Abstract
Bullying research among preschoolers and the early grades of primary school is still scarce. With the aid of a set of cartoons representing prototypical bullying scenes, we interview 120 schoolchildren (50% girls) from kindergarten to third grade (age range: 5.44–9.58) from three mainstream public schools located in the eastern Community of Madrid, in order to analyse their perceptions regarding this phenomenon. Results show that 94.2% (n = 113) of schoolchildren are able to recognize when a partner is victimized. Nevertheless, significant differences were found by grade (p = 0.017), with kindergarteners giving more responses classified as one-off aggressions. Most students (n = 102) empathize with the victims´ emotions and condemn the bullies’ behavior, regardless of their gender (p = 0.637) or grade (p = 0.578). A total of 53.9% (n = 64) of students think these bullying situations are partly caused by previous conflicts; girls are inclined to think this more often than boys (p = 0.003). Furthermore, 53.8% (n = 64) of the students would request help from their schoolteachers if they were bullied, with no statistically significant differences by gender (p = 0.254) or by grade (p = 0.133). These results serve as a rationale to develop bullying prevention programs from a very early school age to provide information regarding its causation and coping strategies, among others.
Highlights
Research on school bullying among preschoolers and primary school grades is still very scarce (Machimbarrena and Garaigordobil 2018)
Sci. 2021, 10, 223 respondents identify with the scenes shown to them as school bullying, (b) what they think bullying is caused by, (c) to ascertain whether they consider bullying to be the outcome of previous situations of conflict between bully and victim, (d) to determine what emotions were attributed to both victims and bullies, and (e) to ascertain what coping strategy they would adopt if they experienced this kind of aggression
We set out the results obtained for these five questions: (a) whether schoolchildren at these ages recognise the distinctive elements of peer abuse, (b) what they think causes it, (c) whether they think peer abuse is the outcome of previous conflicts between victim and aggressor, (d) what emotions schoolchildren attribute to victim and aggressors, and (e) what coping strategy they would use to resolve a case of school bullying if they were the victims
Summary
Research on school bullying among preschoolers and primary school grades is still very scarce (Machimbarrena and Garaigordobil 2018). Bullying is currently regarded as a complex group phenomenon in which the aggressor’s or aggressors’ main goal is to achieve a certain position of power within the group. The analysis of group dynamics is taken to be a key issue for fully understanding the phenomenon since it is the group which assigns each member s status. Violent behaviour is a means towards the end of achieving greater power and status (Menesini and Salmivalli 2017). Other contextual variables have been documented to play a key role in understanding these specific types of peer conflicts, such as teachers relationships with their students (Donat et al 2018)
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