Bullying in schools : The multi aspect problem

• Main Author: Lagerlöf, Hélène
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete - Socialhögskolan 2004
• Subjects: Bullying; Victim; Bully; Perpetrator; Power; Bystanders; Social-context; Social work; Socialt arbete
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-336

Everyday thousands of children and teenagers live through the hell of bullying. This theoretical research essay describes analyses and gives a literature overview of the phenomenon of bullying from eight different ideal-typical aspects based on Max Weber’s concept of Ideal types as a tool to make text analysis. The essay also investigates and compares three studies with focus on what methodological tools the researchers have employed to come to their conclusions. With the results from this investigation the research essay discusses possible explanations to why results, conclusions and understanding on the self-concept and self-esteem of perpetrators of bullying are so contradictory between researchers. Findings suggest that differences in gender in the sample, sample-size and age-group variations could be possible explanations to why results differ between studies. The essay discusses bullying from a power theory perspective and presents thoughts on how such a perspective could be employed in future research. It also suggests more research in the sociological discipline and investigations on a contextual and organisational level considering that the present study has shown that the academic field of bullying have not been researched to a great extent from this perspective.