartz, D., Farver, J. M., Chang, L., & Lee-Shin, Y. (2002). Victimization in South Korean children’s peer groups. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 30, 113 – 125. Sharp, S. (1995). How much does bullying hurt? The effects of bullying on the personal wellbeing and educational progress of secondary aged students. Educational and Child Psychology, 12, 81 – 88. Woods, S. & Wolke, D. (2004). Direct and Relational Bullying among Primary School Children and Academic Achievement. Journal of School Psychology. Vol 42; Pp 135-155 Read More