The Relationship Between Bullying and Academic Performance - Report Example

The relationship between bullying and academic performance Introduction At some point in their lives, many children engage in bullying their peers. Bullying involves the use of aggression from a position of power and is often used to establish dominance and status within the peer group (Pellegrini, 2004; Pellegrini & Bartini, 2001). It would therefore be an interesting study if one was to discuss the relationships that exist between bullying and academic performance in detail and thereby trying to justify the perspective and framework by conducting a detailed analysis of the subject. In this assignment, we discuss two project methods to justify the relationship between bullying and academic performance. In Project Method 1, the assignment will focus primarily on the evaluation and analysis of available materials to get explicit and subtle hints that would establish the relationship between academic performance and tendencies to become bullies or victims. Second, we draw conclusive evidences based on the works of other researches to establish the theoretical model that academic performance can be an indicator to bully and victim behaviour. Beside this we will also discuss the underlying theoretical models on social, psychological, mental and intellectual behaviours that would relate the academic performance to bullying behaviour. Going ahead, we evaluate other factors that would relate to school bullying (and victimization) and poor performance. Lastly, the study makes use of personal records of school children to evaluate their tendencies to become bullies or victims before we conclude the theoretical and conceptual evidences of the possibility of academic performance as an indicator of bullying behaviour. In Project Method 2, there will be a cross-sectional research on the academic performance as an indicator of becoming a bully/ victim. This would be done by conducting a questionnaire survey of school teachers on this subject and of randomly selected school students to reveal their experience of being bullied or being a bully. The study will also focus on conducting structured interviews of randomly selected school students to identify whether they have experienced being a bully or being bullied, talk about their beliefs and why they bully or why they are being bullied highlighting the importance of the academic performance. Thereafter statistical methods will be employed in order to draw conclusions and validate the relationship of academic performance and bullying/ victim tendencies. Project Method One The first step is a detail evaluation and critical analysis of available materials to get explicit and subtle hints that would establish the relationship between academic performance and tendencies to become bullies or victims. Evaluation of available materials Various findings were as follows: There is a consensus on the argument that bullying would in-effect lead to and vice-versa. The tendency of bullying led to increased bullying and the tendency to being bullied led to further victimisation (Linda R. Finger, Roberto Parada, Herbert W. Marsh, and Rhonda Craven, 2003) Student-level as well as school-level factors influence students’ bullying experiences, perceptions, and attitudes. Sex is associated with students’ experiences of bullying. Age and culture are associated with students’ perceptions and attitudes towards bullying. Male and female students of different ages report different experiences of bullying but both have similar bullying perceptions and attitudes. Conversely, students of different ages and cultural backgrounds have similar experiences of bullying but both have different bullying perceptions and attitudes (Jean Healey, Martin Dowson and Genevieve F. Nelson, 2005). Reducing victimization of school students is linked with improving their academic outcomes. The school staff could easily find out that students with more number of absences are frequently in trouble at school and students who have more number of lengthy disciplinary records are at risk for dropping out of school. They can draw an inference that many of these students are likely to be the victims of bullying by their peers thereby affecting their academic performance. (Billie Gastic, 2008). One would need to accept at the very outset that bullying would occur when a real or a perceived imbalance of strength exists in a given group (Olweus, 1994). Critical Analysis of available literature Bullying would have an impact one the bully as well as the victim. When critical analysis of the above evaluation of available materials is done, it clearly establishes the relationship between academic performance and bullying/ victimisation tendencies. The bullies suffer from superiority or inferiority complexes. They try to participate more in bullying and punking than studying. So they are at risk of being drop-outs and they start developing criminal tendencies and behaviour. Bullies or victims are at great risk so they should receive prevention services to help them feel safe. Alternative strategies should be developed for interacting with peers and resolving interpersonal conflict. Bullies tend to feel unsafe and worried, and so they develop retaliatory attitudes and defensive aggressive responses in ambiguous situations. (Lindsey M. O’Brennan, 2009) On the other hand, the victims’ minds start filling with frustration, despair, and depression leading to losing self confidence and interest in studies. They are at risk of becoming patients of mental disorder. In both cases, the standard of academic performance starts going to low levels. The social and emotional background of students, their attitude towards retaliation, aggressive and impulsive behaviour, and perceptions of safety and possessiveness is different for different students. It depends on whether they are bullies or victims. It is found that bullies demonstrate aggressive behaviour, whereas victims show more emotional distress and induce negative emotions. (Lindsey M. O’Brennan, 2009) Conclusive evidences based on other researches If one was to therefore analyse the relationship of bullying with academic performance one would find that there are a number of research studies that have looked into the psychological and social issues, environmental issues, emotional factors, physical strengths and concepts of self perception in an attempt to explain the causes bullying and victimization. In order to fully comprehend the relationship that would exist between bullying and academic performance, one would have to first understand fully the relationship between bullying and victimization and the impact that one would have on the other. Some researchers have looked into the complex psychology involved in becoming a bully and in becoming a victim of bullying. Bullying occurs when there is an imbalance of strength - either real or perceived. Students who are physically strong are more prone to become bullies. Consequently, students that stand out from the rest particularly because of some peculiar physical features are often subject to ridicule and bullying. Underlying theoretical models 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. Students with highly negative behaviours 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 can indicate the students’ tendencies to become school bullies or victims. Being a school bully or a victim will also affect future academic performance as well. This would therefore mean that there is an intrinsic relationship between bullying and academic performance. If one was to understand the factors that would lead to betterment at academic performances one would find automatically that the relationship a child shares with his or her peer group would affect that manner in which a he/she does at academics. A child well liked with a healthy peer group for example would more often than not be a good, trouble free student. With bullies this does not always happen. Children who intimidate and cause distress to peers are likely to generate conflict with peers, be rejected, have strained relationships, and become marginalized within the peer group. This pattern of peer problems is found for a subset of children who bully and often become victimized. The social and emotional background of students, their attitude towards retaliation, aggressive and impulsive behaviour, and perceptions of safety and possessiveness is different for different students. It depends on whether they are bullies or victims. It has however been found that victims of bullying were more likely to have low achievement than bystanders. All bullying-involved groups were significantly more likely than bystanders to feel unsafe at school.  Victims and bully-victims were more likely to report feeling that they don't belong at school and Bullies and victims were more likely than bystanders to feel sad most days (Glew et al., 2005). These are automatically factors that would lead to deterioration in school work. Victims of bullying would obviously feel insecure in class, they would be made to feel inferior and most would run away from the school and school related work instead of enjoying their education. Bullies are usually aggressive in school, they call names to other students, and they resort to extortion, physical violence, slandering, and group exclusion, damage to property of other school and students, and verbal intimidation. (Roberto H. Parada, Herbert W. Marsh, Rhonda G. Craven and Brad A. Papworth, 2005) It is found that bullies demonstrate aggressive behaviour, whereas victims show more emotional distress and induce negative emotions. Bullies or victims are at great risk so they should receive prevention services to help them feel safe. Alternative strategies should be developed for interacting with peers and resolving interpersonal conflict. Bullies tend to feel unsafe and worried, and so they develop retaliatory attitudes and defensive aggressive responses in ambiguous situations. (Lindsey M. O’Brennan, 2009) Evaluation of other factors In a survey conducted by American Association of University Women (AAUW, 1993), it was found that two thirds of the boys were identified as sexual harassers and bullies. These boys were alienated from other groups. Boys were the most common victims of bullying and harassment, including homophobic ridiculing and taunts. It was also found that specific social, emotional, psychological, mental and intellectual behaviours resulted in bullying and victimisation. (Phillips / Punking and Bullying, 2007). Penalising attitudes were one of the reasons of students involved in bullying. Aggressive students displayed aggressive retaliation more than nonaggressive students. This attitude directly supported violence in schools particularly in social situations. Lindsey M. O’Brennan, (2009) argue that students that have been penalised in relation to bullying have higher levels of aggressive-impulsive behaviour than other students. Bullies displayed proactive and reactive forms of aggression whereas victims displayed reactive rather than proactive aggression. The situation becomes more complicated for teachers when these students become hyperactive and disruptive. They find it difficult to control their anger when provoked by their peers. Bullies are usually aggressive in school, they call names to other students, they resort to extortion, physical violence, slandering, and group exclusion, damage to property of other school and students, and verbal intimidation. (Roberto H. Parada, Herbert W. Marsh, Rhonda G. Craven and Brad A. Papworth, 2005) Bullying, violence, aggression, victimisation, and difficulties in peer relations in schools are persistent problems having long term psychosocial consequences for bullies and victims. Bullying problem is a result of decrease in school performance, poor mental health, delinquent behaviour and future criminality. Bullying causes a bad impact on schools and communities. Schools become unsafe and alienated from school community. They become victim of distrust amongst students. This gives rise to formation of gangs to instigate bullying or gain protection from being bullied, low staff morale, higher occupational stress, and a poor educational climate. This also resulted in having negative effects on parent-children relationships. However, students with higher levels of self-concept are less likely to be bullies and the self-concept acted as a deterrent to subsequent bullying behaviours. (Roberto H. Parada, Herbert W. Marsh, Rhonda G. Craven and Brad A. Papworth, 2005). Conclusion of theoretical and conceptual evidence The most common reason that students become victims of bullying is due to their different appearance. They suffer from low self-esteem. There are many reasons why some students resort to bullying and punking in schools. The bullies may have psychological or family problems. They may have low self-esteem and in order to cover their shortcomings/ inferiority complex, they try to bully others to feel better and superior. Sometimes, the bullies may feel that they are better than others (superiority complex); they want to impress others; they are jealous of the others/ victims; they may lack respect for other people; they may be annoyed with the victim's appearance or behaviour; they may also be a victim of bullying and want to give back; they may suffer from peer pressure to dislike/hate others; and they may be afraid of bullying without any reason. Bullying arises from relationship problems. The children, who bully frequently, try to use power and aggression to control the victims and cause suffering or pain to them. They also establish an interactional style that will carry forward through adolescence into adult relationships. (Ann Frisen, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson, 2007) Project Method Two A cross-sectional research was conducted on the academic performance. Study group was comprised having 484 teenagers (286 boys and 198 girls). All these participants were of different age group. Conducting a questionnaire survey for Psychological assessment Since we were interested in the participants' experience of bullying during all their academic years of schooling, we asked questions about each specific age period that was formed (7 to 9 years, 10 to 12 years, 13 to 15 years, and 16 to 18 years). We asked if they had been a victim of bullying or had bullied others in each age period (as mentioned above). Also, for their better understanding, the definition of bullying was given at the beginning of the questionnaire. (Ann Frisen, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson, 2007) Four open-ended questions were posed: According to you, why do you think that individual is bullied? According to you, why does someone bully others? What do you think that will cause bullying stop? According to you, can academic performance be considered as an indicator of becoming a bully? Procedure followed In the six classes from two schools, students were asked beforehand if they will be interested to take part before they could fill the questionnaire. We found that 95% of students show their willingness to take part. Results of the survey 39% of the students reported that they had been bullied at some point of the time during their schooling, 20% stated that they had bullied others, and of these 13% reported being both bullies and victims (bully-victims). No significant differences were observed in the proportion of boys and girls who were victims or bullies. The age period during which most students had been bullied was between 7 and 9 years. Few high school students (16 to 18 years) reported being bullied during their academics. Eight of the bullied students reported that they were bullied during more than one school period. (Ann Frisen, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson, 2007). Three of these reported being bullied during both the period of 7 to 9 years and also in the period of 10 to 12 years of age. The most common response the teenagers gave as to why some teenagers bully others (Question 2) was that bully suffers from low self-esteem. This response is interesting since the question of whether or not bullies actually have low self-esteem has yielded contradictory results in previous research. The most common response teenagers gave to the question "What do you think makes bullying stop?" (Question 3) was that the bully matures over the period of time. The next most frequent response had to do with the victim standing up for himself/herself. Teenagers who were not involved in bullying during their school years had a much stronger conviction that victim can stand up himself/herself. The most common response teenagers gave to the question of academic performance being an indicative factor of becoming a bully (Question 4) was that bully gets higher self esteem when his/her academic performance is significantly higher as compared to others. Bullying shows following characteristics on its victims such as poor psychosocial adjustment and academic achievement, loneliness, rejection, depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem. It was also found that the victim’s academic performance gets hampered as he/she is unable to cop up with the situation for a prolonged period of time. To sum it all, teenagers tend to believe that those who are bullied have a different appearance and that those who bully others suffer from low self-esteem. They do believe that in order to stop bullying, the bully needs to mature and still it is uncertain that bullying causes dramatic decline in academic performance of the victim. What this would mean in essence is that bullies target a group that are physically different, or have a different style of dressing. Bully-victims have lower academic performance than uninvolved peers (Schwartz et al., 2001). The idea therefore is that bullies would automatically have a few an impact on the manner of academic achievement and academic pressure in schools. Academic pressure refers to the expectations of peers and teachers. Students with lower academic pressure are more likely to bully than students in schools with high academic pressure. Victimisation, on the other hand, relates to various factors including academic achievement. Regardless of the type of bullying, victims suffer various negative consequences. The survey also demonstrates the fact that the bullying would automatically have consequences that include students having difficulty concentrating on study, decreased academic achievement levels, decreased interest in school, and increased absences. This link between academic work and bullying suggests possible connections between academic achievements. Conducting structured interviews Teenagers/ Children were interviewed individually inside the school premise using a standard structured interview technique. First, they were asked whether they had experienced any of six behaviours that had upset them: (1) Were you called by bad or nasty names? (2) Were your belongings taken by someone? (3) Did someone give false information about you? (4) Were malicious tricks played on you? (5) Were you threatened or blackmailed? (6) Did someone abuse you physically? If the child answered that he/she had experienced any of the six above mentioned behaviours, the child was then asked to give examples and describe how this happened. Those children who had experienced one or more of these behaviours were asked how frequently these incidents happened. To aid children’s reference, anchors such as ‘‘since last Christmas’’, ‘‘since the summer holidays’’, etc. were used. The six behaviours were then repeated and the child was asked whether they have used these behaviours to offend other children and how often they had done. (S. Woods, D. Wolke, Journal of School Psychology, 2001) Children’s frequency responses were later coded according to three categories as mentioned below: Seldom (one to three times during the past 6 months) Frequently (four times or more during the past 6 months) Very frequently (at least once per week) According to the results of the interview and the frequency of bullying events reported, children were classified using a homogeneous coding manuscript into the following groups: Physical bullies Physical victims Physical bully/victims Physical neutrals Conclusions based on statistical analysis A computerized database was formed using the Microsoft Excel 2003 program. The results are presented as absolute and relative frequencies. Out of the total sample (n=484), most children were bullied sometimes (62.8%), some never (20.7%), and some (16.5%) reported experienced bullying almost every day. Around half of the children (240) never or rarely assaulted their peers. It is observed that girls were more often victims than boys. Bullies were more frequent in high school grades and boys were more often bullies than girls. (Edita Cerni Obrdalj and Mirjana Rumboldt, 2009) Using binary regression analysis, Sex, age, town, and school achievement were assessed as predictors for being a bully or a victim. Only sex was found to be a major predictor for being a bully. The most prevalent form of violence was verbal violence, followed by physical, emotional, and economical violence. Sexual violence was the least prevalent amongst all. The prevalence of frequent bullying amongst elementary school children is considerable and needs to be dealt with significant efforts of children, teachers and parents. Objective analysis by statistical method Questionnaire based survey method was used to measure teenagers bullying experiences, perceptions and attitudes, as well a relevant demographic and other data. This method consisted of few questions, which included mixture of quantitative and qualitative responses. The quantitative data collected was then coded for analysis, and this paper is based on the results of the analyses of that data. Teenager’s experiences of bullying were measured by a series of questions to nominate the particular kinds of bullying behaviours that they experienced, and the frequency of these bullying behaviours (such as teasing, name calling, being left out, being threatened, being hit, punched or kicked, being forced to give money or belongings to someone). Descriptive statistical analysis were used to summarize teenager’s experiences of bullying (i.e. how and how often they were bullied), their perceptions of bullying (i.e. why they thought they were bullied and whether they felt bullying as an issue) and attitudes towards bullying (i.e. whether they would report bullying to school authorities, and whether they would help someone who was being bullied). Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVAs) were used to decide whether student level factors (such as age, sex, and cultural-background) and school-level factors (such as school type and climate) effected students’ bullying experiences, perceptions, and their attitudes. (Jean Healey, Martin Dowson and Genevieve F. Nelson, 2005) The MANOVAs were divided in such a way that they include as many variables as possible, thereby reducing the probability of finding subtle difference by chance. Finally, one-way ANOVAs (using Tukey’s Honestly Significant Different post-hoc comparisons) were used to decompose significant effects that are identified in the MANOVAs. Results of Objective analysis Experience of Bullying: When considering the responses of attributes such as ‘Weekly’, ‘Daily’, ‘Most Days’, it was found that teasing and name calling are the most frequently reported forms of bullying behaviour. Perceptions of Bullying: Almost one out of 10 teenagers received regular unwanted comments on his/her personal appearance. Few teenagers perceived regular bullying to be based on certain attributes such as their family, race and religion. Bullying as a problem: Almost half of the teenagers felt bullying as a problem and they demanded strict actions against such behaviours from school authorities. They were of the opinion that due to bullying, they feel mentally disturbed; they are unable to cop up with the academic pressure and hence fail to meet the academic expectations. Attitudes towards Bullying: More than half of the teenagers reported that they would be willing to help somebody who is being bullied. Interesting to point here is the observation that almost one third of the teenagers would not be prepared to report the bullying incident! Differences in Experiences of Bullying (Student-Level Factors): There was a significant multivariate main effect of sex on teenager’s experiences of bullying. Follow-up one-way ANOVAs were used to conclude where significant sex differences existed. The results of these ANOVAs indicate that females reported being teased, threatened and hit significantly more than the males in the study. Males reported that they were left out significantly more than did the females in the study. The overall main effect for cultural background was not significant. Thus, main effect of sex on students’ experiences of bullying was the only significant multivariate effect. Differences in Experiences of Bullying (School-Level Factors): There was a significant two-way multivariate interaction effect on students’ experiences of bullying. It was also found that in both the single-sex (girls) and the co-ed school, students were more likely to report being left out in a situation when they felt the school climate to be poor. Overall, it would appear that teenager who found his/her school climate poor was more likely to report being bullied, particularly in the single-sex (girls) school. Summary of Key Findings Sex (but not age or cultural background) was associated with students’ experiences of bullying. In contrast, age and culture were associated with students’ perceptions towards bullying. These suggestions may imply that bullying perceptions and attitudes may be relatively independent of students’ overall experiences of bullying. School type influenced various experiences of bullying, whereas school climate and school type influenced bullying perceptions and attitudes. Cultural background seems to have very little impact on teenager’s experiences of bullying. It appears that academic performance is linked with various social, emotional and psychological factors discussed in this study. It is not precise to say academic performance has direct relationship with bullying behaviours. (Jean Healey, Martin Dowson and Genevieve F. Nelson, 2005) Conclusion The study demonstrated that both student-level and school-level factors may influence teenager’s bullying experiences, perceptions, and attitudes. The results reported in this study are somewhat complex. However, these results will certainly help researchers and practitioners to potentially widespread the influence of these factors. The available material does not confirm any concrete relation between academic performance and tendencies to become bullies or victims, but some points indicate that bulling and academic performances have related to each other by some extent. Academic performance roughly expresses what a person has learned or achieved as a result of a process of instruction or training. Different types of abuse can influence the academic performance of students and make them bullies and being bullied. The aggressive behaviour of bullies towards peers could be considered as a reaction to frustrations and failures at school. Recent study reported that children who exhibited poor academic performance in school tended to emerge as frequent targets of bullying. Research on peer rejection has also considered the relationship to academic achievement and adjustment in school. (Sarah Woods and Dieter Wolke, 2003). References Linda R. Finger, Roberto Parada, Herbert W. Marsh, and Rhonda Craven. (2003). Do My Self-Beliefs Lead Me to Bully or be Bullied? - An Investigation into the Causal Relations between Bullying, Victimisation and Self-Concept. Self-concept Enhancement and Learning Facilitation Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Paper presented at NZARE AARE, Auckland, New Zealand November 2003 (PAR03780) Sarah Woods and Dieter Wolke. (2003). Direct and relational bullying among primary school children and academic achievement. Journal of School Psychology. Retrieved on 12 Oct 09 from the Website: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/EcircusWeb/Publications/Psychology/bullying_academic_achievement.pdf Edita Černi Obrdalj and Mirjana Rumboldt. (2008). Bullying Among School Children in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina: Cross-Sectional Study, Croatian Medical Journal, Retrieved on 12 Oct 09 from the Website: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2525832 Ann Frisen, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson. (2007). ADOLESCENCE, Vol. 42, No. 168. Adolescents' perception of bullying: who is the victim? who is the bully? what can be done to stop bullying? Billie Gastic. (2008). School truancy and the disciplinary problems of bullying victims. Educational Review. Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. Debby A. Phillips. (2007) Punking and Bullying - Strategies in Middle School, High School, and Beyond. Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume 22 Number 2, Seattle University. Lindsey M. O’brennan, Santa Barbara, Catherine P. Bradshaw and Anne L. Sawyer. (2009). Examining Developmental Differences In The Social-Emotional Problems Among Frequent Bullies, Victims, And Bully/Victims. Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 46(2). Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Psychology in the Schools. Roberto H. Parada; Herbert W. Marsh & Rhonda G. Craven and Brad A. Papworth. (2005). Bullying in Schools: What Can We Glean from Self-concept Theory? SELF Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia (PAR05324). Anne C Grunseit, Don Weatherburn and Neil Donnelly. (2005). School Violence And Its Antecedents: Interviews With High School Students. New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Anne van Hoof, Quinten A. W. Raaijmakers, Yolanda van Beek, William W. Hale III, Liesbeth Aleva. (2007). A Multi-mediation Model on the Relations of Bullying, Victimization, Identity, and Family with Adolescent Depressive Symptoms. Empirical Research. Published online. Glew G M, Fan M Y, Katon W, Rivara F P, Kernic M A, 2005, Bullying, psychosocial adjustment, and academic performance in elementary school, pub, Arch Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Vol.159, No.11, pp1026-1031 Read More