School Bullies And Bullying Behaviors

Abstract

School violence is a big phenomenon nowadays, with social and educational implications. This issue has increased the concern of educational and health professionals, encouraging the development of intervention programs. The aim of this study is to identify the existence of bullying practices in children attending elementary school and characterize the influence of a set of socio-demographic variables underlying these behaviors, such as their family and school contexts. 201 children were studied, mostly males (53.73%), with a mean age of 9.60 years and enrolled in the 4th year of elementary education, in rural and urban schools of the central region of Portugal. Two survey instruments "Bullying: The Aggressiveness among Children in School Space" and the "Natural Child Environment Signaling Scale", validated for the Portuguese population, were used to gather the data necessary for the study. The findings suggests that 26.90% of children are involved in bullying behaviors with verbal and physical aggression highlighted as the most common type. The school playground was revealed as the favorite places for these practices (91.30%). Bullying behaviors were shown to be significantly influenced by family environment (p 0.001), and not significantly, by gender, age, number of non-approvals, attendance in kindergarten and number of siblings. These results show that certain strategies need to be considered in the planning and implementation preventive bullying where educators, teachers and psychologists can intervene to improve the mental and physical health of children.