Abstract

Bullying is repeated intentional infliction of injury or discomfort (physical or nonphysical) on another person over time in an imbalanced relationship. In addition to physical and nonphysical forms, bullying can also be categorized as direct or indirect, direct bullying includes threatening, stealing, hitting, and verbal abuse, whereas indirect bullying involves social isolation, spreading rumors, and ignoring.

This study investigated the effects of bullying on the educational advancement of students in some selected secondary schools in the Buea municipality. Specifically, the study sought to investigate why bullying is perceived to be prevalent in schools by both teachers and students, to assess what forms of aggression are associated with bullying, to find out the underlying motives for bullying behaviours, and to examine when and where aggression can be identified as bullying.

The study was guided by the Rational/choice theory by Casare (1990), the General strain theory of Emile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde’s social learning theory and the social learning theory by Albert Bandura. The study employed a descriptive survey research design. Data was collected purposively, with the use of a questionnaire, from a sample population of 70 students from 3 selected secondary schools.

Data were descriptively analyzed from the questionnaire by calculating frequencies and percentages. Findings revealed that physical aggression, proactive rational aggression, being hostile, emotional, and accidental forms of aggression are all forms of aggression associated with bullying with physical and social aggression being the most rampant in the school milieu.

It was also revealed that students bully their mates for pleasure, popularity, to cause pain and trauma, for revenge or payback and power as well as envy which are underlying motives for bullying others.

The study recommended that in view of a high prevalence of bullying there is a need for the teachers, school administrators, pediatricians, and educationists to focus on the issue. Research should be undertaken to determine the high-risk factors for bullying and to identify the characteristics of victims in our milieu. This should, of course, be accompanied by the implementation of appropriate preventive and remedial measures.

The study also recommends the need for the schools to set up a system that will identify the various types and also stop bullying in the schools. Students should be counseled and made aware of the harmful effects of bullying in schools. Programs should be organized to educate the senior high school populace on the dangers of bullying.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Introduction

This chapter presents the general overview of the background of the study, talks about the research question, and objectives of the study that is general and specific objectives, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, and the operational definition of terms including the summary of this chapter.

Background of the study

Definition of Bullying is repeated intentional infliction of injury or discomfort (physical or nonphysical) on another person over time in an imbalanced relationship (Olweus,1994).

In addition to physical and nonphysical forms, bullying can also be categorized as direct or indirect, Direct bullying includes threatening, stealing, hitting, and verbal abuse, whereas indirect bullying involves social isolation, spreading rumors, and ignoring (Van der Wal MF, de Wit CAM, Hirasing RA, 2003). In recent years bullying has a great impact on students around the world and in Cameroon, as many students are being affected physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, and psychologically.

Debates about how best to define bullying have been a perennial problem within the field (Smith & Monks, 2008). Whilst the widely agreed definition of bullying in the academic literature is that it involves repeated aggressive behaviour directed towards someone with less power, with the intention of causing them harm (Rigby & Smith, 2011), research has highlighted that this definition is not shared, or does not necessarily suit, the complex setting of the school community.

Using a similar methodology, pupils of different ages have also been found to interpret the meaning of bullying in varied ways (Smith, Cowie, Olfasson & Liefooghe, 2002), with younger pupils tending to adopt a broader definition than older pupils (Smith & Levan, 1995). Furthermore, at a wider contextual level, international research has revealed that the English term ‘bullying’ does not have a 7 exact translations in other languages and that different meanings are attributed to terms associated with it Smith & Monks, 2008).

Historically, the most significant turning point for bullying took place in the mid-1970s. Dan Olweus, a research professor of psychology, was the first to conduct an intensive study on bullying among students using his own systematic researching methods (Voo, 2007, p112). He created the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), which had significant results in reducing school bullying (Hazelden Foundation, 2007).

Olweus’s efforts contributed greatly to the fight against bullying because it brought awareness, initiated other professionals to conduct research, and vastly expanded the meaning of bullying (Voo, 2007). Olweus’s efforts have made a great impact on school violence and helped to bring safety back into schools.

Bullying has been a problem in schools around the world for generations; it is not a recent phenomenon that emerged in the 20th century (Ross, 1996). Bullying is not synonymous with violence oraggression (Harachi et al., 1999), but is a particular form of both. The contemporary definition of bullying, generally credited to Olweus(1993), includes several essential elements: the harmful act must be intentional, although it may be physical, verbal, or psychological.

To be considered bullying, the act must also be repetitive and directed from a more powerful (physically, verbally or socially) individual towards one who is weaker (Batsche, 1997; Craig et al., 2000b; Hazler et al., 2001; Nicolaides et al., 2002; Olweus, 1993; Sampson, 2002).

Bullying is a subset of more general aggression, distinguished by an intent to harm, the repetitive nature of the acts, and the power imbalance between bully and target (Batsche, 2002; Craig, Henderson, & Murphy, 2000; Hazler, Miller, Carney, & Green, 2001; Nansel et al., 2001; Nicolaides, Toda, & Smith, 2002; Olweus, 1993, 1995, 2003; Parada, Marsh, & Craven, 2003; Sampson, 2002; Smith & Brain, 2000; Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002).

Bullying is one of the most pervasive issues affecting American youth and schools. According to the 2005–2006 national Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) Survey, 34.4 % of U.S. students in Grades 6 through 10 reported bullying others in the past 30 days (Ha, 2015). However, rates of verbal bullying perpetration were higher (i.e., 37.4 %), while rates of relational bullying weres lightly lower (i.e., 27.2 %; Wang, Iannotti, & Nansel, 2009).

About 27.8 % of youth reported bullying victimization (School Crime Supplement; Robers, Kemp, & Truman, 2013), however rates of specific forms of victimization are higher (e.g., 41.0 % reported relational bullying victimization and 36.5 % reported verbal bullying victimization; Wang et al. 2009). Further, bullying is an international problem and in a sample of 202,056 youth from 40 countries, 26.9 % reported involvement in the bullying dynamic (Craig et al., 2009).

Technology allows cyberbullying perpetrators to maintain anonymity and gives them the ability to post messages to a wide audience (Dempsey et al., 2009; Holfeld & Leadbeater, 2015; Menesini et al., 2012; Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007; Schneider et al., 2012). In a Canadian study, close to half of the cyber victims did not even know who cyberbullied them (Li, 2007).

In addition, perpetrators may feel reduced responsibility and accountability when online compared with face-to-face situations (Cénat et al., 2014; Schneider et al., 2012). Cyberbullying has been defined as the use of email, cell phones, text messages, and Internet sites to threaten, harass, embarrass, or socially exclude someone (Li, 2007; Raskauskas & Stoltz, 2007; Sampasa-Kanyinga et al., 2014; Wang, Iannotti, & Nansel, 2009).

cyberbullying started to occur due to recent increases in technology (Smith & Monks, 2008). Another recently recognized type of bullying is bias bullying or prejudice-driven bullying; this is bullying, according to the general definition, based on group characteristics and would include racial harassment, faith-based bullying, sexual harassment, and homophobic bullying (Hensley, 2014; Smith & Monks, 2008).

Examples of physical acts of bullying in the U.S, include assault, theft, hitting, pushing, kicking, pinching, or restraining another person against their will, whereas verbal acts include threats, insults or nicknames (Due et al., 2005; Kennedy, 2010; Ng, 2012; Olweus, 1993; Price et al., 2013). Relational aggression in these three countries is non-verbal and/or non-physical and may entail making faces or dirty gestures or intentionally excluding someone from a group (Due et al., 2005; Olweus, 1993).

Bullying behaviors in France can be overt (such as direct physical or verbal aggression) or covert (such as secretly encouraging other children to ignore a specific classmate) (Richard, Schneider, & Mallet, 2012). Traditional bullying, which includes all forms of bullying except for cyberbullying, is usually contained on school grounds and often stops once the victim has gone home; in contrast to traditional bullying, cyberbullying is neither overtly physical nor verbal (Price et al., 2013).

Bullying can be understood as a social process where normativity and deviance are constructed when youth define why bullying occurs (e.g. Forsberg and Thornberg 2016; Teräsahjo and Salmivalli 2003; Thornberg 2015). This is referred to as the ‘odd student repertoire’ (e.g. Teräsahjo and Salmivalli 2003), addressing how the target is recurrently positioned as an outsider. Walton and Niblett (2013) claim it is not neutral who becomes a victim of bullying, since those who are routinely bullied often fall outside of gender and sexuality norms (see also Erling and Hwang 2004).

It is proposed that normative (hetero)sexual and gendered discourses overlap with bullying and identity constructions in bullying (Duncan 1999; Forsberg 2017; Meyer 2008; Page, Shute, and McLachlan 2015; Ringrose 2008). In this way bullying connects to gendered processes (Duncan 1999; Formby 2015; Pascoe 2013; Payne and Smith 2012) where behaviours that are similar to bullying are enacted. These kinds of processes reproduce structural and cultural inequalities (Pascoe 2013) where students ‘battle for social position’ in a normative institutional structure (Payne and Smith 2012).

Different processes such as bullying and sexual harassment can overlap (Duncan 1999; Shute, Owens, and Slee 2008) and bullying and homophobic teasing are found to predict sexual harassment (Espelage, Basile, and Hamburger 2012). This has called for a broader understanding of bullying in the contexts where it emerges (Pascoe 2013; Walton 2005).

Such an understanding would acknowledge wider social practices and processes and when there is a possible overlap between different processes such as bullying, sexual harassment, and gender (Meyer 2014). One issue that could affect the possibility of revealing these kinds of overlaps might be that the most common description of bullying states that it is a repeated, intentional behaviour where the target finds it difficult to defend themselves (Olweus 1993).

Using this definition might exclude isolated acts with a non-specific target, for example, incidents where biased behaviours (e.g. gendered, sexual or racial) are performed but not repeated against the same target (Meyer 2014). To account for both of these matters, Meyer (2008) uses the common definition of bullying but adds a focus on harassment (e.g. verbal attacks or jokes).

It would be defined as harassment or as contributing to a hostile environment when biased acts are directed towards a non-specific or specific target, not repeated and either intentional or non-intentional (Meyer 2014). Bullying and harassment could also overlap when biases are articulated, when there is an intention to target someone and when these experiences are repeated (Meyer 2014).

Theoretically, Bullying has become a national epidemic and the behavior of bullying can be examined by looking at it through the lens of Social Learning theory. According to the social learning theory as described in Berger, (2015) it’s an extension of behaviorism that emphasizes the influence that other people have over a person’s behavior, stating that every person learns through observation and imitating other people’s behavior. This means the bulling behavior was learned by his/her imitation of someone else or a group of other people.

According to (Swearer, Wang, Berry & Myers, 2014) Social learning theory also knows as social cognitive theory can be used to explained aggressive bullying behaviors, for example, youth who are exposed to domestic violence in the home are more likely to bully others than those who aren’t exposed to domestic violence and the same goes with children who socialize with aggressive peers: they are more likely to show aggressive behaviors toward others than those who do not socialize with aggressive peers.

It is apparent that students who bully others are a result of what they see or what is being done to them. They are hurting and the root is unresolved emotional issues from witnessing violence in their homes or from their peers or both.

Statement of the problem

Bullying is becoming a worldwide problem and can occur in every school. Many cases have been reported from many countries and each has its own peculiarities, or in some cases they have similarities.

However, in Cameroon schools, very limited formal research of this phenomenon has been nationally and internationally documented, and of course, this leads to limited identification of cases. Thus, since this study investigates the prevalence of bullying and victimization among students in schools, the major problems to be addressed in this study are:  1) to what extent the bullying phenomenon can be found in secondary schools in the Buea municipality 2) how well can bullying behavior among students in these schools be predicted by different types of bullying.

This research also sets to investigate why bullying is perceived to be prevalent in schools by both teachers and students, to assess what forms of aggression are associated with bullying, to find out what are the underlying motives for bullying behaviours and also to examine when and where can aggression be identified as bullying.

 Research questions

The research questions for this study are formulated as follows:

1. To what degree is bullying perceived to be prevalent by students and teachers in both schools?
2. Which forms of aggression associated with bullying can be identified?
3. What kind of motives underlying bullying behavior can be identified?