Technology-Based Awareness and Control Program to Target Factors Causing Bullying in School - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal Technology-based awareness and control program to target factors causing bullying in school. Introduction Bullying among students in schools is a very sensitive issue that needs to be addressed in order to establish a positive learning environment. The quality of learning hugely depends upon the environment. An environment in which a child feels unsafe is not helpful for optimal learning. Bullying in schools is not easy to address as it can happen anytime and anywhere. Unlike mature adults, children cannot be expected to be as considerate and kind in their behavior toward their peers as they should ideally be. This imparts a need for the school as well as the parents to play a role in developing this sense in the children. However, part of the problem is that many parents are not even aware of the fact that their children are involved in acts of bullying at school. One reason for this may be that children do not share such experiences with their parents. Research conducted on American students in grades 3 to 12 showed that the percentage of students that had shared a bullying experience with their parents was less than 50 per cent (Limber, Olweus, and Wang, 2012). There is dire need to explore factors that cause children to engage in the acts of bullying at school. There is also great need of a program executed mutually by the concerned school authorities, parents, and students themselves to prevent bullying among students at school. Significance of the problem Students have a propensity to bully others. This research is directed at examining ways to reduce bullying in the school. The proposal will explore common reasons because of which students engage in bullying. The number of fights that take place among the students in schools is considerable. They become the cause of suspension of a lot of students from the school and the instructional time of those that remain is also decreased because of such unfavorable events. Missed instructional time by constant fear of the peers and the aggressors exacerbates to long-term unfavorable outcomes for the students (Bowen and Bowen, 1999). Causes of bullying among students in the school setting may include but are not limited to racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic differences. Bullying among students may also result from the gang culture. Personnel of the school district, parents, and the community at large all have a vested interest in this research’s results because identifying ways to mitigate the risk of bullying among students in schools is a common concern for all. Parents generally have a fair understanding of what constitutes bullying at school and how it can negatively impact the children (Sawyer et al., 2011). The research will not only identify the most important causal factors behind bullying among students in schools, but will also propose how to formulate an awareness program so as to protect the children from bullying at school. The awareness program will be oriented around the use of modern technology to optimize the efficiency of the control system when children face the risk of bullying at school. The fact that bullying is harmful for the social and psychological wellbeing of students and destroys the discipline of a school is a cause for concern. This sparks a need to research the factors that cause students to fight each other. The specific area of fight whose reasons will be explored in this research is bullying. Review of research Schools assume a great responsibility together with the teachers, staff, and the parents to foster a positive learning environment so that students’ tendency to gain their full potential, feel safe at school, and do their best in studies can be optimized. Frequent episodes of bullying and the company of aggressive and violent peers can detract the students significantly from the positive learning environment. Considering the fact that educators in the modern age are constantly exploring strategies and ways to foster a positive learning environment in the classroom, minimization of the factors which hinder the achievement of this goal is vital. Reducing classroom bullying and mitigating the violent attitude of the students is one way of reaching this goal. Findings of various studies on ways to control violence and bullying in school are reviewed and summarized in this section. New-man Carlson (2004) carried out research to study the effectiveness of a program meant to prevent bullying that can be used by school counselors in order to modify the knowledge of teachers and benefit from their bullying intervention skills. The research further explored the self-efficacy of teachers and bullying behaviors of the students within middle school classroom gauged with the help of disciplinary referrals. The participants in this research attended training sessions that educated them on different ways to prevent bullying and function as a school-based support team. Findings of the research suggested that attendance of training session and participation in support teams effectively enhances the knowledge of teachers and the use of skills for intervening in bullying while dealing with specific children. The research also showed that intervention can reduce discipline referrals linked with the bullying behaviors. Aber, Brown, and Jones (2003) explored developmental trajectories leading to violent behavior in middle childhood to find out how the various demographic subgroups varied in these trajectories and how well was the response of these trajectories to a preventive intervention that was more school-based. The researchers gathered data related to the social and emotional developmental behaviors ranging over a period of two years, that are generally known to cause aggression and violence. Students that participated in the research were in public elementary and middle schools. Aber, Brown, and Jones (2003) used the techniques of hierarchical linear modeling in order to find out the response of students to the teachers that taught the skills of conflict resolution in the school. Their research led them to the conclusion that the response to the trajectories varies in the different demographic subgroups. The research also revealed that children that were taught more conflict resolution lessons showed more positive changes in their social and emotional development compared to others. Students also showed radical shift from displaying aggression and violence. Findings of this research reassure that teachers can play a very important role in behavioral counseling of the students by carefully crafting the lesson plans and curriculum. However, more research needs to be conducted in order to customize such curriculum according to the individual learning needs of the students studying at various levels in the elementary and middle schools. Moreover, there is dearth of research that suggests how modern technology can be best used to inculcate a positive attitude in the students towards their peers. Parents’ behavior and attention toward their children has a remarkable effect on the children’s tendency to bully others or be bullied. Having disengaged parents who do not supervise the children’s activities regularly increases the children’s likelihood to bully others whereas this likelihood is decreased when the parents regularly supervise the children (Olweus, 1993; Espelage, Bosworth, & Simon, 2000). Research has demonstrated that parenting style also has an impact on the child’s tendency to bully others or receive bullying. Children whose parents have an authoritative style of parenting have less tendency to be involved in an act of bullying (Bowes et al., 2009) whereas parents that are overly permissive in their style of parenting and others that are overly harsh have children with a high tendency to bully others. Parents generally believe that their children’s involvement in the acts of bullying as perpetrators or victims is less than what the children report (Stockdale et al., 2002; Holt et al., 2009). There is need to create awareness about how grave the problem actually is so that parents’ commitment to eradicating bullying tendency in their children is increased. While ample research has been conducted to explore factors that instigate students to bully others in school, there is dearth of research that explores the ways in which modern technology can be used to prevent bullying in school. This can be attributed to the fact that modern technology like the sophisticated mobile software, operating systems, and the apps are relatively new discoveries and have not been tried and tested for such matters in depth so far. This research will fill in this gap in the literature and generate a well-researched, prudently crafted, and practicable technology-based bullying prevention mechanism in schools. Research questions Some of the questions that this research will find answers to include: What factors contribute to the occurrence of bullying among students in schools? What is the relative importance of these factors in causing bullying among students in schools? What role can parents, teachers, staff, and peers play in reducing the tendency of students to bully others in schools? How can modern technology be used to prevent bullying among students in schools? Methodology The research methodology will start with a detailed review of literature to be followed by face-to-face interviews, a pilot study, and conduction of a questionnaire survey. The factors related to bullying among students in the schools will primarily be identified through the detailed literature review. Relative importance of the selected factors will be found out so that the factors can be ranked in order of their importance. This order is important in order to implement the control measures that target the most important factors first and subsequently target all other factors to exercise a holistic and effective control upon the factors causing bullying among students in the schools. The formula used to find out the relative importance index of the selected factors will be the one used by (Olomolaiye et al., 1987). Interviews and pilot study The factors causing bullying among students in the schools as identified through the detailed review of literature will be approved by the research participants. Since the control program has to be collectively run by the school staff, students, and the parents; opinions of all these research participants upon the factors causing bullying among students in the schools will be taken. The research participants will belong to all these groups and they will be asked about their opinion on the wording of the preliminary list of factors by conducting face-to-face interviews with them. The interviews will be conducted individually with each research participant either in person or online as convenient for the interviewee. The purpose of these interviews will be to make the statements of factors causing bullying comprehendible to all research participants. Only when the factors have been worded in the right manner can they be fully understood and ranked by the research participants later, so any modifications to the wording suggested by the interviewees will be considered. These interviews will form part of the pilot study that will subsequently lead to the development of the questionnaire. The questionnaire The questionnaire will be divided into two parts. The first part of the questionnaire will be based on the specific information about the research participant, including questions about their level of education, whether they have had been a victim or cause of bullying in their academic history, their age, and racial and ethnic origin. The second part of the questionnaire will contain the factors identified through the literature review and subsequently modified in the process of pilot study. Research participants will be asked to rate the factors on the basis of their perceptions of the tendency of the respective factors to cause bullying among students in schools. Their responses will be taken against each factor on a 5-point Likert scale. The points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on the Likert scale will stand for ‘not a cause’, ‘somewhat a cause’, ‘cause’, ‘huge cause’, and ‘extreme cause’. The questionnaire survey will be carried out in different schools in different cities across the country and a variety of schools ranging from elementary to high schools will form part of the research. The purpose of such diversity in research participants and school levels is that the research may be applicable and the results may be generalized for all sorts of contexts related to bullying among students in schools. Data analysis Once the data has been obtained, it will be analyzed to find out the relative importance index (RII) of the factors supposedly causing bullying among students in schools. Formula for RII will be derived from Agrawal (2010) which is as follows: RII = ∑w / (A x N) In this equation, w is the weight given to a factor from 1 to 5 on the Likert scale by each research participant, A is the highest weight which in this case is 5, and N represents the total number of research participants ranking the factors. Once the RII of the factors has been determined, a framework for controlling and preventing bullying among students in schools using modern technology will be proposed in a way that the most important causal factors are targeted most effectively. This framework will be developed through input of all research participants through interviews. This part of the research will be a qualitative research in which the same questions will be asked from teachers, parents, staff, and students themselves so that the perspectives and insights of all categories of research participants can be obtained. Some of the questions that will form part of this interview will be as follows: How can technology be used to prevent bullying among students at school? What are the barriers to the use of this technology for the said purpose? How can these barriers be crossed to make the process of prevention effective? The interviews will be tape-recorded for careful analysis of the responses and generation of results subsequently that will lay the basis of development of the framework for preventing bullying among students in schools. Expected outcomes The expected outcomes of this research include most important causes of bullying among students in schools ranked in order of their relative importance starting with the most important and ending with the least important among the selected causes; analysis of the causes of bullying, barriers to effective solution, and recommendations to eradicate those barriers for effective implementation of a prevention framework from a variety of perspectives of students, teachers, parents, and staff members; and identification of ways in which modern technology can be used to prevent bullying among students in schools. This research is of huge significance particularly to schools and academicians as bullying is a major and a growing concern in the increasingly multicultural and globalized contemporary societies. Furthermore, parents and students themselves will also benefit a lot from the results of this research because they will learn practicable ways of eradicating bullying among students in schools. If implemented, the prevention framework will optimize the positive learning environment in schools and increase the tendency of the young generation to grow up into humble and responsible citizens. References: Aber, J. L., Brown, J. L., & Jones, S.M. (2003). Developmental trajectories towards violence in middle childhood: Couse, demographic differences, and response to school-based intervention. Developmental Psychology. 39(2), 324-348. Agrawal, R. (2010). Successful delivery of public - private partnerships for infrastructure development. Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India. Bowen, N., and Bowen, J. (1999). Effects of crime and violence in neighborhoods and schools on the school behavior and performance of adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research. 14(3), 319-342. Bowes, L., Arseneault, L., Maughan, B., Taylor, A., Caspi, A., & Moffitt, T. E. (2009). School, neighborhood, and family factors are associated with children’s bullying involvement: A nationally representative longitudinal study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 48, 545-553. Espelage, D. L., Bosworth, K., & Simon, T. R. (2000). Examining the social context of bullying behaviors in early adolescence. Journal of Counseling and Development. 78, 326-333. Holt, M. K., Finkelhor, D., & Kaufman Kantor, G. (2009). Parent/child concordance about bullying involvement and family characteristics related to bullying and peer victimization. Journal of School Violence. 8, 42-63. Limber, S. P., Olweus, D., & Wang, W. (November, 2012). What we are learning about bullying: trends in bullying over 5 years. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Bullying Prevention Association. Kansas City, MO. Newman-Carlson, D. (2004). 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