Age and gender factor into bullying more than language
(District of Columbia) As with other life experiences, students endure bullying differently as they graduate through elementary, middle and high school, suggesting that intervention should evolve as well, new research shows.
A team of university researchers found that verbal and physical bullying occurred more in a student’s younger years, but as they aged, cyberbullying became more common.
The findings come in the wake of data provided by the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development that shows one in five high school students were bullied last year, with girls being twice as likely to suffer cyberbullying as boys.
The new research was based on surveys of 1,180 fifth through eighth grade students and published in this month’s School Psychology Quarterly.
The team – which included Cixin Wang, an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside's Graduate School of Education; Susan M. Swearer, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and Ji Hoon Ryoo, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia – focused on variables such as grade, gender and whether or not students were native or non-native English speakers.
Among the findings:
- Students who are bullied fell into four subgroups: frequent victims (11 percent), occasional victim of face-to-face verbal, physical or relational bullying (29 percent), occasional cyber and face-to-face victim (10 percent), and infrequent victim (50 percent).
- Students who bully fell into three categories: frequent perpetrators (5 percent), occasional verbal or relational perpetrators (26 percent), and infrequent perpetrators (69 percent).
- While bullying on both sides decreased over time, there was an increase from fifth to sixth grade - the transition from elementary to middle school at the schools researchers studied.
- Girls were more likely to experience verbal or relational and cyber bullying than boys, and boys were Age and gender factor into bullying more than language :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Brown split on student attendance data bills
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