Relational Bullying in Classrooms among Female Students: How Teachers Respond?
A closer look at what being a teacher really means invites us to disentangle ourselves from the old-fashioned view of the teacher as a mere carrier of knowledge. Teaching is, in fact, a highly multifaceted profession. For teaching to be successful, teachers need to redefine their roles as they are expected to have more duties and responsibilities. Indeed, they are expected not only to be learning facilitators but also classroom supporters and promoters of social and psychological order and equilibrium. In this article, I will shed light on the social as well as the psychological role of the teacher in the classroom. A functionalist sociologist particularly Durkheim (1956) argued that the school is a society miniature and its major function is to maintain the collective conscience defined as shared norms and values of the society. This article is devoted to particularly answer a very alarming question which is how teachers respond to relational bullying in classrooms.
The only concern that teachers used to have was to equip the students with the necessary knowledge and skills necessary for their future careers. However, far too many issues pop up and they now become alarming to teachers. Relational bullying among female students is one of the leading social problems facing teachers in their classrooms. It is a toxic behaviour that we cannot see it but we can feel it and experience it and is really hard to detect.
Before we start digging deep into the different strategies that teachers opt for to tackle the issue of bullying, let’s understand what is bullying? And what are the causes behind such behaviour?
Setting someone up for harassment, humiliation, ridicule, exclusion, verbal abuse and physical harm is bullying. A commonly cited definition is offered by Olweus (1994) “A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students”. Bullying so must meet certain conditions to be considered bullying like malintent, distress, provocation imbalance of power and repeatedness. Indeed, it requires an unbiased long-term observation and background knowledge about what bullying is in order to appropriately address the misbehaviour in the classroom. There are different types of bullying that can be experienced by a student either in the classroom or around, some are obvious to spot while others can be even subtler. Relational bullying is an example of subtle aggression that is hard to identify and for this main reason, I would bring your awareness to the alarming rise of such social issues especially in classrooms and among female students. Relational bullying is usually silent and hidden. It involves quiet actions like social marginalization or exclusion; when someone is repeatedly left out of activities by their classmates with the intent to cause emotional harm to them. In any sense, social exclusion entails a lack of connectedness and participation. While the sense of belonging and connectedness is important to the students’ social and psychological equilibrium, the lack of it is patently damaging.
Research suggests that adolescents are particularly sensitive to rejection and social exclusion. They may experience the most significant mental health repercussions such as depression and anxiety. As human beings, we have a core need to be accepted and feel secured by identifying ourselves within a group. Rejection and exclusion, however, may have significant disturbing effects on their psychological well-being (Edith Cowan University, 2009).
Gossip and rumours are also considered as forms of relational bullying, in which students are exposed to emotional devastation through spreading false information, stories and details about them. Gossip and rumours can destroy someone’s self-confidence and self-esteem. It can also damage their reputations and social relationships leaving them sinking in a deep dark hole of loneliness, which can inescapably lead to suicidal thoughts. Students always seek compliments and positive feedback which are very important to keep up morale and make people feel valued. However, when they find themselves, victims of deteriorating scenarios of gossiping and rumours, they will unwillingly refrain from social life, become alienated and useless as they lost their sense of purpose and value.
Relational bullying, indeed, is one of the most common and devastating behaviours among female students. To give a sense of the size of the problem, let’s deepen our understanding of what makes a bully. Students who have experienced abuse and neglect at home tend to bully others, find schools and universities the best environment to vent off their anger and despair. Vulnerable students are, usually, victims of bullying. Indeed, toxic characters like passivity and vulnerability are perceived as attracting factors that might give a solid reason to the bully to cause harm to others who are perceived as easy prey. Some students who have higher self-confidence correlated with a higher tendency to aggression end up bullying their classmates and most of the time the school climate allows it. Those students usually show a lack of empathy and compassion towards their peers. Students may struggle with a persistent feeling of psychological insecurity and anxiety, will take their inner pain out on others. Most of the time, they fail to find an outlet for the safe expression of their feelings so they lash out at those who are vulnerable. The bullies usually view the bullied as a mirror that reflects and discloses their weakness that’s why they mean to attack them with the intent to escape their weakness. Bullying is pandemic and bullied may be future bullies. Indeed, those who have been rejected by their peers and find themselves outside of the social mainstream will unconsciously echo the misbehaviour of their tortures and bullying will become an endless chain of aggressive events. Although the aforementioned reasons are still relevant, some new research has been carried out on the topic of bullying end ups with a very important conclusion that bullies who are higher on the social ladder tend to push others down to remain on the top of the hierarchy.
Bullying prevention is best handled by being proactive. Teachers are often preoccupied with the way their lessons should be delivered successfully, but if some of their time and efforts are devoted to identifying warning signs of bullying and preventing the subtle misbehaviour right away, future repercussions can be easily avoided.
It is the teachers’ responsibility to make the classroom feel like a harmonious community. Indeed, when you teach your students that they are part of a community and each member of that community is equally valuable, they will be less likely to bully and more likely to stand up to bullies. The teacher should work to create opportunities for fruitful connections like pair or group work in the classroom.
In case bullying scenarios take a place in the classroom, the teacher should address the behaviour itself and never target the bully. Indeed, labelling a student as a bully will never solve the problem, it will worsen the situation instead and, maybe, pave the way to some hatred and distress. Teachers can invite the student to a private talk instead of embarrassing her in the classroom. Alternatively, they can target the situation unanimously in the classroom and explain to the students that such behaviour is unacceptable and can never be tolerated in the future.
Each student is unique and remember also that the reasons that push the bullies to lash out at their peers are different. For this very reason, teachers should tailor their methods and strategies to deal appropriately with each case of bullying. The social environment and the hidden psychological background should be put under scrutiny before judging the bully.
As mentioned before, relational bullying is very hard to spot. It requires careful observation of each subtle suspicious behaviour in the classroom. Teachers should be sensitive enough to know when to intervene and how to respond.
In essence, it is the teacher’s responsibility to create a safe environment in the classroom that protects the students from bullying. Teachers should not only work to identify and address bullying on a consistent basis, but they should also create a culture of respect and dignity. They should be aware that their role, indeed, goes beyond the walls of their classrooms as they are teaching tomorrow’s leaders who will leave their stamps in their societies. For this very reason, teachers should spare no effort to maintain the students’ social and psychological well-being.
