Focussed Scheduled Pre-determined Sequential Closed question Feeling valued, INTERVIEW PLAN. Interview structure. Semi-structured
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Closed or open? Respondents knowledge1
Relationships confident, Teachers Informal Guidelines — Flow Follow-up Elaboration Single topicrapport building trust
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Verbal and non-verbal behaviour.
The interview was designed also to find out from the teachers if any of their experiences as pupils involved bullying led to ways in which they dealt with bullying among pupils. The strategies teachers use to combat bullying were examined as was the
importance of the communication of ideas among teachers.
All the interviewees said that they had found their interviews very interesting as validated by Mrs Jacques (App 1 p 3). To an extent the reflectivity of the interviewees, suggests Walker
of the same institutional processes, much of the questioning was of mutual benefit. The interview, as Walker (1985, p 91) also points out, hinges on the assumption that people are, to some degree, reflective about their own actions, or can be put into the position where they become so. The teacher interviewees had already completed a questionnaire but there were a number of
sensitive issues such as teachers as bullies which were better said than written. For instance, one teacher (App 10 p 8) had refused to answer the questionnaire about teachers as bullies but when in interview she realised that the question was not directed at teachers working at Baden Road School the verbal answer
appeared much more open.
The lunch time supervisors were interviewed about their role, relationships and problems but may have been alarmed by the use of tape recorders. Instead, as a record of their interview, they read and signed the script the day after the meeting. Samples of the teacher transcripts and the lunch time supervisor script are in appendix 7. Names are anonymous.
Analysis.
The three taped interviews were used along with the lunch time supervisor responses in the card indexing system (op cit) to create a meaningful and highly structured case study. Although the number of teacher interviews prevented the development of a representative sample, the information was used also to
Interviewing and Counselling bullies and victims.
Interviewing formed part of the work with bullies and victims but this could be described more as counselling. To obtain qualities consistent with a naturalistic study, these took place during actual case events. What must be stated categorically is that the need to research never interfered with the need to help bullies and victims. No schedules were used except for field notes which were also part of the counselling programme. The sessions were spontaneous, occurring unexpectedly and naturally on any day during the pressures of working in a school. The teacher/researcher never knew when cases would arise and in this respect the research was unplanned. Time therefore had to be prioritised to best fit in with existing routines. This was
sometimes difficult but not insurmountable. The sessions were as long as it took to draw conclusions to the satisfaction of the victims and bullies. This work is described in the case study. Reports of cases were written afterwards but on the same day of each counselling session. The case studies were then supported with references from literature on bullying.
Peer Nomination. Introduction.
Peer nomination was used in a non-threatening and safe way to identify the extent to which children perceived other pupils in their class as victims or bullies. This method identified
bullies and victims, revealed their number in school and could be cross checked with appropriate data from the Sheffield survey and from their questionnaires. Smith and Sharp (1994, p 12) claim that peer nominations are reliable in that one is pooling information from a number of informants and agreement between children has been found to be reasonably good. Peer nomination, suggest Boulton and Smith (1994, p 12), is a preferred method for case studies on bullying involving large groups of children.
Limitations.
The approach raises a variety of methodological issues not least of which is the meaning children attach to the words 'bully' and 'being bullied.' Arora and Thompson (1987, p 118) found agreement about the meaning of the word bullying across pupils aged 12 to 14 years. However, there appears a difference in perceptions of bullying and being bullied from children who are aged around seven and those who are eleven. Children's nominations did not indicate severity, intensity, form or duration.
Nominations were kept within the same age range on the assumption that each child in one class knew all the others. For instance, peer nomination did not account for children who may have just entered a class. Conversely children were not given the
opportunity to nominate anyone from another class as victim or bully even if they felt they knew of one. However none asked to nominate anyone from a different class. What was hidden also was the number of bullies who bully more than one person, if not all at the same time.
The peer nomination could not detect whether a child nominated as a bully was one or a member of a gang who bullied another child or a number of children. As only single nominations with a similar mark [a cross] could be made against each child it was impossible to tell whether or not pupils nominated as bullies were members of gangs.
The teacher/researcher was concerned about the extent to which children who are being bullied feel able to report this, even through anonymous surveys. There is no conclusive way of comparing ’real' levels of bullying with reported levels.
However, each peer nomination sheet was coded enabling responses to be checked against each child's coded questionnaire.
Despite these limitations the peer nominations were frequently used in school as a quick reference profile when cases of
bullying arose. The Y3 nomination sheets lasted for four years until the pupils left at the end of Y6. One reference involved a child now aged twelve and at secondary school who was recently referred back to the teacher/researcher for help as a victim in June 1996. The teacher/researcher used the child's 1992 peer nomination with the parent to obtain an immediate profile.
Method.
To keep control of the explanation of peer nomination to the pupils each of the eight class teachers agreed that for
approximately fifteen minutes the teacher/researcher would takes their class. The classes were taken on Tuesday March 31st 1992
involving the 197 children present in school that day. Their
ages ranged from seven to eleven years. Frost (1991, p 31) found in her research that children's time-scales tended to become
confused. Instead of "monthly, weekly or daily" as used in the Sheffield survey, the terms "lot, often, little and never," were used and explained to the pupils.
Victim profile.
"Lot," meant children seemed upset most of the time and were unhappy because bullying had gone on a long time and that there might be a number of people bullying them. "Often" meant they knew of pupils who had been bullied,
possibly by different children and were sometimes upset. "Little" meant pupils had occasionally been bullied,
possibly just once or twice, which had then stopped. "Never" meant behaviour which did not disturb a child. Bully profile.
"Lot" meant that the person possibly bullied more than one child and had continued to pick on a child or different children.
"Often" meant that a pupil had bullied and upset others but didn't bully all the time.
"Little" meant pupils had bullied once or twice and stopped. "Never" meant someone who is usually kind and does not upset
others.
The scale was presented to the children and were asked to mark a cross against each child's name including absentees but not their own. Confidentiality and anonymity was assured and children
worked alone taking about ten minutes to complete the task. All 197 children were encouraged to ask if they could not read any name but none did. None of the original nomination sheets are entered in the appendices as this would reveal true identities.