School climate and bullying bystander responses in middle and high school
Section snippets
Bystander behaviors
Research has shown that youth who witness bullying play a crucial role in either perpetuating or ameliorating the behavior (e.g., Padgett & Notar, 2013). Common categories of bystander responses include passive, assisting. and defending. Specifically, passive bystander behaviors include ignoring, or not taking any action (such as walking away or not passing on the harmful text message). Whereas assisting bystander behaviors include encouraging or contributing to the bullying behavior, such as
Adolescence as a critical developmental context for examining bystander behaviors
Peer interactions, including bullying, are best conceptualized from a developmental contextual perspective, which emphasizes the interaction of individual factors and critical contexts that change over the life course (Bronfenbrenner, 1994; Espelage & Swearer, 2004). As a theoretical perspective that is sensitive to life stages, this framework posits that the importance of specific contexts will vary over time depending on the developmental stage of interest. This is a particularly helpful
School climate
There are many aspects of the school context that could interact with individual factors to influence bystander behaviors. Within the school context, the climate is a primary force that shapes interactions between individuals in schools (students, teachers, administrators, etc.) through the shared beliefs, values, and attitudes which together, create the parameters for norms and behaviors in a school (Emmons, Corner, & Haynes, 1996; Kuperminc, Leadbeater, Emmons, & Blatt, 1997). An
School climate factors related to bystander behaviors
Literature consistently shows that school climate can influence students' bullying and victimization. For example, prior research has examined the association between selected individual constructs, separately as they related to bullying and victimization. In fact, both unsupportive teachers (i.e., low engagement) and accepting attitudes towards aggression (i.e., emotionally unsafe) may contribute to an environment that inadvertently encourages bullying behavior (Gendron, Williams, & Guerra,
Individual-level factors and bystander responses: gender differences
In addition to school-level factors that influence bullying, studies have examined the relations between demographic characteristics such as gender, developmental (i.e., grade-level), and race differences in bystander responses. For example, concerning gender differences in defenders, girls are more likely to report being or be viewed as defenders than boys (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012; Pöyhönen et al., 2012; Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2012); this is most likely due to girls' higher levels of
Individual-level factors and bystander responses: developmental differences for middle schoolers vs. high schoolers
Middle school students generally demonstrate more defender behaviors than high school students (Lindstrom Johnson et al., 2013; Salmivalli & Voeten, 2004). Social dominance theory posits that hierarchies are often reestablished at the beginning of middle school, which may lead to less risk-taking in stepping into a defender role (Juvonen & Graham, 2014; Meter & Card, 2015). On the other hand, valuing how one appears to peers and having close friendships become more important to adolescents over
Individual-level factors and bystander responses: race and ethnic differences
Race and ethnicity, describe shared meanings, values, and cultural practices generalized to specific groups, and characterize how members within a group perceive their social environment and respond in social interactions (Triandis, 2002). When witnessing bullying towards peers, youth from different racial-ethnic backgrounds may evaluate and respond to the displayed aggressive behaviors consistent with their cultural normative beliefs about bullying victimization (Xu, Macrynikola, Waseem, &
The present study
Researchers have called for additional studies on bystander responses to bullying that include multiple individual-level and contextual variables, as opposed to focusing on single aspects of school climate and student characteristics (Meter & Card, 2015). The current study aimed to address this knowledge gap by examining the separate contributions of individual and school-level factors in relation to bystander behavior (Aims 1 and 2). For our third aim, we expanded on previous work by
Hypotheses related to school climate
Regarding the Engagement school climate construct, given the literature, we hypothesized that adult connections/relationships and perceptions of support would be associated with defending behaviors and lower student-teacher connections and support (hereafter teacher connectedness) will be associated with increases in passive and assistor behaviors. It is less clear how connectedness between students (hereafter student connectedness) would be associated with bystander responses, as studies have
Participants
The current study drew upon data from 64,670 youth attending 107 middle (grades 6–8, which includes youth approximately ages 11–13) and high schools (grades 9–12, which is youth approximately ages 14–18) participating in a statewide survey study of school climate called the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools (MDS3) Initiative. The schools had a mean percentage suspension of 10.95 (SD = 9.79), average enrollment was 1151 students (SD = 451.83) and an average ethnic diversity score (range: 0–1)
Descriptive analyses
We first conducted descriptive analyses on the overall sample (middle school and high school students) to explore the frequency of students' endorsement of bystander behaviors. The top three selected responses were “try to make others stop the bullying” (defending), “stay out of the bullying” (passive), and “comfort the person being bullied” (defending). The least selected response was “join in on the bullying” (assisting). Approximately 40% (39.8%) of students endorsed one or more defender
Discussion
Bullying behaviors have an impact on and are impacted by the broader context in which the bullying occurs. As such, programming to reduce bullying that targets these broader systemic factors, like increasing positive bystander responses to bullying, has shown promise for reducing bullying behaviors (Polanin, Espelage, & Pigott, 2012; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Although research has shown that school climate as a whole is associated with overall school bullying perpetration and victimization (
Individual-level associations
With regard to gender and grade level, the results both corroborate and build on what was found a decade ago (Trach et al., 2010). As compared to female students, male students were less likely to report defending and passive behaviors, yet more likely to report assistor behaviors. In general, boys had higher odds for endorsing the behaviors consistent with assistors (e.g., “join in on bullying”), and girls had higher odds for endorsing the behaviors consistent with defenders (e.g., try to make
Limitations
There are some limitations of the current study, such as the reliance on self-report and the cross-sectional design. Moreover, scholars have warned that the examination of bystander behavior is subjective and captures overall tendencies of behavior rather than behavior to specific incidents or most recent incident (Datta et al., 2016), the methods used in this study (i.e., a yes/no response) precluded variation in responses such as would be found using a frequency scale, moreover, the use of
Practical implications and conclusions
Taken together, these findings suggest that programing to increase positive bystander behaviors and decrease negative bystander behaviors, similar to typical bullying prevention, will likely need to have a tiered approach that includes both broad programming for all youth and targeted programming as well. For example, all high school youth would need additional supports to increase positive bystander behavior; however, boys in both middle and high school might require additional guidance
Acknowledgement
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305H150027 (PI: C. Bradshaw) and the National Institute of Justice (2014-CK-BX-0005) to the University of Virginia. The writing of the manuscript was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD; 1R01HD102491-01A1; MPI: Waasdorp). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of either the Institute, the
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