Conference Report (Short Version)

Research: A Way to Deal with School Bullying and Violence

International Online Conference, September 25 – October 20, 2006

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Contents

In this short report of the online conference ‘Research: A way to deal with school bullying and violence’, you find a short description of the course of the online conference and its background. Then, the main results and discussions are briefly presented. More detailed information can be found in the full report.

About the online Conference

The online conference ‘Research: A way to deal with school bullying and violence’ was the last of five online conferences of the VISIONARIES-NET project. For an overview of the other conferences and more information about the VISONARIES-NET see www.bullying-in-school.info

The audience of the conference ‘Research: A way to deal with school bullying and violence’ were researchers who have developed their research on School Bullying and Violence, in order to gather and share the different perspectives of this complex problem. You find a list of all the participants and moderators with information on their background at conference5.bullying-in-school.info/index.php

The general objective of all five online conferences is to bring together experts on SBV via Internet and thus network people form all over the world, who wouldn’t have a chance to get together in real life.

The specific objective of the conference was to bring together experts on SBV and discuss with them on matters like: Can we talk about a unique concept of SBV? Where does research on SBV go to? Which are the requisites that SBV assessment instruments should fulfill? How can we achieve greater coordination among researchers?

That way, the participants were given the chance to: meet others who also offer web resources on school bullying and violence; find out more about approaches and ideas from other parts of the world; learn and profit from others who deal with the same problems and challenges; network with experts from other countries and cultures.

Concept and Methodology of the Conference

The conference consisted of an asynchronous forum to which only the invited participants had access. The forum was open 24 hours a day for five weeks. That way, it was made possible for the participants from all over the world to take part in the discussion whenever they found the time.
As the participants are considered the real experts, they were involved in the process of selecting the topics. The moderators offered them a short questionnaire with questions related to the four topics of the week. Those answers were then analysed and served as starting points for the conference’s discussions in different threads. There, the participants reflected once again about the answers they and their colleagues had given to the initial questions and used those answers as a base for further discussions.
This multilevel process is very similar to the so-called Delphi approach, which is used to explore new fields of research with help of a group of experts.
 
There was one major topic for every week that was discussed in several threads. The topics were not – as intentionally planned – closed exactly at the end of the week, but left open somewhat longer in order not to interrupt interesting discussions.

The outcomes of the discussions were summarized at regular intervals and presented to the participants in the conference forum. They were informed about the opening and closing process via a daily newsletter. In an off-topic section, the experts could discuss other important issues which were related to the topic of ‘Research: a way to deal with School Bullying and Violence’ but didn’t fit in any of the main threads.

The conference’s main outcomes in brief

Topic one: Can we talk about a unique concept of SBV?

Delphi questioning

•Introduction

Referring to the classical definition based on intention, imbalance, and repetition, Thomas Jäger, from the visionary.net team, wonders if we are really talking about the same phenomenon because of the big differences in the concept between countries, and doubts whether we could find a common definition.
Other researchers, as Andrea Smorty and Joaquin Mora, accept this classical definition but including the effectiveness of the act, the cultural context and the perception of the act. Smorty also thinks that now we need more studies that deepen qualitatively the meaning children give to “aggressive acts” while Joaquin doubts whether we should use a universal concept to get more accuracy or adapt it to the different countries which will difficult comparison. Rosario del Rey says that we need to create agreements to compare results and wonders whether we should include sexual violence in the same concept.

Tom Letsom from USA provides a “Simple definition for bullying” considering the kid’s advantage and types of advantages, with the purpose of making it easy to understand by students of different countries, while Simon Hunter thinks the question about the definition can be broken down into two: one for the children and the other one for professionals. The first one needs an empirical research examination and the second one must be answered by researchers. He also gives some information for Rosario’s question about sexual violence.

The pain, a common matter of bullying for every culture is pointed out by Helga Johannessen. She thinks that before finding a definition we should find a common word for it. For her, bullying may be a unique phenomenon or something even worse: a trend.

It follows an interesting reflection by Rosario Ortega about VSB as a compromise among the scientific community of working into an area of aggressiveness far from the traditional and individual way. Violence is a phenomenon that goes further than bullying itself. The interpersonal violence where bullying phenomenon can be included also needs an analysis of the complex contextual elements, such as the system of peers’ interpersonal relationships. Bullying, as a complex phenomenon (an intentional, unbalance, and persistent behavior of physical, psychological and social abuse) involve both the psychological and the social area of investigation, and we need new paradigms.

She also agrees that the methodological issues and finding new ways to research about SVB are very important.
About the definition A. Smorti said that, although an only act can cause a big damage, we should leave the repetition of an act as a necessary condition for bullying to separate it from other violence act. He adds that the complexity of the situation should make us use more qualitative instruments
For Sandra Peters all of the contributions up now “have similar thoughts on what constitutes bullying and share a common understanding of bully/victim/bystander relationships”.

•Unclosed questions

After all of the contributions to the introduction; there were some open questions still to be solved and participants were asked for some more answers and their opinions to these points:
-Which would be a common definition for bullying?
-What do children and teenagers understand by bullying?
-Is bullying a trend?
-What do you think about the use of frequency in the identification of bullying events?”
-Are new forms of bullying with more single events different problems?
In this section we only had one, but significant, contribution on the part of Luciana Grosu (Romanian). She gives a complete students’ point of view from her own experience of observing in primary and secondary schools. She states, among other things, that for children and teenagers bullying is a trend, “it is cool” indeed, to gain others’ respect. She thinks aggressors do not feel they are doing anything wrong and that mass media encourage it. For her, many victims accept being bullied because they don’t want to be excluded and feel like it is a personal problem difficult to be solved.

Topic two:  Is current research able to explain SBV changes over the time?

Delphi questioning

•Are real problems too far from research?

Thomas Jäger wonders why it looks to be some misunderstanding between researchers and normal people and if researchers are focusing wrong aspects of the problem for being far away from schools. He also questions whether it could be a matter of language.
There are very different opinions about these questions:
-For some people it is a matter of feeling. People affected by the problem ask for real and fast solutions because they can feel the emergency of stopping children’s suffering (Helga). Rinus Ronderburg, thinks that after twenty years of research we still don’t have a real method to stop bullying. He says that experts have failed because they do not know what to do yet and asks for real solutions. Anti-bullying programs are good before actions, but not as a solution to the victims when bullying is going on
-It looks like we need details of the phenomenon and a “diagnosis” of the situation in the schools to cope with the problem. Some people, as Sandra Peters, disagree with the idea that researchers don’t focus on really important questions because their role is to do ongoing research to gain objective knowledge to help school administrators and communities to find effective strategies of prevention and programs. But she also thinks, as Helga, that solutions need to come fast. Researchers are still important since results can be used for many different things, according to Juana Delgado and to Oliviero Facchinetti who supports research as an instrument.

-Is current research able to explain SBV changes over the time?

Research has advanced, according to Rosario Ortega, despite of the necessity of still looking for answers to important questions referred to levels of frequency, seriousness, children’s involvement, new ways of bullying and contexts of interpersonal relationships.
After suffering a hard experience in her own family, Helga Johannessen asks researchers to listen to the parents as well as to focus on the bully, the reasons of his or her behavior and the ways to stop them. Confirming the importance of focusing the aggressors, their psychopathology and their personal features, Rosario Ortega participated again.
 Juan Calmaestra, from Spain, suggests that a differentiated psycho-educational intervention must be carried out for aggressors, victims and spectators. He underlies the role of the spectators.
Agnés Pradet, from the European Forum for Urban Safety goes back to a very important question mentioned by Ros. Ortega: Are levels of frequency and seriousness of SVB increasing in the schools?
For some participants bullying is always the same despite of the ways it occurs. But for others, as H. Johannessen, bullying is changing over the time. She thinks that now is more harmful because of what children watch in TV with violent contents as if they were funny. She adds that we will always have bullying but we have to stop long term evil bullying; the only problem is that we do not really know when evil bullying is and when harmless.
About Helga’s comments M. J. Toscano wonders whether we will be able to stop bullying at any time.
After what participants wrote U. Lissmann states that we need more systematic information before making decisions.

Topic three“Recently, a wide number of tools have appeared to assess the SBV problem in its different facets. In your opinion, has this fact introduced accuracy?”

The third topic of our conference started with an introduction by R. Ortega. She thinks that researcher advance is opening new prospects despite that the evaluation of the phenomenon that may need new instruments.
Questionnaires do not always reflect truth, according to S. Peters and H.  Johannessen, and a deeper understanding can only be reached by researchers studying different aspects..
Nevertheless S. Hunter, thinks that measures and tools for assessing SBV are generally positive.
Together with him J. Mora thinks that the problem would be in the way we use the instruments and adds that new instruments will provide us very useful information.

Topic four: How could the development of instruments be optimized? Which are in your opinion the new focuses of interest of research on SBV?

R. Ortega opened it stressing to find the procedures to study the psychological features of both: victims and aggressors.
Andrea Smorti (Italy) agrees with Rosario Ortega on qualitative and narrative methods and suggests two possible directions of research to improve instruments. The first one is to assess the diffusion of bullying and to identify aggressors and victims. And the second one is to interpret bullying by people involved to complete the picture about victim and bully by making autobiographies of bullying episodes
Finally, Simon Hunter thanks Andrea Smorti’s ideas and makes some suggestion. Simon is studying those aspects in kids that show resilience to bullying and thinks that only including negative feelings in a questionnaire would exclude important information.

“Unsolved questions” within Summaries and Interim Results

Here we repeat the same questions as in “unclose question” to give the audience a new chance to participate.
-Which would be a common definition for bullying?
-What do children and teenagers understand by bullying?
-Is bullying a trend?
-What do you think about the use of frequency in the identification of bullying events?”
-Are new forms of bullying with more single events different problems?
About the definition A. Smorti said that, although an only act can cause a big damage, we should leave the repetition of an act as a necessary condition for bullying to separate it from other violence act. He suggests that to call bullying we should use types of words different from literal translation of bullying and listen to what children says whether something is bullying or not. He adds that the complexity of the situation should make us use more qualitative instruments able to assess from the bully and the victim whether a bullying act occurred.
The lack of consciousness in adults about the seriousness of the problem is the main problem in Mexico for Adriana Corona. She defends anti-bullying programs to prevent violence but including a component of aid to victims (emotional and therapeutic support).

About the type of bullies, Helga Johannessen mentions the young "psychopaths" that do not have any conscience