The classroom culture is an important factor, among several, that influences the level of bullying in a school class.

When classroom culture is malfunctioning, the risk of bullying increases. This is one of the main results in a comprehensive survey on the well-being of more than 1000 students in Denmark who answered questions about their everyday school life and their experiences with bullying. The findings of the survey indicate that the ways in which a particular classroom culture is formed can be decisive to whether or not there is fertile ground for bullying (Hansen, Henningsen & Kofoed 2014).

For example, the culture of tolerance in a school class or among a group of children plays a role in defining the boundaries for what will be judged unworthy or what will be judged worthwhile.

The culture of tolerance is not explicitly and actively decided by the children, but the anxiety of being excluded from the group inclines the children to keep up existing negative patterns, even though it  means that they might have to talk behind a classmate’s back, hit and fight classmates or make fun of classmates (Søndergaard 2014, Christoffersen & Petersen 2011).   

You can read more here:

• Christoffersen, D.D. & K. S. Petersen (2011): Mobning - et socialt fænomen eller et individuelt problem? Frederikshavn: Dafolo Forlag.
• Hansen, H. R., I. Henningsen & J. Kofoed (2014): When classroom culture tips into bullying. In: Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Søndergaard, D.M. (2014): Social exclusion anxiety: Bullying and the forces that contribute to bullying amongst children in school. In: Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Two Danish bullying researchers, Helle Rabøl Hansen and Helle Plauborg, have developed a concept which they call “Community-building didactics” (fællesskabende didatikker) as a potential intervention against bullying.

The concept is inspired by a theoretical understanding of learning (for example from participation in common practices), by social practice theory and by the new perspectives on bullying from the eXbus research project and by critical reviews of previous interventions on bullying.

Helle Rabøl Hansen explains how many interventions against bullying and anti-bullying programmes are often considered as an “extra component” to normal school work and not as practices that are directly associated with going to school and with the context of school. This can constitute a problem because bullying is understood as an individual and separate phenomenon which has nothing to do with the culture of the school class or the context of school.

Helle Rabøl Hansen recommends to focus on the local school context and the classroom culture as it's her theory that bullying grows within these environments. As explained in the section “Longing for belonging”, a school class is not a community from the beginning. The community needs develop over time.

Bullying can play a role in developing a community because the children can develop a feeling of togetherness and community when they - together - bully a selected child. In this way bullying can constitute a common activity that the children can gather around (Hansen 2013).

With the concept “community-building didactics” the two researchers Rabøl Hansen and Helle Plauborg focus on how education and achievement should instead establish the main activities for the children to gather around. The education goals, the teaching contents and the learning activities must be organized as practices that involve all the children allowing them to participate in the activities. This way, the participation will form basis for and create the sense of community.

Helle Plauborg has conducted comprehensive research on class room management, and she explains how academic content and sociality are often seen as two separate and independent foci – how, for example, focusing on academic content is prioritized over focusing on developing a good social class culture or vice versa.

Through her research, Plauborg emphasizes the importance of seeing academic content and sociality as mutually dependent factors. Plauborg has, for example, studied six teachers who managed to unite academic content and sociality by focusing on the students’ professional learning processes while at the same time aiming to build a community and worthy participation in the learning activities (Plauborg 2011, Plauborg 2014).

In the concept “community-building didactics”, sociality and academic content are seen as mutually dependent – but the concept is about more than just sociality and content. “Community-building didactics” is about supporting tolerant, attentive, dignity-producing and academically focused relationships between teachers and students and among the students.

The concept is also about progression in education where students are privy to the didactic considerations that lie behind the learning activities that take place ensuring space for worthy participation and meaningfulness in education (Plauborg 2011, Plauborg 2014). 

You can read more here:

• Hansen, H.R. (2013): Mobning kræver mere end en fredagskage. In: Asterisk, marts 2013, p.32-33.
• Plauborg, H. (2014): Klasseledelse via intra-aktivitet af didaktik, faglighed og socialitet – eksempler fra et casestudie. In: Krejsler, J.B. & L. Moos (red.): Klasseledelsens dilemmaer. Fortsatte magtkampe i praksis, pædagogik og politik. Frederikshavn: Dafolo.
• Plauborg, H. (2011): Klasseledelse og fællesskabende didaktikker. In: Kvan, årg. 31, nr. 90, p.67-78.
• Alternatively, on the website of The Inclusion Center (in Danish)

Bullying leaves scars for life.

Mental illness, low self-esteem, suicide attempt, isolation, declining grades or performance or dropping out of school are just a few of the devastating consequences of bullying (Friends report 2015, Cross et al 2015).

Research shows that persons who have been bullied in elementary school will have lower chances of achieving higher education later in life.

The same research shows that victims of bullying in childhood will have a weaker network, experience a lower feeling of security and less satisfaction with life (Henningsen 2009).

Other research demonstrates that a child’s involvement in bully-victim problems at school, either as a victim or as a bully, can constitute a risk factor for poor psychological health. Four categories of negative health conditions can be identified:

• Low psychological well-being
  This includes states of mind that are generally considered unpleasant but not acutely distressing, such as general unhappiness, low self-esteem, and feelings of anger and sadness.
• Poor social adjustment
  This normally includes feelings of aversion towards one’s social environment, evident through expressed dislike for school or workplace, manifest loneliness, isolation and absenteeism.
• Psychological distress
  This is considered more serious than the first two categories and includes high levers of anxiety, depression and suicidal thinking.
• Physical unwellness
  Here, there are clear signs of physical disorder, evident in medically diagnosed illness. Psychosomatic symptoms can be included in this category.

(Rigby 2003)

Recent research points out that there is a strong link between being bullied and having symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The research cannot determine whether the consequences of being bullied lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or if you are more exposed to bullying if you have post-traumatic stress disorder. More research is needed in order to explore this (Nielsen et al 2015).

Bullying doesn’t only affect the individuals who are involved in bullying. Research shows that all the children in a class are affected if bullying occurs in the class.

The Danish bullying researcher Helle Rabøl Hansen claims that children seem to establish an alternative moral code of social conduct in classes where bullying is present. If the bullying has being going on for a long period without any involvement from the teachers, the children will start to consider the bullying as a “natural” part of the culture in the class. Rabøl Hansen describes this process as ”a moral melt down”.

According to Rabøl Hansen, the children are well aware of the morals and values of appropriate peer behavior in society, but in the classroom they establish an alternative moral code which alters their perception of acceptable social behavior. The consequence might be that the children’s compassion for the victim(s) is pacified – also among those children who are not directly involved in the bullying, but who are only bystanders.

When old classmates meet again as grownups, they often have difficulties understanding why they didn’t stop the bullying or why they participated in the bullying. Rabøl Hansen explains this by the fact that - when we go to school as children, we are in a dependent relationship with the group. We are longing to be part of the group, and we when leave this relationship as grownups, we are able to see things differently (Hansen in Nielsen et al 2010, Hansen 2005).

Together with her Danish colleagues Henningsen and Kofoed, Rabøl Hansen has demonstrated that there is a lower prevalence of bullying in classes where the children express satisfaction with the class-culture, with their teachers and their classmates. Conversely, there is a higher occurrence of reported bullying in classes where the children report negative teacher-student relationships, frequent conflicts and bad mouthing among the students. This research shows how the whole class culture is likely to be affected if bullying is present in a class. (Hansen, Henningsen & Kofoed 2012).

You can read more here:

• Cross, D., L. Lester & A. Barnes (2015): A longitudinal study of the social and emotional predictors and consequences of cyber and traditional bullying victimization. In: International Journal of Public Health, 60, p. 207-217.
• The Swedish anti-bullying organization Friends' report on bullying: Friends Report 2015
• Hansen, H. R. (2005): Grundbog mod mobning. Nordisk Forlag A/S.
• Hansen, H. R., I. Henningsen & J. Kofoed (2012): Skoleklassekultur og mobbemønstre. I: Pædagogisk Psykologisk Tidsskrift, nr. 6, 2012, p. 445-457.
• Henningsen, I. (2009): Sammenhæng mellem mobning, barndomserfaringer og senere livskvalitet. In: Kofoed, J. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): Mobning. Sociale processer på afveje. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Nielsen, J. C., N. U. Sørensen, N. Katxnelson & M. D. Lindstrøm (red.) (2010): Den svære ungdom. 10 eksperter om unges trivsel og mistrivsel. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Nielsen, M. B., T. Tangen, T. Idsøe, S.B. Matthiesen & N. Magerøy (2015): Post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of bullying at work and school. A literature review and metaanalysis. SienceDirect, 21, p. 17-24. Read more (in Norwegian).
• Rigby, K. (2003): Consequences of Bullying in Schools. In: Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 48, No 9, October, p. 583-590.

The Australian bullying researcher Donna Cross and her colleagues define cyberbullying as a damaging kind of psychological aggression that occurs when an individual or group uses information and communication technologies to intentionally and repeatedly harm a person who finds it hard to stop the bullying from continuing.

Such behaviors include nasty or threatening messages sent via the internet or mobile phones, sharing other persons' images and messages without permission, deliberate exclusion online and pretending to be others to hurt or embarrass the target (Cross et al 2015).

A recent international review concludes that approx. 24 % of young people report being victimized online and 17 % report perpetrating bullying behaviors online (Patchin & Hinduja 2012 in Cross et al 2015).

Jette Kofoed, a Danish cyberbullying researcher, points out that international research has identified three important characteristics of cyberbullying. These are as follows:

• Impossible to escape
  You don’t have to be at the same psychical place as the bullies, because it happens online which means you cannot hide from cyberbullying, and cyberbullying can happen everywhere and reach you any place. This increases the vulnerability of the person who is bullied. With the new communication technologies, it is easier to pursue someone.
• Anonymity
  It is possible to bully anonymously, and some researchers even claim that it is easier to bully online than in “real life” because you can hide from your actions.
• An endless public
  For example, an embarrassing picture gets more important or sensitive when it is sent not only to the person on the picture, but also exposed to an unknown number of unknown people on the internet.

(Kofoed 2013)

Jette Kofoed participates in the research project eXbus at Aarhus University in Denmark (read more about eXbus), and in her research on cyberbullying she understands bullying as a social and complex phenomenon that is constituted through many different forces.

In her research, she is, among others, inspired by Gille Deluze’s concept of the rhizome and she uses the rhizome as a thinking technology that enables a reconsideration of how we perceive cyberbullying. A rhizome is the rootstock of a certain plant where the roots are entangled with no end or beginning. With this concept Kofoed tries to illustrate how the social-discursive-temporal-technological formations involved in cyberbullying are entangled with each other and enter a constant displaced circulation.

In cyberbullying there are no fixed positions or one unique story with a fixed beginning and a fixed ending. Instead, cyberbullying activities are characterized by non-continuity, non-simultaneity and with a tangle of multiple perspectives and voices, and Kofoed emphasizes the importance of listening to all the voices, actions and perspectives when we try to understand cyberbullying (Kofoed 2009).

The Norwegian cyberbullying researcher Elisabeth Staksrud defines the difference between cyberbullying and “traditional” bullying. She points out seven differences:

• You can't escape from cyberbullying. You can be a target of cyberbullying anytime and everywhere even though the bullies are not near you physically. In her work Staksrud counsels teachers and parents, and she emphasizes that logging of from social media, for example, doesn’t help from a child’s perspective as he/she will most likely loose positive aspects related to the online life, such as contact and control.
• In cyberbullying, audiovisual material can be used as a part of the bullying, for example pictures and films.
• When cyberbullying takes place over the internet or mobile phone, it can easier be documented than “traditional” bullying. Staksrud urges young people to save bullying messages and use them as documentation when they involve adults.
• In cyberbullying, it is easier to be anonymous.
• Cyberbullying opens up for a new kind of digital isolation. For example, when “closed” groups on Facebook are created, only for the specially invited – when no one replies to friend-requests etc.
• Cyberbullying can spread to a big audience very fast.
• Cyberbullying can be less visible for parents, teachers and other adults. The adults and the children don’t use the same digital platforms, and it can be hard for the adults to follow what is going on when the children are online.

Prevention

It is crucial that children acquire appropriate digital competences (digital resilience) when they interact online.

From an early age, children should become confident in using digital media by, for example, playing or practicing on iPads or other platforms. The competences they acquire can be used later in life, partly to avoid that they will behave inappropriately towards others, and partly to avoid that they might “socialize” with persons who don’t have positive or constructive intensions.

An example could be to avoid contact with adults wishing to establish inappropriate contact where strategies to stop the contact or to seek help and advice would then hopefully be in place.

A school intervention could be to let older students teach younger students. In terms of digital skills the credibility is often considered higher when students teach other students compared to adults as parents and teachers.

Parents

Following a child’s life online can be difficult for parents, and it may be difficult to find out if the child is exposed to bullying or involved in difficult situations. A rule of thumb is that parents should use their common sense, be present and ask the child or young person about their digital life, just like they would do when talking about school or leisure time activities.

It is very important that the child’s digital experiences are taken seriously. If the child indicates that he/she has experienced unpleasant incidents, it should be taken seriously. The child or the young person should define whether the experience has been unpleasant. Parents may have difficulties in obtaining the confidence of their child when it comes to embarrassing or complex episodes on the internet, and it is therefore important that help or guidance can be accessed from other trusted adults, like teachers or professionals.

Professionals

A professional can be a teacher, preschool staff, person working at an after school club, a social counselor or other trusted helpers. The professional should strive to achieve the confidence of the young person and thereby offer help in difficult situations. The adult should moreover be able to handle conflict resolution as this might be necessary in order to avoid that the conflict or bullying situation escalates and spreads to digital media.

Adequate time should be available for the professional to assist the young person, and it is important that the adult has the right competences. This might require specialized training in order for the professional to help, guide and support in the best possible way.

(Staksrud 2013)

You can read more here:

• Cross, D., L. Lester & A. Barnes (2015): A longitudinal study of the social and emotional predictors and consequences of cyber and traditional bullying victimization. In: International Journal of Public Health, 60, p. 207-217.
• Kofoed, J. (2009): Genkendelser af digital mobning. Freja vs. Ronja vs. Arto vs. Sara vs. Emma. In: Kofoed, J. & Søndergaard, D.M. (red.): Mobning. Sociale processer på afveje. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Kofoed, J. (2013): Affektive rytmer. Spektakularitet og ubestemmelighed i digital mobning. In: Kofoed, J. & Søndergaard, D.M. (red.): Mobning gentænkt. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Kofoed, J. (2014): Non-simultaneity in cyberbullying. In: Schott, R. M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): School bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Staksrud, E. (2013): Digital Mobbing. Hvem, hva, hvordan, hvorfor – og hva kan voksne gjøre? Oslo: Kommuneforlaget A/S.
• Alternatively, on the Facebook page of Elisabeth Stakrud's book Digital Mobbing.

Bullying can be defined in various different ways. In general, bullying is about being excluded from a community. When it comes to Free of Bullying, we use the definition formulated by the Danish bullying expert Helle Rabøl Hansen:

• Bullying is a group phenomenon. Individuals sometimes exclude one another, but when bullying happens, the exclusion takes place in and around a community or group.
• The exclusion becomes systematic. It involves a number of actions signalling “You are not included in this”.
• The forms of bullying can be direct and persecuting or indirectly excluding in nature. Hitting and pushing are direct forms of bullying, while bad-mouthing and ignoring are examples of indirect bullying.
• Bullying takes place in a social context from which the child is unable to withdraw, such as the preschool or primary school chosen for the child.

(Helle Rabøl Hansen, 2010)

Bullying researcher Helle Rabøl Hansen highlights that bullying can be regarded as a means of creating a sense of community when attempts to find common ground around the activities within the group fail. Helle Rabøl Hansen works on the assumption that bullying is a “longing for togetherness”, even when it is based on a violation. The group creates a community through bullying – even though this means that someone is being excluded from the community. In other words, bullying becomes the group’s normative behaviour.

Watch the short video to the right for more information about this perspective on bullying.

Dan Olweus’s definition of bullying and the criticism of this definition

The research on school bullying of the Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus is seen as pioneer research, and his model of understanding bullying has over the years been very dominant.  Dan Olweus’s research on bullying explains bullying in terms of individual personality traits. In this model, the personal traits of bullies include being aggressive and impulsive, having a positive attitude towards violence, a need to dominate and little empathy with the victims. Olweus furthermore describes the personality traits of victims as passive, submissive, insecure, anxious and weak.  

Olweus explains the behavior of bullies as a result of neglect and lack of parental attention (Olweus 1973, Olweus 1993). In this way of understanding bullying, the positions of bullying (bullies or victims) are seen as stable over time – you are either a bully or a victim - and bullying is understood as a phenomenon that remains the same across different groups and contexts. The way Dan Olweus understands and explains bullying is described as an individual approach to bullying (Schott & Søndergaard 2014).

The research of Olweus has later been criticized for being too focused on individual explanations and neglecting the social dynamics within a group. The Swedish bullying researcher Bjørn Eriksson and his colleagues have criticized Olweus for explaining a phenomenon within the classroom by circumstances outside the classroom - by the aggressive behavior of bullies caused by the poor parenting (Eriksson et al 2002, Frånberg 2003).

Olweus’s focus on personality traits has also been criticized for overlooking that individuals can change over time and within different social contexts, which for example explains how children can both be bullies and victims of bullying (Schott 2014). Olweus’s concept of power is also derived from his individualistic approach where he is concerned with the power of one individual to dominate or subdue another rather than how power functions in a social and institutional context (Schott 2014).

You can read more here:

• Eriksson, B., O. Lindberg, E. Flygare & K. Daneback (2002): Skolan - en arena för mobbning. En forskningsöversikt och diskussion kring mobbning i skolan. Kalmar:  Skoleverket.
• Frånberg, G-M. (2003): Mobbning i nordiske skolor. Kartlägningav forskning om och nationella åtgärder mot mobning i nordiske skolor. København: Nordiske Ministerrådet.
• Kofoed, J. & D. M. Søndergaard (2009) (red): Mobning – sociale processer på afveje. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Kofoed, J. & D. M. Søndergaard (2013) (red): Mobning gentænkt. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag. 
• Olweus, D. (1973): Hackkycklinger och Översittare: Forskning om Skolmobbning. Stockholm: Almisphere Press.
• Olweus, D. (1993): Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Malden and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. 
• Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.)(2014): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Intra-activity of Didactics, Academic Activity and Sociality and Rethinking Learning and Didactics. Analysis of Three Experimental Case Studies.

PhD dissertation by Helle Plauborg, Aarhus University (defended 2015).  

The dissertation “Intra-activity of Didactics^[1], Academic Activity and Sociality and Rethinking Learning and Didactics. Analysis of Three Experimental Case Studies” explores how didactics, academic activity and sociality interplay in teaching and seeks to develop the concepts of learning and didactics on an agential realist basis. Helle Plauborg was interested in exploring relationships between didactics, academic activity and sociality because they are often spoken of as living separate lives. For example, Helle Plauborg often has heard teachers say “We should not focus on academic work alone; students should also have a good time together socially”. Also in the public debate and in many political texts, academic and social activity are regarded as separate and opposite - often with a prioritization of the academic. An additional reason for the dissertation was that many studies indicate connections between how classroom management is practised and the social environment in classes, including the occurrence of bullying. For example, several studies suggest that schools with a high level of academic achievement also have a low frequency of bullying and a higher prevalence of prosocial behaviour. But these studies do not explore how classroom management can affect the social cohesion in classes. The purpose of this part of the dissertation was to qualify our understanding of the relationship between didactics, academic activity and sociality and after defending her dissertation, Helle Plauborg re-wrote it in order to address classroom management directly and to produce knowledge about how classroom management can be operationalized to unite academic activity and prosociality (Plauborg 2016).

The dissertation explores the following research questions: How do didactics, academic activity and sociality intra-act, and (how) are these intra-actions affected when the didactical apparatus is adjusted? How can learning and didactics be developed on an agential realist basis?

The dissertation is based on three experimental case studies produced in three different classes at intermediate level at three different schools: the Urban Class, the Rural Class and the Suburban Class. The case studies involved recurring observations of lessons and breaks, informal conversations with students, teachers and school leaders, interviews with 6-10 students from each class who were re-interviewed a total of three times during the school year, memo writing, excerpts from teaching material, interviews with teachers and minutes from so-called working group meetings.

Theoretically, the dissertation is inspired by agential realism developed by the American physicist and feminist Karen Barad.

The analysis of the case from the Urban Class illustrates that didactics, academic activity and sociality are inseparably connected and it contributes to shed light on the fact that ideas about separating didactics, academic activity and sociality by believing (for instance) that students need to be straightened up before didacticizing academic activity is out of step with reality, because in reality didactics, academic activity and sociality intra-act. The analysis of the case from the Rural Class clarifies (for instance) that teaching loses direction and seems to take form of disorientation and opposing movements that lead to academic indifference and teaching situations characterized by random events, unless the links in teaching situations are defined and made ​​explicit for teachers as well as students. The analysis of the case from the Suburban Class elucidates that the joy of academic mastery and the desire to learn are initiated by didacticism characterized by emphasis on working hard, providing response, ambitious and explicitly articulated expectations, and setting goals in positive intra-action with sociality, academic activity and agentialities outside the classroom.

The re-written edition of the dissertation in which classroom management is addressed directly and in which Helle Plauborg reflects on how classroom management can be operationalized to unite academic activity and prosociality is published by Hans Reitzels Forlag in 2016 and entitled “Klasseledelse gentænkt” (In English: Rethinking classroom management).  

Contact information: E: hp@helleplauborg.dk * P: +45 2548 2845

EU Kids online is a multinational research network which seeks to enhance the knowledge of European children’s online opportunities, risks and safety.

The network uses multiple methods, both quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with children, to map children’s experiences on the internet, in dialogue with national and European policy stakeholders. In 2014, 33 countries were a part of the network.

Key findings about cyberbullying

• In relation to online bullying, 6 % of 9 to 16-year-olds have received nasty or hurtful messages online, and 3 % have sent such messages to others. Over half of those who received bullying messages were fairly or very upset.
• Since 19 % have been bullied either online and/or offline (compared with 6 % online), and 12 % have bullied someone else either online and/or offline (compared with 3 % online), it seems that more bullying occurs offline than online.
• Most children who received nasty or hurtful messages online called on social support. 25 % had not told anyone. Six in ten also used online strategies – deleting hurtful messages or blocking the bully. Children saw this last strategy as effective.

In Denmark, 12 % of the children report that they have been subjected to cyberbullying.

You can read more here:

• EU Kids Online's website or read through their main findings in this interactive report.
• EU Kids Online Survey - Danish results.

During the past years, new research on bullying has begun to focus on bullying as a socially and culturally complex phenomenon - making a shift from the individual approach to a more complex approach. 

In Denmark, a five-year research project called Exploring Bullying in Schools (eXbus) has been conducted, and several Nordic researchers, Australian researchers and researchers from the United States have worked together on this study.

They shared the same analytical ambition of understanding bullying as a complex phenomenon which is enacted or constituted through the interactive/intra-active entanglements that exist between a variety of open-ended, social, discursive, material/physical and subjective forces (Schott & Søndergaard 2014, Kofoed & Sønderggard 2009, Kofoed & Søndergaard 2013).

The figure to the right illustrates all the intra-active forces that can play a role when a class or a group of children have problems with bullying.

The eXbus project aimed to develop concepts and analytical approaches that can embrace the complexity of the bullying phenomenon, and the project has strived to open up the field of school bullying by using other theoretical approaches than the theoretical approaches which dominated the research of Olweus. 

You can read more here: 

• Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.) (2014): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kofoed, J. & D. M. Søndergaard (2009) (red): Mobning – sociale processer på afveje. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Kofoed, J. & D. M. Søndergaard (2013) (red): Mobning gentænkt. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag. 

Or on the exBus website.

The Friendly School Plus Project is a whole-school evidence-based bullying prevention program based on the research of a group of Australian researchers at Edith Cowan University in Perth and headed by Professor Donna Cross. The research project involves more than 30 researchers from around the world.

The Friendly School Plus Project sees bullying as a complex problem that needs flexible and context-sensitive interventions, and based upon comprehensive research on interventions against bullying, the researchers at Edith Cowan University emphasize that it is essential to take into account the specific social context of the individual schools when choosing and implementing interventions.

This means that the same programmes and interventions can have different effects among different groups of children and in various social contexts. The Australian researchers Donna Cross and Amy Barnes formulate it as follows “One size does not fit all” (Cross & Barnes 2014: 408).

The researchers at Edith Cowan University have developed an evidence-based assessment that can be used by members of the school community to evaluate the needs and strengths of their school and thus guide the selection of intervention strategies.

The guidelines have been categorized into six broad whole-school indicators and each provides a statement of evidence and key areas for action. The researchers call the guidelines a screening tool for schools because it allows schools to ensure strategies that are best suited to their unique contexts.

The Friendly School Plus Project also emphasizes the importance of involving the students at the school when tailoring the specific bullying prevention strategy. The researchers of the project believe that the possibility of achieving effective and sustainable implementation is likely to be enhanced when strategies are relevant to and engaging for young people.

The guidelines – or the screening tool - focus on:

• Building capacity for action – focusing on leadership, resources, organizational support and compatibility to meet the school’s needs and context.
• Supportive school culture - focusing on how fellow students can be involved in a supportive and helpful school culture.
• Proactive policies, procedures and practices - focusing on school policy, visions and practices that have to be strengthened and/or rephrased.
• School community key understandings and competencies - focusing on constantly training staff, students and family on new knowledge of bullying – including knowledge of the nature of bullying, prevalence and types of bullying and information about bystander roles.
• Protective school environment - focusing on school property, design and creation of more safe areas where students have indicated that they feel most exposed.
• School-family-community partnerships - focusing on the family’s cooperation. This includes information to parents on how to talk to their children about bullying.

(Cross & Barnes 2014)

The screening tool was operationalized in 2010-2012 in the Cyber Friendly Schools cyberbullying prevention project and again in 2011-2015 as part of the Strong Schools, Safe Kids project (see below for more information about the projects) (Cross & Barnes 2014).

You can read more about the research here:

• Cross, D. & A. Barnes (2014): One size doesn’t fit all: re-thinking implementation research for bullying prevention. In: Schott, R.M. & D. M. Søndergaard (red.): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• On these websites: Edith Cowan University - Friendly Schools Plus and Friendly Schools

Our definition of bullying also means that the cause of bullying should be sought by looking at the social environment as opposed to the individual child.

Talking about a “bully” and a “bully victim” is therefore irrelevant. Instead, the focus should be on the children’s group as a whole.

The group creates rules for acceptable behaviour, and these rules can either foster or hinder bullying. Groups affected by bullying display low levels of tolerance and limited acceptance of diversity. Bullying is therefore an indicator of declining values within the group. As a consequence, all of the children in the group are affected and all of them will often be on guard, because they know that they can easily step out of line and become the next “victim”.

Simply removing one child from the group will therefore probably not solve the problem. The solution to bullying lies with all of the children – including those who are being bullied, those who bully and those who are passive bystanders. The children create the framework for acceptable behavior as a group; and the adults around them should support them in creating an environment that fosters well-being and tolerance.

Bullying is not about destructive children. Bullying is about destructive patterns.

The different participant roles in a bullying situation

The Finnish researcher Christina Salmivalli and her colleagues have in their research focused on bullying as a dysfunctional group dynamic. Their research emphasizes the different participant roles which might occur in a bullying situation. They describe six different roles:

1. The victims who are systematically attacked by others.
2. The bullies who have an active initiative-taking role.
3. The assistants of bullies who eagerly join in.
4. The reinforcers of bullies who offer positive feedback by laughing, by encouraging gestures or just by gathering around as an audience.
5. The outsiders who withdraw without taking sides with anyone.
6. The defenders who may comfort the victim or actively try to make others stop bullying.

(Salmivalli et al 2004).

The different participant roles must be considered as dynamic and flexible (Schott 2014).

You can read more here:

• Salmivalli, C., A. Kaukiainen, M. Voeten & M. Sinisammal (2004): Targeting the group as a whole: the Finnish anti-bullying intervention. In: Smith, P.K., D. Pepler, K. Rigby: Bullying in Schools. How successful can interventions be? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schott, R.M. (2014): The social concept of bullying: philosophical reflections on definitions. In: Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Different intervention strategies reflect the different understandings of bullying.

If bullying is understood as individual aggression, interventions will reflect this by being directed towards appointed individuals instead of a group of children. On the other hand, the interventions will be directed at the whole group of children if bullying is understood as a social group phenomenon (Hansen 2009).

The Australian bullying researcher Ken Rigby has studied interventions against bullying, and he points out how one understanding of interventions against bullying can focus on identifying and punishing the bullies, while another way of understanding interventions against bullying tries to promote respectful behavior (Rigby 2002).

You can read more here:

• Hansen, H. R. (2009): Straf mod mobning og straf mod skoleuro. In: Kofoed, J. & D. M. Søndergaard (red.): Mobning – sociale processer på afveje. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
• Rigby, K. (2002): New Perspectives on Bullying. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd.   

Ken Rigby is a well-known Australian professor and researcher on bullying and interventions against bullying at the School of Education, University of South Australia.

Rigby has for more than 25 years been a counselor to Australian schools in developing anti-bullying policies and effective proactive and reactive strategies and has published several books and papers about bullying and anti-bullying strategies.

Rigby defines bullying as the systematic abuse of power. It presupposes an imbalance of power in which the perpetrator(s) repeatedly engage in aggressive behavior intended to hurt or threaten a targeted person or persons.

The behavior may be overt, as in face-to-face physical assaults and verbal abuse, or covert as in deliberate and sustained exclusion, rumor spreading and the use of cyber technology (Rigby 2011).

In 2002, Rigby and one of his colleagues carried out a study among school children which showed that 57 % of the bullied respondents reported that things had not improved after telling a teacher about the bullying (Rigby and Barnes 2002).

Other studies have showed the same (see for example Fekkes et al 2005, Smith & Shu 2000). However, Rigby also points out that other studies demonstrate that teachers want to react if students are bullied, but the actions taken by teachers are influenced by their level of awareness of different approaches and their skills in applying them.

Rigby defines six major approaches which school staff often considers when choosing interventions against bullying:

• The traditional disciplinary approach. This approach is seen in many countries as the most appropriate way to deal with all types of bullying. This approach seeks to prevent bullying by imposing sanctions or punishments on the offender. The Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus has inspired this approach (Please see the What is Bullying?-section). The Olweus programme is considered very effective in Norway, but is in other countries seen as less successful.
• Strengthening the victim. This approach aims at assisting the victim in coping more effectively when he or she is being bullied. Students will be trained and advised to be less vulnerable. Studies to explore and determine whether this method is effective are needed.
• Mediation. Students in conflict may be invited to work with a trained teacher or peer-mediator to find a mutually acceptable way of resolving their problem. This approach requires a readiness of the parties involved in the bullying to agree to meet and seek a solution through the assistance of a neutral practitioner. This approach is considered effective in resolving conflicts in which there is little or no imbalance of power between people in dispute, but in cases of bullying which typically involves a sustainable imbalance of power, this approach is less effective.
• Restorative practice. This approach involves the “offender” to reflect upon his or her unacceptable behavior, experience a sense of remorse and act to restore a damaged relationship with both the victim and the school community. The effectiveness of reducing bullying with this approach is lacking.
• The support group method. This is a non-punitive approach in which students who have been identified bullies are confronted at a group meeting with vivid evidence of the victim’s distress derived from a previous interview with the victim. Those present at the meeting also include a number of students who have been selected because they are expected to support the victim. The victim is not present. It is impressed upon everyone that they have a responsibility to improve the situation and each student must say what he or she will do to support the victim. This method was considered very satisfactory in a survey among 59 English schools who implemented the method.
• The method of shared concern. This is also a non-punitive approach developed by the Swedish psychologist Pikas. It is intended for working with groups or students who are suspected of non-criminal bullying. The methods involve separate meetings with both bullied and bullies to explore the perspective of the bullied and to explore what the bullies can do to improve the situation. After these meetings, both bullied and bullies meet to negotiate an agreed solution. This approach has been reported as overwhelmingly positive.

(Rigby 2011)

Rigby points out that regardless the chosen method, the anti-bullying programmes are most effective when they are supported by a whole-school approach.

You can read more here:

• Rigby, K, & A. Barnes (2002): To tell or not to tell: the victimized student’s dilemma. In: Youth Studies, Australian, 21 (3), p.33-36.
• Rigby, K. (2011): What can schools do about cases of bullying? In: Pastoral Care in Education, 29:4, p. 273-285.
• Rigby, K. (2008): Children and bullying. How Parents and Educators Can Reduce Bullying at School. Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
• Alternatively, at Ken Rigby's own website.

The concept longing for belonging explains the human longing for being part of a community, for being part of a we.

Helle Rabøl Hansen, a Danish researcher on bullying, uses the concept longing for belonging to explain why social processes in a school class can tip over into bullying. She explains how a school class is not a community from the beginning. The concept of a school class can rather be described as formal social processes - which over time can evolve into a community to which the students feel they belong and which they identify themselves as being part of.

The concept of longing for belonging explains how the students are longing for being part of the community in the class and the students are trying hard – sometimes even struggling – to be part of the community – to belong to the community. With this struggling to be part of the community follows the anxiety of being excluded from the community (the social exclusion anxiety – the concept developed by Dorte Marie Søndergaard).

Helle Rabøl Hansen claims that in classes where the students and the teachers do not succeed in developing a community based on going to school and doing schoolwork, the meaning of school life might be challenged. Some students might try to tackle this by letting a more informal student community give school life meaning.

This informal community can, for example, take form of a community of bullying. Bullying becomes a factor which the students will gather around, and bullying will give them a feeling of being part of a community – at least as long as they are part of it, and not excluded from the community. Helle Rabøl Hansen explains how bullying can replace a nonexistent formal community within a school class (Hansen 2011).

You can read more here:

Hansen, H. R. (2011): Lærerliv og mobning. Ph.d. afhandling. Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsskole. Aarhus Universitet.

Most of the research on bullying among children focuses on bullying in schools, but since 2007 more attention has been directed towards bullying in preschool among children aged 3-6.

Up to this point, many researchers argued that children this age are not capable of deliberated and systematic exclusion of others, but new research shows that bullying can occur in preschools as well (see for example Alsaker 2007, Midtsand et al 2007, Knudsen et al 2007).

Most recent research assumes that bullying in preschool is not about individual, deliberated actions of single children, but must be understood as a phenomenon that is constituted through social processes in ordinary social groups (Petersen 2008, 2010, 2015, Helgesen 2014).

Just like older children have to go to school due to the compulsory school education, younger children have to attend preschool while their parents go to work, and like in the school, the preschool is a place from which the child cannot withdraw. The community in the preschool is a so-called forced community (see also Where does bullying occur?) and there is an underlying risk that social patterns and interactions among the children in the preschool can tip into bullying (see also What is bullying?) (Petersen 2008, 2010, 2015).

Kit Stender Petersen, a Danish researcher and counselor on anti-bullying interventions, has conducted research on bullying in preschool since 2008. She is inspired by the research project eXbus (see also The eXbus Research Project) where bullying is understood as a social and complex phenomenon with interactive discursive, subjective, cultural, material and technological forces that constitute and maintain bullying.

Kit Stender Petersen’s research is not directed at single children’s behavior, but instead she focuses on the social patterns and forces that constitute or/and maintain what children in preschools recognize as bullying (Petersen 2010, 2008). In order to understand bullying in preschool Kit Stender Petersen has developed an analytic concept which she calls acceptability. With this concept she is inspired by the Danish researcher Jette Kofoed’s concept appropriated/inappropriated which explains the everyday negotiations in a given context about what is understood as right or wrong to wear, say, do etc.

With the concept of acceptability Kit Stender Petersen makes is possible to understand how different sub-communities in the same context can understand appropriated/inappropriated differently and how the perception of what is appropriated or inappropriated can differ dependent of who are together with whom, when and where. The understandings of acceptability in a group of children are created through many negotiations among the children and are influenced by cultural and normative understandings in the society.

Kit Stender Petersen points out that the understandings of acceptability, through which the children recognize themselves and others, have an impact on the culture of tolerance in the preschool – as to who will be recognized as an appropriated and legitimized participant in the children’s community or who will be excluded from the community (Petersen 2010, 2008).

She uses an example from a preschool where circumstances such as wearing a skirt and bringing a yogurt in the lunch pack seemed to be the negotiated passwords to join the community of a smaller group of girls. However, after a few weeks these understandings of acceptability among the girls expanded and suddenly it was also about not having too black hair and not deciding too much, if you wanted to be a part of the smaller social group.

Kit Stender Petersen emphasizes that it is an adult responsibility to launch interventions that allow and encourage the children to renegotiate their understandings of acceptability in such a way that the culture of tolerance is expanded (Petersen 2010). In her research among 5-year-old children Kit Stender Petersen also finds that adult (both parents and professionals) positions, attitudes and actions are factors and forces which also affect the children’s understanding of acceptability. Examples could be the adult power to define what is right or wrong to do in a given situation. It is therefore also important that the adults around the children reflect on their own impact on the processes of negotiating understandings of acceptability (Petersen 2010, 2008).

In her Ph.D. dissertation “Bullying in a preschool setting” (Petersen 2015) Kit Stender Petersen focuses on how bullying is constituted, not only in the light of individual subjects and their mutual interactions and relationships, but how it must also be understood In the light of a wide range of human and non-human forces.

She tries to give a theoretical definition of the phenomenon bullying based on her research in preschools and illustrates how exclusive actions can be recognized as bullying when the child’s need and desire for belonging to a certain group is denied. Kit Stender Petersen furthermore points out how the child’s desire for belonging and directedness can be used as an important factor to determine whether specific exclusion processes can be recognized as bullying (Petersen 2015).

The Norwegian researcher Mai Brit Helgesen is another researcher who studies bullying in preschools. She claims that children are competent and somehow aware of what happens when they initiate what Mai Brit Helgesen calls destructive interactions – or actions of exclusion.

Mai Brit Helgesen explains that the children are practicing social interactions with each other and that the adults around them must help them to find ways that are not destructive or exclusive (Andersen 2012). In her research she also points out how adults can affect processes of exclusion by the way they themselves understand and treat children, and by the way they talk about children (Helgesen et al 2014).

You can read more here:

• Alsaker, F. D. (2007): Bernese programme against victimization in kindergarten and elementary school. In: Smith, P.D.  K. Pepler, K. Rigby: Bullying in schools: How successful can interventions be? Cambrigde.
• Andersen, T. R (2012): Når små børn mobber. I: Bakspejlet 12, p.38-39
• Helgesen, M. B. (red.) (2014): Mobbing i barnehagen. Et sosialt fenomen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget A/S.
• Knudsen, R.K., J. Kampmann & K. Lerhmann (2007): Free of Bullying. 1st follow up research report. Centre for Childhood, Youth and Family Life Research, Roskilde University.  Download the report.
• Midtsand, M., B. Monstad & F. Søbstad (2004): Tiltak mot mobbing starter i barnehagen. Dronning Mauds Minde Høgskole for førskolelærerutdanning.
• Petersen, K.S. (2015): Mobning i en børnehave-sammenhæng. Ph.d. afhandling. Forskerskolen i Livslang Læring, Institut for Psykologi og Uddannelsesforskning, Roskilde Universitetscenter.
• Petersen, K. S. (2010): Kan mobning gå i børnehave? Om udsatheder og eksklusionsprocesser i børnehaven. In: Pædagogisk Psykologisk Tidsskrift, nr. 5, 2010.
• Petersen, K. S. (2008): Mobning i børnehaven? Et kvalitativt studie af, hvorvidt og hvordan der konstitueres mobning blandt femårige i én dansk børnehave. Speciale i Pædagogisk Psykologi, Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsskole.

Prevlance of bullying in Denmark

The survey “Skolebørnsundersøgelsen” is the Danish contribution to a comprehensive international research project called “Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) a WHO cross-national survey”.

The HBSC survey is an international research corporation focusing on health, well-being and health behavior of children aged 11, 13 and 15 in Europe and North America. The study is conducted every four years and has since 1984 been carried out nine times.

In 2013/2014, 43 countries participated in the study. The main goal of the survey is to increase knowledge about young people’s well-being, health and health behavior in the social contexts they live in.

”Skolebørnsundersøgelsen” is based on a representative sample of the 11-, 13- and 15–year-old children in Denmark. Approx. 4.500 children from 5^th, 7^th and 9^th grade and from different schools in different parts of Denmark answered the questionnaire which was optional and anonymous.

The survey contains a section about children’s well-being in school with a specific focus on the prevalence of bullying in schools. Bullying is defined as deliberate, repeated and long-term negative actions done by one or more persons who seem to have a higher status or strength than the one who is bullied.

According to “Skolebørnsundersøgelsen” an average of 7 % of children are bullied in Denmark. Bullying is most common among the 11-year-olds with a prevalence of around 10 % of the children. The frequency of children who are bullied decreases the older they get. Both girls and boys are bullied, and the prevalence is not gender-related.

On the average, approx. 4 % of children in Denmark bully others, and there is no significant difference across age groups. There seems to be a slightly higher representation of boys compared to girls in the group of children who bully others.

When it comes to teaching children to be tolerant, respectful and kind to each other in their daily interactions, it is necessary to start as early as possible. 

Norwegian studies have shown that bullying starts from as early as three years of age (Helgesen, M.B. 2010. Relasjonell mobbing blant jenter i barnehagen, Høgskolen i Finnmark).

Assimilation of culture and values begins in the formative years when the children are still very young. Children are influenced by their parents and extended family, but certainly also by their time in preschool and primary school.

It is therefore important to focus on children’s interpersonal and emotional skills from as young an age as three in order to teach the children fundamental social values (such as tolerance, respect, care and courage).

In addition, leading experts widely agree that the sooner you take action to prevent bullying, the lower the personal and social costs will be.

Children tease and experience conflicts with each other. This is a natural part of human interaction. Bullying is different.

The Danish professor Dorte Marie Søndergaard has in her research on bullying through the eXbus research project focused on the more complicated social processes that emerge in a classroom, with a particular focus on the interactions that culminate in bullying. She has worked with the concepts, social exclusion anxiety and the need for belonging, which she uses to explain why social processes tip over into bullying (Søndergaard 2014).

The concept social exclusion anxiety builds on a social psychological concept of human beings as existentially dependent on social embeddedness. As human beings, we are existentially dependent on belonging to a community and social exclusion anxiety arises when social embeddedness becomes jeopardized, and the hope for belonging is threatened. The risk of being judged unworthy to belong to a group is possible in every social context – like also the joy and pride of being included in a group is always present.

Søndergaard claims that with the possibility of being judged unworthy follows the anxiety in every social context, and she points out that the production of contempt for and the judgement of someone of something in the community may provide temporary relief from the social exclusion anxiety. If a group of children, for example, agree that another child is creepy and disgusting whilst other children are cool, then a sense of community and consensus can occur in the shared assessment that “we” are not creepy and disgusting.

But the relief from the social exclusion anxiety is only temporary, and an escalation of social exclusion anxiety requires more reliefs and prompts further effort within the group to gain control.

In such situations, the social processes of anxiety-alleviating can grow into processes which we recognize as bullying, where empathy evaporates and contempt and dehumanization increase.  Søndergaard uses the concept abjection to understand the special characteristics of bullying, and she points out how something which is abjected can seem to be a naturally alien element, but the alienation/abjection is established through the exclusion.

The concept abjection must be understood together with the fundamental need for social belonging. When this need is being threatened, the process of abjection can be awakened (Søndergaard 2014).

You can read more here:

Søndergaard, D.M. (2014): Social exclusion anxiety: Bullying and the forces that contribute to bullying amongst children in school. In: Schott, R.M. & D.M. Søndergaard (red.): School Bullying. New Theories in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

In a PhD-report from 2016 Louise Klinge emphasizes the importance of teacher-pupil relations and teacher's relational competence.

As part of her PhD Louise Klinge observed four teachers’ teaching 5th, 6th and 7th grades and she interviewed the teachers and 50 of their pupils. The analysis was generated on the basis of two cases with teachers, who found it challenging to create positive relationships with the pupils and two cases with teachers, who were not challenged by it. The empirical analysis is theoretically conducted in five theories with focus on human interaction and experience: Ethics of care, mentalization, self- determination theory, communicative musicality and neuroaffective developmental psychology.

The PhD shows that the quality of the teacher-pupil relation influences the pupils’ academic commitment and progression, their well-being – including stress level and self-perception – their social behaviour in the classroom, internalisation of rules and standards and self-regulation, and that a central factor to it all is the relational competence of the teacher.

Pupil interviews point on a fundamental wish to be of importance to the teacher. Partly, in the educational context in which they relate to the teacher and in which they thrive and learn something through the teacher’s careful teaching. Partly, through an existential dimension which concerns the matter of being taken seriously by the teacher and to feel a general human interest.

When the teachers found themselves short of time or were negatively aroused, a discrepancy occurred between on one hand the teacher’s attitude towards the teaching, the pupils and the teacher role and on the other hand the teacher’s interactional behaviour when teaching. In these situations, the teacher’s practice was characterized by ways of acting which excluded certain pupils from the learning community, and of irritable exclaims and scolding. Amongst other things, this inhibited the pupils’ motivation, safety and ability to concentrate even for pupils, who were not scolded at.

The empirically grounded and theoretically founded analysis shows, that teachers act relationally competent through ethical caring, attunement and supporting of the pupils’ needs for self-determination, competence and relatedness. Hereby, individual and collective relations to the pupils are established and maintained, which promote the learning community of the class on a common third, and thereby the well-being and cross-curricular competences of each pupil. The relational competence of teachers presupposes receptive directedness, their own psychological needs being supported, and a general and specific knowledge of children.

You can read more here:

• Klinge, L. (2016). Lærer-elev-relationen med fokus på lærerens professionelle relationskompetence (Teacher-student relations with focus on relational competence of teachers.) Phd thesis, University of Copenhagen and Metropol. (in Danish)