Identifying The Contextual Factors Of Indirect Bullying Situations That Influence Canadian Teachers' Intervention Behaviour

Indirect bullying is a form of peer victimization that is observed as frequently occurring in both males and females yet is often overlooked by teachers. Nine bullying situation characteristics were created, which contained 3 to 4 descriptive levels. These bullying situation characteristics were then used to create unique randomly generated questionnaires consisting of 17 unique choice tasks. One hundred and ninety four teachers participated. Using latent class analysis two segments with different influences on intervention were identified. The Group 1 segment teachers (28%) were found to be less influenced by specific information regarding bullies and victims while making intervention decisions and instead assimilated more elements of a bullying situation into consideration. Furthermore, these teachers were found to be more sensitive to covert acts of indirect bullying. The Group 2 segment teachers (72%) decisions were more influenced by the vulnerability of the child who is victimized as well as to physical components of bullying situations. These findings indicate that there is a need for greater focus on the vulnerability of children who bully as well as greater emphasis on indirect bullying within bullying prevention training for teachers. Identifying contextual factors of indirect bullying 3 Identifying The Contextual Factors Of Indirect Bullying Situations That Influence Canadian Teachers' Intervention Behaviour The problem of bullying and victimization is one that exists and that has been studied around the world. Bullying is defined as repeated exposure to negative actions, either through physical gestures, with words or through indirect means, that have a hostile intent, and that cause distress to the victim. Bullying involves a power difference between the bully and victim, making it harder for victims to defend themselves (Olweus, 2003). Most recently, bullying has been described as a destructive relationship problem by which children who bully learn to use aggression to control their victims who in turn become increasingly defenseless (Craig & Pepler, 2007). There exist different methods of bullying. For example, direct bullying harms others through the use of physical and verbal aggression such as hitting, kicking, threats, and intimidation, while indirect bullying harms others in a surreptitious manner through damage to interpersonal relationships using gossip, social exclusion, or rumor spreading (Bjorkqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukianen, 1992; Cote, Vaillancourt, Barker, Nagin & Tremblay, 2007; Crick, Casas & Mosher, 1997). The term indirect bullying shares commonalities with both relational aggression and social aggression. Relational bullying includes both direct and indirect forms of aggressive behaviour where harm or threat of harm to relationships serves as the primary means of hurting a victim (Crick, Ostrov, Burr, Cullerton-Sen, Jansen-Yeh & Ralston, 2006; Ostrov & Crick, 2007). Social bullying inflicts harm through damaging another individual's self-esteem and social status, or even both (Galen & Underwood, 1997). The term indirect bullying will be used for the purpose of this study to refer to acts Identifying contextual factors of indirect bullying 4 of indirect aggression since it is hard to draw the distinction between aggression and bullying (Bjorkqvist, 2001). Research on the prevalence of bullying has been studied in Europe for many years. Despite the considerable resources that have been allocated to solving bullying problems in the last three decades, there are indications that the problem is actually getting worse. For example, in a 2002 survey study of Scandinavian students aged 8 to 16 years old, it was found that the percentage of Scandinavian students who had reported being bullied rose by approximately 50% since 1983 and the percentage of students who had been involved in bullying others had increased by about 65% since 1983 (Olweus, 2003). Canadian research has shown that bullying problems in Canada are comparable to those in Europe. According to a report from the Public Agency of Canada, Canadian children ranked 26 out of 35 countries with respect to rates of students who bully other children and 27 with respect to rates of being victimized by peers (Craig & Edge, 2008). Data from Public Agency of Canada also indicated that in 2006 39% of students in grade 6 to 10 admitted to bullying others, 36% admitted to having been bullied, and 20% reported having both bullied others and having been bullied at least twice over a two month period. More recently, it has been found that, of 11,152 students in grades 4 to 12 in southern Ontario, 12.3% of students were classified as students victim of bullying, 5.4% as students who bully others, and 4.0% as both students who are victimized and bully others (Vaillancourt et al., 2010). It was also found that 19.5% of students reported feeling unsafe at school. In elementary school 20.5% of students reported feeling unsafe whereas 16.7% of secondary school students reported feeling unsafe. Thirty-nine percent Identifying contextual factors of indirect bullying 5 of elementary students reported that recess/break time was the most unsafe area, whereas the hallway was reported as the most unsafe area by 44.3% of secondary