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Yasmin. Learning about unacceptable sexual behavior in a sport setting
For over a decade practitioners and researchers have been concerned about cyberbullying within educational contexts. Few tools exist to explore this complex phenomenon in-depth from a teacher or pre-service teacher perspective. Importantly, pre-service teacher perceptions of cyberbullying may have a significant impact on how pre-service teachers respond to issues of cyberbullying. Pre-service teachers (n = 61) participated in a five-phase online project to develop knowledge and understanding of resources and responses to cyberbullying. First, this article provides a short scan of the literature to contextualize current understandings of the issue and explore different responses to cyberbullying. The literature was analysed using a constant comparison method to search for and identify current and emerging themes. Out of this work, the researchers developed a Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework, which can be used as a tool to investigate cyberbullying. The framework provides key elements for identifying, managing, and preventing cyberbullying. These elements represent a template to guide researchers and educators in exploring cyberbullying from a conceptual, practical, and research basis. Second, the framework is used as a lens to analyse pre-service teachers’ online discussions. Each of the pre-service teachers’ online posts were coded against the Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework to examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of cyberbullying. Two factors were evident from the study: 1) The online project provided an opportunity for students to develop greater awareness and confidence in identifying, managing, and preventing cyberbullying; and 2) the framework provided a structure to unpack the complex phenomenon of cyberbullying and the meta-language to begin constructive conversations about addressing the issue. Finally, the article concludes with implications for teacher education programs.
Researchers typically employ either peer or self-reports to assess involvement in bullying. In this study, we examined the merits of each method for the identification of child characteristics related to victimization and bullying others. Accordingly, we investigated the difference between these two methods with regard to their relationship with social adjustment (i.e., perceived popularity, likeability, and self-perceived social acceptance) and internalizing problems (i.e., anxiety, depression, and self-worth) in 1192 Dutch school children, aged 9 to 12years. Perceived popularity and likeability were more strongly correlated with peer reports than self-reports, for both victimization and for bullying others. Self-perceived social acceptance correlated equally strong with peer and self- reports of victimization. Furthermore, peer reports of bullying were also correlated with self-perceived social acceptance, whereas self-reports of bullying were not. All internalizing problems showed stronger relations with self-reports than peer reports; although only the relation between self-reported victimization and internalizing problems was of practical significance. Despite our findings indicating that using only one type of report could be efficient for examining the relation between bullying behaviors and separate child characteristics, both types of report are necessary for a complete understanding of the personal and social well-being of the children involved.