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Abstract
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Psychological theories suggest different explanatory models of school bullying and prescribe its likelihood, relying on the spectrum of the factors, from the individual predictors to the environmental ones which contribute to the increase or decrease of school bullying. This paper substantiates the questions about reasons and course of bullying and suggests a new conceptualization from the perspective of school community dynamics. A view of school bullying as a form of stress response, namely, the destructive communal coping of the school community, is proposed. This approach explains students' and teachers' joining bullying despite the values conflict and constancy of bullying.
The origin of bullying in different theories is explained in different ways. According to the social-cognitive approach, bullying perpetration is a result of a child's social learning, an adoption of the behavior which receives rewards and is typical for the social environment (Swearer et al., 2014). Bullying also is explained as a way for a bully to increase his/her popularity, visibility or to get other resources among the peers (Salmivalli, 2014). Another explanation of bullying suggests that it is determined by a desperate need to belong and can be a way of coping with a fundamental fear of social exclusion (Underwood and Ehrenreich, 2014). The bystanders' behavior (verbal or nonverbal acceptance of bullying; Salmivalli, 2010; Houghton et al., 2012) and moral disengagement (Hymel and Bonanno, 2014) promotes bullying, but does not trigger it by itself. The most influential social-ecological approach considers bullying as a phenomenon located in an extensive and complicated social context, including peer groups, schools, families, neighborhoods, communities, and country (Hong and Espelage, 2012; Hymel and Espelage, 2018). It allows an analysis of the risk and protection factors in relation to bullying in the various systems in which a child is socialized, and describes how the individual characteristics of children interacting with environmental contexts and systems prevent or support bullying (Espelage, 2014; Yoon and Bauman, 2014; Bauman et al., 2021). The ecological approach to bullying is is very helpful in conceptualizing separate groups of factors and bullying outcomes, however, it does not explain the reasons for the occurrence of bullying in general...
Language: en |