First, the activity assumed that, at the time of writing,
children had ideas about bullying first hand as victim, witness, or bystander or second-hand through hearsay. Without exhaustive social studies of the individual relationships of each child in the school it would be hard to tell which or any number of these induced the responses. It was impossible to tell whether the responses were limited to specific behaviours in specific groups. If so, they would be restricted to the age group in which the children played. Nor was it possible to know whether or not the responses were wider observations of general bullying behaviours
in other age groups. It seems then that the longer pupils are in school the greater the knowledge and experience of the repertoire of bullying behaviours emerges. Once learnt, pupils then have a choice whether or not to respond likewise with other children. Second, the activity assumed that the behaviours cited were in fact related conceptually to bullying behaviour and not just to the culmination of a number of single incidences from different children at different times. Smith and Sharp (1994, p 13)
emphasise that aggressive and violent behaviour between two people is not always bullying. It is only bullying if it is an unequal interaction. At what point primary children develop
sufficiently, if at all, to recognise this complexity is not
obvious. The term "bullying" is the classification of a behaviour or a number of behaviours, each with motives and intentions
designed to harm and set within certain social situations. Increased power is felt each time the behaviour is repeated.
To contribute individual ideas to the collective term "bullying" assumed an ability to memorize, classify, categorise, make sense of and differentiate behaviours which on some occasions might be termed bullying when at other times they might not. Pupil
responses to the idea "I think bullying is...." depended on their ability to discern these differences and required some degree of cognitive development which, according to Piaget (1969, p 197) is closely linked with age. Without this capacity some children, particularly the younger ones aged around seven years, may have perceived bullying as a single form of aggression, a name to a behaviour rather than the multifaceted concern it is.
Third, the activity depended upon language development, each child having the most appropriate terms to make sense of and the ability to write and explain the word "bullying." At the point of analysis, there was no way of knowing if the pupils had used the correct terminology to express what they really wished to say. Equally, there was no way of knowing if pupils had avoided writing what they thought they knew to be bullying but could not express it because of linguistic inabilities in terms of limited vocabulary, writing skills and/or spelling deficiencies.
Method.
The wording "I think bullying is....11 on a slip of paper was given to the 203 pupils present on Friday March 20th 1992 for them to complete the sentence. This enabled opinions and/or perceptions of bullying behaviour to emerge. There was no preparation time or chance for the children to discuss the
activity and influence each other. It was to be as naturalistic as possible. Except for absentees, all the pupils had completed the extensive 1990 Smith bullying questionnaire the previous
November. There was no way of knowing whether or not this had any effect on their responses some four months later.
The concern over linguistic ability proved unfounded. Teachers reported that no child refused or had difficulty in writing their thoughts although limited vocabulary may have been a problem for younger children or for the less able. Teachers reported that they tended to take more time and wrote less but all the children described at least two behaviours. No child expressed a view
suggesting bullying to be acceptable or appropriate behaviour. No opinion focussed on or expressed a view about individual victims or bullies nor revealed cases of bullying or victimisation. This was a measure of how successful the intervention was in focussing the children's attention on defining bullying and giving opinions about it. Every piece of information provided was used.
Analysis of the pupil responses.
The information was tallied and the results ranked according to frequency. The most prolific number of responses related to bullying was name-calling then hitting and so on. Definitions outnumbered opinions by a ratio of 3 : 1 which were tallied and ranked in the same way. Any differences in behaviours would be determined by age, experience, language and cognitive development and revealed in the written responses. These differences did indeed reveal contrasting data which had an immediate effect on creating a pupil definition of bullying.
Analysed collectively, many similarities existed between the children's and authoritative definitions. However, the responses from the younger pupils aged 7 - 9 years were so significantly different from those of the older pupils aged 9 - 1 1 years that two definitions of bullying were developed. The younger pupils had responded mainly with overt behaviours while the older pupils
included more indirect forms of bullying as perceived by experts such as Smith and Sharp (op cit) and Olweus (op cit). Their responses were grouped similarly, the definitions emerging as one
for the lower juniors (7-9 years) and one for the upper juniors (9-11 years). The 1991 definitions were:
LOWER SCHOOL DEFINITION. ( 7 - 9 years)
Bullying is when boys or girls kick, hit, fight and hurt, call names, upset feelings or make cry someone who is defenceless, smaller or younger than themselves.
Longevity, a greater general ability, awareness and command of English to describe the behaviours which can exhibit more
sophistication meant that many older children expressed succinctly more varied feelings and views about bullying.
UPPER SCHOOL DEFINITION. (9 - 11 years)
Bullying is when a cowardly individual or gang act tough on the yard and for no reason at all call names, hit, fight, tease, kick, pick on and upset the feelings, make cry and hurt, physically or mentally, someone who is younger, smaller, weaker, afraid or different because of clothes, weight or colour to make them feel inferior.
Other criteria were mentioned by less than six children from a year group (three from each of two classes.) In a class of
thirty pupils this averaged 10%. Anything less was considered to be unrepresentative. Nevertheless, these responses were still ranked. [Bold shows responses from the older pupils only.]
Bullies say nasty things, beat up, demand things or
money, smack, thump, push down, isolate, torment, tell on,
threaten, spread rumours, pester, force, nip, make fun of,
pull hair, scratch, spit, bite, hide or take things,
interfere with a game and pull faces.
The individual opinions, analysed in the same way as the
nasty, horrible, cruel, evil, naughty and mean. Some upper school pupils identified bullies as acting tough and cowardice. Other than this, there was no distinction by age of the opinions and from their comments all pupils thought bullying to be morally unacceptable. However, this seemed hypocritical coming from the minority of those pupils who do bully. Out of context and away from bullying situations, some may not see their behaviour as bullying while for others it may be due to the lack of
seriousness they place upon their behaviour.
When the definition slips were sorted into gender responses of the 98 girls and 105 boys, further analysis revealed that bullies tended to see bullying in others rather than in themselves.
Analysed and ranked by frequency in the same way as the school definitions, the gender definitions were as follows: