Recognizing Bullying Behavior Jared R. Rawlings


The music classroom has been praised as a safe and supportive space for children to explore, create, and experience music’s affective quality. As facilitators of music-making experiences, we have an opportunity to create a positive, open classroom environment so all students feel wel- come to participate in music. Despite this rec- ognition, conversations about the music class- room environment persist. Recently, the Music Educators Journal (Nos. 97 and 98) published two articles on the strategies for creating a safe space in the music classroom. Dr. Carteri. Dr. Taylorii


and . referenced bullying as a behavior that pervades the music classroom.


Bullying behavior is a concern among school- aged youth. According to the Center for Disease Control and Preventioniii.


“… nearly 30% of


American adolescents reported at least moder- ate bullying experiences as the bully, victim, or both” (p. 1). Long-term outcomes of bullying perpetration increase the likelihood of experi- encing depression, delinquency, and criminality as adults, as well as possible unemploymentiv.


.


Theories associated with bullying intervention programs indicate that bullying behavior typi- cally begins during preadolescence, peaks dur- ing adolescence, and then diminishes through adulthoodv.


, which suggests that taking preven-


tative action prior to seventh grade can have a significant effect in reducing bullying behav- iors. The word bully has become a term, which may be generically over used and under clari- fied. As a society, do we really know what it means? For the purposes of this article, it is im- portant to understand and define what is bully- ing?; What does bullying behavior look like in schools?; and How do music teachers recognize bullying behavior in the music classroom?


What is Bullying? Bullying has been defined as a sub-category of aggression depicted as intentional, repetitive, and imposing a power imbalance between stu- dents who bully and students who are victim- izedvi.


Direct/overt aggression includes physical and verbal aggression. Physical aggression is de- fined as shoving, hitting, punching, kicking, and pushing. For music education, movement activities may provide opportunity for this type of behavior. The other type of direct/overt ag- gression is verbal aggression. Verbal aggres- sion includes harmful taunting and teasing. A common mistake in classifying this behavior is to connect harassment with verbal aggression. Although harassment can include verbal ag- gression bullying and harassment are different behaviors. The main difference is in the inten- tionality of the behavior. Bullying behavior has been determined to be intentionally repetitive, whereas harassment has been defined to be in- tentional or unintentional. For more information on harassment in schools, see Elizabeth Mey- er’s text, Gender, Bullying, and Harassment.


Direct/overt aggression is directly observable by the teacher and does not require student’s report. Indirect/covert forms of aggression (psychological, relational, and reputational ag- gression) include exclusion, ridicule, and name calling with a specific goal of manipulating so- cial networksviii.


. Two types of aggression, which


. These three elements associated with be- havior must be in place in order for a behavior to be referred to as bullying. When you witness a behavior you think is bullying, ask yourself these three questions: (1) Was this behavior in- tentional?; (2) Was this behavior repetitive?; and


25


are exclusively, indirect/covert aggression men- tioned in the bullying research are reputational aggression (spreading rumors or gossip in order to advance one’s position in the social network) and psychological or social aggression (ridi- cule, making faces/rolling eyes, and group re-


(3) Was their an attempt for one student to win power over another student? Before jumping to conclusions and reprimanding the behavior as bullying, both students or multiple students must be conferenced with in order to determine the intent of the behavior.


What does bullying behavior look like? When recognizing bullying behaviors, music teachers need a common vocabulary. The termi- nology in this section is not yet found in music education research; however, it does exist in the education and public health research and has become the common language when discussing behaviors of bullying. Bullying behavior can be direct and overt or indirect and covert forms of aggressionvii.


.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48