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Bullying and the philosophy of shooting freaks

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Confero | Vol. 3 | no. 2 | 2015 | pp. 17-35 | doi:10.3384/confero.2001-4562.150625
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Bullying and the philosophy of
shooting freaks
Gerald Walton
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he audience sneered and sniggered. Susan Boyle
strutted toward the microphone on the stage of
Britain’s Got Talent, a televised talent contest.16 It
was April 2009. Alone on a vast and empty
auditorium stage, she faced hundreds of people in
the studio and the gaze of millions of television viewers around
the world. On display was a middle-aged woman lacking
refinement and sophistication, wearing a plain, muted-yellow
housedress, her grey hair curled in an apparent home-perm.
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Awkwardly, Susan prepared to perform for an audience that
dismissed her the minute she emerged from backstage. Scorn
abounded. From the recorded reactions, a panel of three judges
were as dubious about her capacity for talent as was the
audience. Simon Cowell, one of the three judges, rolled his eyes
when she reported her age to be forty-seven. The audience
revelled in derision, aghast that such a simple, ordinary women
would appear on a show that was ostensibly meant for younger,
more attractive contestants.
For one 18-year old audience member, sneering at Susan had an
unfortunate ricochet effect. Jennifer Byrne faced online and in-
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16 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk
T
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person backlash after her scoffing was caught on camera and
was broadcast to the world17 “It was a split-second reaction
that changed my life,” she said. “All I did was roll my eyes and
I'm targeted by a hate campaign for months”18. After a few
more moments of uncomfortable questioning by Simon Cowell,
Susan began to sing. Instead of anticipated boos and quick
disqualification from the panel of judges, eyes widened and jaws
dropped in shock when she sang the first powerful notes of “I
Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables. An outburst of
cheering and applauding, accompanied by a standing ovation,
replaced mass ridicule. Even Jennifer Byrne said, The moment
Susan started to sing I did what everyone else in the audience
did. I jumped to my feet and started cheering because her voice
was so unbelievable." Accompanied by billowing orchestral
music, Susan’s powerful voice built to a crescendo to rouse full
emotional impact.
In his post-performance feedback, Piers Morgan, a second
judge, said, “When you stood there with that cheeky grin and
said, ‘I want to be like [English musical theatre star] Elaine
Paige,’ everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now.
That was stunning, an incredible performance! Amazing! I’m
reeling from shock!” Amanda Holden added from the judges’
panel, “I honestly think that we were all being very cynical . . .
and I just want to say that it was a complete privilege listening
to that!” Even the infamously acerbic Simon Cowell swooned.
From that one performance, Susan became an international
sensation. To date, she has released six studio albums and her
concerts sell out around the world.
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17 Smith, 2009
18 Smith, 2009#
Gerald Walton
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The Boyle story is an example of a true-life fairy tale that
delights those whose worldview centres upon contrived
Disneyesque happy endings and the American Dream ideology.
She faced mass public condemnation in the form of classism and
ageism, but was ultimately vindicated. For many, she triumphed
not just over a televised moment of adversity, but also over a
lifetime of it in relation to her plain looks and material poverty.
Susan Boyle is celebrated not just because of her vocal talent,
but because she is the proverbial ugly duckling-turned-swan.
Her story tugs at heartstrings, personifying much-beloved fairy
tales and feel-good happy endings. It became a musical titled “I
Dreamed a Dream” that was produced in 2012.19
Not begrudging Susan her sudden fame and fortune, I throw
cold water in the face of the usual interpretation of the story,
which is that adversity yielded to triumph. The story is bought
and sold as a celebration of underdog dreams coming true
against all odds. Regrettably, the packaging of the Susan Boyle
story is a superficial interpretation and, for me, far from heart-
warming. What happened to Susan was an event that played
out in a drama of two acts. Thematically, the first act is about
the rejection of those deemed inferior or unworthy based on
surface appearances and the negative stereotypes that are
associated with them. The second act, by contrast, is about
celebrating and embracing her only when she proves herself
worthy. Contrived though they were to incite heightened
emotional responses, the dramatic moments captured before she
began to sing are a harbinger of unbridled social prejudices.
Simply put, Susan Boyle was bullied on a mass, international
scale. She was judged instantly as ugly, awkward, and stupid, as
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19 Tartaglione, 2012
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different and thereby inferior to the rest of us. That is, until she
started to sing.
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But, what if her voice had met the initial grim expectations that
were so evident as she advanced towards the microphone,
namely, that she would sing as plainly as she looked? What
would have happened then? As many other contestants have
experienced on such televised contests, Susan would have been
driven from the stage, shamed by the unpleasant blaaaat as the
judges pounded their “X” buzzers, and scolded her for her
mediocre talent, or lack of it, entirely. The sneers and sniggers
of mass derision would have been valorised. Eager for the next
contestant, the audience and judges alike would have delighted
in seeing her walk off the stage into obscurity.
I do not use the word “bullied” lightly to describe what
happened to Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. I do not
employ the word liberally to describe everyday emotional
injuries, affronts, or abuses. Rather, I use it in a very specific
sense and in a very different way than do most researchers and
educators such as Olweus20 who focuses on behaviour, Harris21
who examines bullying in the context of interpersonal
dynamics, and Hazler, Carney, and Granger22 who promote
theory on the neurological factors that influence bullying. While
such accounts offer valuable multidimensional angles from
which to consider factors that give rise to bullying, the issue of
social difference is, broadly speaking, given short shrift. I know
this in part because I was bullied as a child; I was deemed, and
mistreated as, different. Many years later and through the eyes
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20 Olweus, 1993
21 Harris, 2009
22 Hazler, Carney, and Granger, 2011#
Gerald Walton
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of a researcher, I have to wonder about the validity of
scholarship on bullying that glosses over difference.
Initially, Susan Boyle was also bullied for her social difference
from the younger, evidently more sophisticated audience. To
put it in scholarly language, she was “Othered” and thus
subjugated (for a more in-depth discussion about Othering, see
Jensen23 ). For me, her experience mirrors what happens in
schools, except without the happy ending that she enjoyed.
Children and youth bully each other predominantly because of
social difference on any number of grounds, including race,
gender expression, real or perceived sexuality, class, physical
ability, mental ability, physical attractiveness, body size and
shape, social competence, and so on. These are aspects that
have social status, meaning that they are, as McMullin24 puts it,
“differences that matter” 25. Such differences matter because,
beyond surface variation, they represent allocations and
intersections of social power, privilege, and disadvantage.26
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Attempts to grapple with bullying have, in general terms,
failed.27 As long as they stay the present course of modifying
individual and interpersonal behaviour between and among
students, they will continue to fail. Jeong and Lee28 make the
point even stronger in their argument that, from their research
sample of 7001 students across 195 schools, anti-bullying
programs may even increase bullying. They theorize that bullies
may actively choose to disregard and adapt around what they
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23 Jensen, 2011
24 McMullin, 2004
25 McMullin, 2004, p. 6
26 Dhamoon, 2009
27 Swidney, 2010; Merrell, Gueldner, Ross, and Isava, 2008
28 Jeong and Lee, 2013#
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learn through anti-bullying programs. Anti-bullying work
constitutes an overall failure, even when limited and temporary
success of particular approaches are considered, because,
despite all of the research and programs that are purported to
reduce bullying, it remains a widely misunderstood
phenomenon. The Susan Boyle video offers instruction to a
better understanding, but only if we can move past the
sensational and struggle with the difficult issues of prejudice,
discrimination, and social difference that are integral, yet largely
ignored, components of bullying. The question is: Why is there
so little struggle in the first place?
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Stepping away from the glitz and glamour of televised talent
shows, bullying in schools plays out for many children as a
story devoid of triumph. Portrayals in news media are
predictable: An incident garners attention from journalists,
usually because a bullied child has committed suicide. Shock
ensues, followed by the inevitable question, “What can we do to
stop bullying?” So-called talking heads are called upon to give
their opinion, as I have on numerous occasions. Typically, the
issues that we are asked are about how to reduce aggression,
what to do about cyberbullying, and how bystanders might be
key players in both stopping and supporting bullies. After a
flurry of coverage over a few days, each story fades and rarely
sees the camera spotlight again. Later, another tragedy captures
media attention and the cycle of bullying discourse begins anew.
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As I have argued elsewhere29, an additional problem is that
teacher education and educational research are enamoured by
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29#Walton,#2011#
Gerald Walton
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evidence-based solutions to any sort of problem that adversely
affects students, teachers, and pedagogy. Bullying experts have
told us that, based on their analytical “findings” that are
achieved through methodological technologies, bullying
happens between and among students and is harmful to them.
But to offer such findings, bullying had to be operationalized in
the first place so that it could be measured, analysed, and
ultimately regulated. This meant identifying a particular realm
or expression that constitutes “bullying” through social science
methods. In short, bullying was discursively created. Bullying
behaviours and their scarring effects both of which are real
were allocated by social scientists to a discursive realm, and that
realm was, and continues to be, “bullying.” Dan Olweus is
principally known as a pioneer of this research in Norway
during the 1960s, even though Frederic Burk explored the
particulars of bullying much earlier, in 1897. Burk suggested
that bullying involves “some form of . . . inborn tendency of the
strong to oppress the weak, etc.”30 Olweus later offered an idea
that extends that of Burk. Translated to English in 1993,
Olweus operationalized bullying as when a student “is exposed,
repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one
or more other students.”31 Such conceptualizations are what
Neil Duncan refers to as the “bullying orthodoxy, meaning
adherence to the discursive norms, which are repeatedly
reinforced, of how bullying is defined, explained, and
addressed.32
Drawing lines around what bullying means that is, building
discursive terrain was a highly successful project, if success is
measured by influence. All over the world, bullying has been
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30 Burke, 1897, p. 366
31 Olweus, 1993, p. 54
32 Duncan, 2012#
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added to the “thou shalt not” list of school conduct codes,
while social science researchers continue to mine it for its
capacities to make change in schools. The utility of findings is
to design policies and programs, the purpose of which is to
mould and modify student behaviour so that bullying is reduced
to rare occurrences, if it happens at all. Yet, bullying persists as
a prominent feature of schools and school life, despite efforts to
contain it. How, then, do we make sense of the rupture between
problem solving and problem-persistence? Have researchers, as
holders of elite knowledge, failed to see what is directly in front
of them? Are they wilfully ignorant, electing to not pursue a
more difficult investigation into the grounds of bullying?
And, what counts as knowledge? If we take anti-bullying policy
at face value and recognize that children and youth of today
continue to bully each other viciously and unremittingly, not
unlike the behaviours of many adults when grouped together,
then we have to admit that the knowledge that anti-bullying
policy hinges upon, and bullying discourse itself, is either faulty
or partial, or both. Perhaps it is prudent to consider not only
what counts as knowledge in the regime of evidence-based
metrics for policy-making, but what forms of knowledge
constitute that which we, to put it in Deborah Britzman’s
words, “cannot bear to know.” 33 Taking a psychoanalytic
approach to knowledge, Britzman asks how it is that “difficult
knowledge” remains largely unclaimed in teacher education.34
She asks, echoing German sociologist and philosopher Theodor
Adorno, how teacher education managed to leave behind
difficult knowledge that arose from Auschwitz and what ethical
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33 Britzman, 2000, p. 201
34 Britzman, 2000, p. 201#
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responsibilities might be held by education after the fact. She
asks,
How is it that so much of our past century remains unclaimed in
education? How can teacher education come to make itself
relevant to . . . ethical obligations? If teacher education could
begin to reclaim difficult knowledge, what would be the work of
teacher educators?35
If Adorno were alive today, he might be asking the same
questions of education, post-Bosnia-Herzegovina, post-Rwanda,
and post-Darfur. More generally but pointedly, Britzman asks
how the world might come to matter in teacher education. It is
not that educators do not teach about genocides and other
horrors of human design, but, as Adorno noted after World
War II, students come to know facts and figures in a technical
and mechanical way, but lack the understanding of their
profound philosophical and ethical implications. Britzman
asserts that, in an age of professionalism and managerialism,
education is gripped by an incapacity to reconcile its own
vulnerabilities and failures.
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We have yet to grapple with what knowledge does to teachers,
particularly the difficult knowledge of social catastrophe,
evidence of woeful disregard, experiences of social violence,
illness, and death, and most generally, with what it means to
come to terms with various kinds of trauma, both individual and
collective. What makes trauma traumatic is the incapacity to
respond adequately, accompanied by feelings of profound
helplessness and loss, and a sense that no other person or group
will intervene.36
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35 Britzman, 2000, p. 201
36 Britzman, 2000, p. 202#
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Such helplessness is expressed poignantly by one of the school
administrators in the 2011 U.S. documentary film Bully.37
Patrolling the halls of her school, Assistant Principal Kim
Lockwood says, “Tell me how to fix this.” She repeats it for
emphasis.“ Tell me how to fix this. I don’t know. I don’t have
any magic.” Later, upset parents complain to her about how
their son is bullied ruthlessly and repeatedly on the school bus,
events that are documented by the videographer over several
days of shooting. Lockwood replies that many kids have a
difficult time on the bus and that she can have their son take a
different bus to school. She then follows up with the rather
astonishing and contradictory claim that “I’ve ridden [that bus].
I’ve been on that route . . . They are just as good as gold.”
Through glib cliché, she invalidates the parents’ claims and
ignores the fact that most children are likely to behave better in
the presence of authority figures.
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Lockwood’s first statement was more honest than her
subsequent defence. Echoing the sentiments of many educators,
to be sure, Lockwood really does not know how to protect kids
from bullying. But the effect of her statement that kids on the
bus are as “good as gold” negates their son’s video-documented
experiences. It constitutes administrative disregard in the guise
of concern and promises of action. At least Lockwood admits
that bullying is a problem when she says, Tell me how to fix
this.” Such recognition is quite unlike Superintendent Vickie
Reed who said,
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The perception that the school is a haven for bullies is just not
true. Do we have some bullying problems? I’m sure we do. All
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37 Lowen, Hirsch, Waitt, Warren, and Hirsch, 2011
Gerald Walton
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school systems do. But is it a major overarching concern in our
high school? No, it is not.
Protecting the school, as she must in her administrative role,
Reed denies the extent of bullying with certainty. Her woeful
disregard aside, Lockwood’s intentions were undoubtedly good.
The problem with good intentions is that everyone seems to
have them and they are easy to claim; they can also hinder
seeing the problem for what it is, namely, a broader social
problem at its core, and not a behavioural one. Claims of good
intentions can protect us from having to face or grapple with
difficult knowledge that defies comprehension. What is even
more problematic is what amounts to administrative disregard
in the guise of concern and promise of remediation that will
never take place. “I'm sorry about this but we will take care of
it,” Lakewood assures the parents as they leave her office. The
mother expresses doubt as they walk back to their car. “What
did she say when we were leaving, that she’d take care of it? I’m
pretty sure that’s what she said [last] fall. She politicianed us.
She’s not going to do anything.” Lockwood, like many of her
counterparts, does indeed not know what to do, but she has to
appear and act as though she does when she meets with upset
parents.
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For Britzman, Lockwood might be an example of how it is that
between education and the world lays a rupture of conscience.
She asks, “What inhibits our capacity to respond ethically to
others, to learn something from people we will never meet and
to be affected by histories that we may never live?”.38 If we can
bear to learn from histories that are not ours, if we can grapple
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38 Britzman, 2000, p. 202
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with difficult knowledge, if the world were to come to matter in
pedagogical industries, then perhaps education might become
less about administrative management of teachers and children,
and more about truth that matters in and to the world. But as
Britzman acknowledges, “there is nothing easy about
encountering histories of woeful disregard.”39
* * *
I empathize with Assistant Principal Lockwood. I, too, do not
have magic or formula that would eliminate bullying from
schools. No one does. Bullying is a tenacious problem and its
antidote for schools eludes researchers and educators, alike,
despite claims to expertise and knowledge. Careers, including
mine, have been built on investigating, analysing, and theorizing
how bullying happens and what can be done about it. There are
no policy approaches, intervention strategies, legislative
regulations, criminal laws, or blueprints for administrative and
pedagogical leadership that would incite such widespread
change in schools that bullying would be reduced to being a
minor problem, perhaps not even a problem at all. Preventative
and interventionist tactics can resolve bullying incidents and
bring about change in school cultures, but only in the short-
term. A long-term solution remains as elusive as the proverbial
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, despite the sheer volume
of programs, policies, and practices aimed at finding it.
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I propose, then, that admitting our collective failure is the first
step to addressing why and how bullying in schools persists.
Perhaps this admission is a pre-requisite for entering the realm
of difficult knowledge. By “our” failure, I mean researchers,
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39 Britzman, 2000, p. 204
Gerald Walton
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educators, parents, and others who, with commitment,
sincerity, and good intentions, have invested much work for
positive change for children and youth in schools. I fully expect
resounding opposition to the contention that, despite efforts, we
have failed to win the “war on bullying,” to use common jargon
found in mainstream journalism. 40 Investments of time and
energy are at risk, and much-loved worldviews about triumph-
over-adversity are threatened. Yet, the evidence is clear that
bullying persists despite widespread and sustained efforts
against it. A small cadre of researchers and theorists has said as
much 41 including leading anti-bullying researcher Dorothy
Espelage who said, “It’s a mess. I want to bang my head against
the wall”.42
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Step one, then, is to admit defeat. The next step is to look very
closely and openly at why and how bullying persists. Most
teachers, parents, and school administrators care about the
safety and welfare of students and would like to see bullying
become a social problem of the past, the social equivalent of
polio or diphtheria, all but eliminated in so-called developed
countries. However, neither lack of care nor lack of industry is
the issue. On the contrary, the work being done to address
bullying is both continuous and fervent. Nevertheless, the news
is grim; revamped programs, new pedagogical approaches,
updated policies, and innovative research methodologies have
not changed the discouraging status quo, nor have cutting-edge
metrics on how to measure bullying and its effects. The issue is
not that the social science is flawed, though an overabundance
of it is certainly tedious, derivative, and compounds the
problem with oversaturation. The pivotal issue, one that
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40 For instance, see Alcinii, 2013
41 See elaboration in Walton and Niblett, 2012
42 Quote in Swidney, 2010, p. 23
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remains undertheorized, is that bullying as a phenomenon
remains misunderstood. Elsewhere, I refer to this as the
“problem trap” 43 , meaning that we think we know what
bullying is (behavioural, interpersonal) and, like centrifugal
force, anti-bullying approaches gravitate around it. It is not the
specific approaches that are necessarily faulty; rather, it is
misguided collective knowledge about bullying that informs
those approaches in the first place.
#
The#paradoxical#problem#is#that#we#do#not#know#what#we#do#not#
know.#Given#the#prominence#of#the#issue#in#public#discourse#and
journalism, it would seem that most people think that they
understand bullying perfectly well, that it functions as necessary
character-building, or that it is harmful behaviour that should
be stopped. In academic contexts, the widespread and prevailing
notion seems to be that more research is needed and that more
research is always better. The common refrain is that we need
to keep finding gaps in the knowledge and fill them with better
research-based approaches and strategies. In the case of
bullying, more research is not better, contrary to research
industry ideology. In fact, I would argue, based on my many
years of adjudicating proposals on bullying for major
international educational conferences, that instead of doing
more research, we need to stop our industry, take a step back,
look at the problem in broad contexts rather than micro-
moments, and go back to the drawing board. A disavowal of
the bullying orthodoxy is called for. In short, we need to stop
before we continue to think.
* * *
At Coney Island in New York City, an open-air paintball game
stood on the boardwalk until its demolition in 2010. Called
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43 Walton, 2010#
Gerald Walton
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Shoot the Freak (see Figure 1), contestants would shoot
paintballs at unarmed “Live Human Targets” (see Figure 2)
who were clad in hard plastic protective-wear.#
Figure 1: Shoot the Freak paintball gallery, Coney Island, 2006.
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Figure 2: Close-up of "Live Human Freaks."#
Bullying and the philosophy of shooting freaks
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I stared in fascination when my partner and I stumbled on it
during a visit to New York in 2006. Though merely a game that
is meant to be fun and amusing, it represents for me the primary
way that bullying plays out and harkens the difficult knowledge
that is unbearable to know. If we can get past the resistance that
it exists as mere entertainment, we can draw parallels between
“shooting freaks” and bullying in schools. Freaks are the
outsiders, those who do not fit in with the norms of the
majority, those who are different or perceived that way. Such
Othering is represented in pop culture, such as FX Network’s
American Horror Story: Freakshow where “freaks” are targeted
and persecuted.
Bullying reveals similar and obvious patterns of persecution.
Losers. Retards. Geeks. Bitches. Fags. Fatties. Chinks.
Ragheads. Such live human targets exist in every school. The
patterns of persecution are neither new nor revelatory, just
disregarded. In typical educational policy and research, lip
service is paid to “diversity” but addressing social difference in
any meaningful way gives rise to criticism and termination of
discussions.44 I have witnessed such resistance on numerous
occasions at teacher conferences and on social media. “Too
theoretical! What about practice?” is a tedious but common
response. Still, my view remains that, if we were to engage with
the messy realities of difference and grapple with the dynamics
of privilege, stigma, prejudice, and hate and how they shift in
accordance with wider social and political contexts we might
come to see that anti-bullying discourse and its industry have
missed the mark.
#
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44 For elaboration, see Walton, 2011
Gerald Walton
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We might also be able to move beyond the stultifying mountain
of research that has largely been for naught. Then, we might
begin to have a very different conversation about bullying.
Documentary films such as Bully might be able to address social
difference meaningfully, rather than function as a venue for
hackneyed notions of “Let’s stop bullying.” Maybe then we
might be closer to being able to say that the world matters in
education and education matters in the world.
!
References
Alcinii, Daniele.”Waging the war against bullying”. Fairview
Post 6 Nov. 2013.
Britzman, P. Deborah. ”Teacher education in the confusion of
our times. Journal of Teacher Education 51.3 (2000):
200-205.
Burk, L. Frederic. “Teasing and bullying”. Pedagogical
Seminary 4 (1897): 336 371.
Dhamoon, Rita. “Identity / difference politics: How difference is
produced, and why it matters”. Vancouver BC: UBC
Press, 2009.
Duncan, Neil. Personal correspondence. 2012.
Harris, J. Monica.”Taking bullying and rejection
(inter)personally: Benefits of a social psychological
approach to peer victimization”. Ed. Monica J. Harris.
New York, NY: Springer, 2009, 3-23.
Hazler, J. Richard, Carney, V. JoyLynn, and Granger, A.
Douglas.”Integrating biological measures into the study
of bullying”. Journal of Counseling and Development, 84
(2006): 298307.
Jensen, Q. Sune. Othering, identity formation and agency”.
Qualitative Studies, 2:2 (2011): 63-78.
Bullying and the philosophy of shooting freaks
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Jeong, Seokjin and Lee, Hyan Byung. ”A multilevel examination
of peer victimization and bullying preventions in schools”.
Journal of Criminology, (2013):
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jcrim/2013/735397/
Hirsch, Lee, Lowen, Cynthia, Foudy, Susan and Waitt, Cindy.
(Producers) & Hirsch, Lee (Director). Bully [Motion
picture]. US: Cinereach, 2011.
McMullin, Ann Julue.”Understanding social inequality:
Intersections of class, age, gender, ethnicity, and race in
Canada.” Don Mills, ON: Oxford University, 2004.
Merrell, Kenneth W, Gueldner, Barbara A, Ross, Scott W and
Isava, Duane M. ”How effective are school bullying
intervention programs? A meta-analysis of intervention
research.” School Psychology Quarterly, 23.1 (2008), 26-
42.
Olweus, Dan. Bullying at school: What we know and what we
can do. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell, 1993.
Smith, Steve. ”Exclusive: Agony of TV teenager filmed sneering
during Susan Boyle’s debut.” Daily record 22 Nov. 2009.
Swidney, Neil. “The secret to stopping a bully? After decades of
research, no one has yet found a way to reduce bullying
in US schools. But in the shadows, you just might find the
solution.” Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, 2 May 2010,
pp. 20-23, 32-37.
Tartaglione, Nancy. ”Fox Searchlight to develop Susan Boyle
story based on musical ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’” Deadline,
Nov. 23, 2012.
Walton, Gerald. ”The problem trap: Implications of Policy
Archaeology Methodology for anti-bullying policies.”
Journal of Education Policy, 25.2: (2010), 135 150.
Walton, Gerald. “Spinning our wheels: Reconceptualizing
bullying beyond behaviour-focused approaches.”
Gerald Walton
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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of
Education, 32.1 (2011): 131 144.
Walton, Gerald and Niblett, Blair. “Investigating the problem
of bullying through photo elicitation.” Journal of Youth
Studies, 16. 5 (2013): 646-662.
Gerald Walton, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education
at Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. #
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... Horton, 2021;Huuki, 2018;Schott & Søndergaard, 2014a). Vaikka yhteiskuntatietoisia, kriittisiä näkökulmia kiusaamistutkimukseen alkoikin jälleen ilmestyä vuosituhannen vaihteessa, ovat ne kuitenkin kansainvälisesti edelleen marginaalissa psykologiseen tutkimukseen nähden (Schott & Søndergaard, 2014a;Walton, 2015). Suomessa ja erityisesti suomen kielellä muualta kuin psykologiasta nousevaa koulukiusaamistutkimusta on vielä hyvin vähän. ...
... esim. Horton, 2019;Schott & Søndergaard, 2014a;Walton, 2015). Olosuhteiden ollessa toisenlaiset relevantiksi ajateltu tieto voisi kuitenkin muodostua myös erilaiseksi. ...
... Koulukiusaamista koskevassa tutkimuksessa määritelmä on kuitenkin tullut myös haastetuksi (esim. Agevall, 2008;Canty ym., 2016;Horton, 2019;Juva ym., 2020;Schott & Søndergaard, 2014a;Walton, 2015). Koulukiusaamista koskeva tutkimus jakautuukin kahteen hyvin erilaiseen tutkimusnäkökulmaan, joiden eroa on sanoitettu eri tavoin. ...
Thesis
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In this doctoral thesis of education, I examine Finnish expert discourses on school bullying in professional literature and policy documents. My research is discursive and based on a post-structuralist research tradition, whereby discourses are not only thought to describe the world, but also to produce social reality. Expert discourse has great power to define and constrain how conflict situations and peer challenges in school are interpreted and addressed. Internationally research on bullying is divided into two research perspectives. Individualised research focuses on the risk factors and behaviours of the individual. The aim is to manage and solve bullying through large-scale surveys, building on them to construct context-independent intervention models and targeting remedial actions at individual children. Critical bullying research, on the other hand, views bullying situations as complex phenomena linked to broad social and societal contexts involving ordinary children. Critical bullying research seeks to identify and remedy the contextual factors that produce emotional or physical violence against others. These factors include racism and heteronormativity in society or in the school environment. This study shows that Finnish expert discourse on school bullying rely heavily on an individualised research perspective. The causes of bullying are seen to lie in the typical behaviour and characteristics of individual children. Circumstances such as racism, the school environment or past events are not recognised as relevant, and bullying as a phenomenon is thus decontextualised. Although the expert discourses focus on educational contexts, there is little room for education or opportunities to learn. Instead, bullying is prevented or resolved by disciplining and controlling the children who are perceived as bullies and victims. I suggest that instead, education could be an intersection of different research perspectives on peer conflicts: taking into account the knowledge of individuality and difference provided by psychological research, perspectives on humanity and ethics from philosophical research, and views on societal phenomena such as normativity provided by social sciences. At the crossroads of these different views, education can play a unique role in producing new knowledge on how to make school contexts more convenient for children and young people.
... To downplay the importance of social context in bullying is problematic, since the underlying processes of inclusion, exclusion, and social difference, which contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of bullying in schools (Carrera et al., 2011;Horton & Forsberg, 2019;Walton, 2015), may then be overshadowed and insufficiently managed (Schott & Søndergaard, 2014;Temko, 2019). Some researchers have thus argued for the importance of accounting for social group and group dynamics, rather than conceptualising bullying in terms of the fixed or static roles of "bullies" and "victims" (Carrera et al., 2011). ...
... Bullying, "Sameness", and "Difference" School bullying researchers have emphasised bullying as tied not primarily to individual pupils, but to normative categorisations and beliefs regarding ethnicity, social class, disability/ability, sexuality, age, and/or religion (Dixon et al., 2008;Thornberg, 2015b;Walton, 2015). As Walton (2015), for example, argues, bullying is "a broader social problem at its core, and not a behavioural one" (p. ...
... Bullying, "Sameness", and "Difference" School bullying researchers have emphasised bullying as tied not primarily to individual pupils, but to normative categorisations and beliefs regarding ethnicity, social class, disability/ability, sexuality, age, and/or religion (Dixon et al., 2008;Thornberg, 2015b;Walton, 2015). As Walton (2015), for example, argues, bullying is "a broader social problem at its core, and not a behavioural one" (p. 27), thus pointing to an understanding of bullying as larger than individuals and individual characteristics. ...
Thesis
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The aim of this dissertation is to explore and deepen the understanding of pupils’ experiences of bullying and their reflections on why bullying may occur and be maintained in school, despite pupils’ understanding that bullying is wrong. This aim is examined in four articles. The results highlight how pupils emphasise the importance of the social perception of individual pupils. Pupils may thus assume different participant roles in bullying situations to emphasise, maintain, or protect their own social position in the group, but also in an effort to reduce the risk of being bullied. The participating pupils raise the importance of social stigmatisation as a significant social process in bullying and highlight social stigmatisation processes as closely related to social perceptions of “normality” and “difference”. Social stigmatisation is, in turn, related to processes of inclusion and exclusion. The results point to the importance of the institutional constraints of the school setting in the occurrence and maintenance of bullying, not least in how pupils relate these constraints to social status, friendship, and bullying. In conclusion, the results of the dissertation highlight the importance of understanding bullying as a socially intertwined phenomenon and part of a social ecology. Not only do societal norms shape pupils’ perceptions of how pupils “should” be as a girl or boy in school, but the social contexts of schools and classrooms are also significant for what is socially valued or rejected. The results of the dissertation underline that the social ecology of bullying is closely linked to pupils’ experiences of social marginalisation, loneliness, and bullying.
... There is some criticism that research on youth bullying is not linked to the social context. Most researchers are interested in individual problems and behavior (Walton, 2015). ...
... In this sense, bullying is neither a visual act nor a mere offensive behavior. It is a "discursive practice" that the bully uses to attack the opponent (Walton, 2015). ...
... The important thing is that the difference becomes a problem that makes people less accepting of others. This is also missing from current studies of bullying (Walton, 2015). ...
Article
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This paper argues against Western theories and paradigms that are used to describe the problem of bullying. The behavioral science and psychological knowledge that dominate studies in other societies leads to emphasize that bullying in all societies is a result of aggression and those who are bullied are vulnerable victims. I need to indicate that when Thai scholars describe the problem of homophobic bullying they tend to overlook the social and cultural dimensions that have changed in the past 80 years, which often brings western thoughts to explain the non-normative gender. This leads to insults and discrimination that make parents feel ashamed of having gay, kathoey (m ale transgender) and tom (female transgender) children. In the Thai context, I argue that people who claim a non-normative gender identity are not passive victims but they can express thier sexual/gender identity within amusing bullying and teasing situations. This is an ever-evolving form of complex social relationship.
... While school bullying researchers have increasingly drawn upon Bronfenbrenner's (1977Bronfenbrenner's ( , 1979 social-ecological model to conceptualise bullying (e.g., Espelage & Swearer, 2010;Hong & Espelage, 2012), studies of school bullying utilising the social-ecological model have tended to restrict themselves to the microsystem (e.g., peer relations) and, to a lesser extent, the mesosystem (e.g., family or school influences) (Bouchard & Smith, 2017;Carrera et al., 2011;Horton, 2016a;Huang & Cornell, 2019). Despite some commentary on the importance of discourse to school bullying (e.g., Horton, 2016b;Walton, 2011Walton, , 2015, there has been a lack of empirical consideration of the importance of the exosystem (e.g., the role of the mass media), the macrosystem (e.g., the influence of dominant societal norms and values), or the chronosystem (e.g., the temporal context) (Bouchard & Smith, 2017;Horton, 2016a;Huang & Cornell, 2019). Espelage and Swearer (2010) have argued that while the "social-ecological framework illustrates the intricacy of human behavior, it is more difficult to empirically examine this complexity, particularly at the macrosystem level" (p.62). ...
... The statements of the principal and the superintendent highlight how the dominant bullying discourse places focus on the behaviour and character of individuals rather than a more extensive consideration of the ways in which social practices are influenced by discursive practices (Horton, 2016b;Walton, 2011Walton, , 2015. The statements also illustrate how bullying and harassment are often treated in terms of individual incidents that need to be dealt with, rather than as part of broader power relations. ...
... Such focus has entailed that relatively little consideration has been given to the contexts beyond individuals, such as as the exo, and macrosystem layers (Barboza et al., 2009). However, more and more school bullying researchers have come to pay attention to the ways in which school bullying interactions at the microsystem layer (i.e., the individuals directly involved in bullying situations) are connected to aspects at the exo, and macrosystem layers (e.g., Barboza et al., 2009;Espelage & De La Rue, 2011;Hong & Espelage, 2012), such as the school environment (e.g., Horton et al., 2020;Rajaleid et al., 2020;Roland & Galloway, 2010), including the design of playgrounds (e.g., Horton et al., 2020), and/or culturally influenced norms and beliefs (e.g., Thornberg, 2015;Walton, 2015). It has been underlined how teachers and other school personnel influence the social interactions at a given school, such as the social relationships between pupils and between pupils and school personnel (Rajaleid et al., 2020;Roland & Galloway, 2010). ...
Article
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Background Despite extensive work to prevent and reduce bullying interactions, bullying is still a prevalent problem in many schools. Children and youth also report that they feel involuntarily left out in school. While research has demonstrated the ways in which school bullying is connected to risk factors across different ecological layers or contexts, relatively little consideration has been given to aspects beyond the individuals directly involved in bullying situations, such as the exo, and macrosystem layers. Objective The aim of this study was to examine three pupils’ experiences of school loneliness and bullying. The following questions guided the study: (1) What are the pupils’ experiences of school loneliness and bullying? (2) How can the pupils’ experiences of school loneliness and bullying be understood beyond the individuals directly involved in the bullying situations? Method The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at one Swedish elementary school including 34 pupils and 7 teachers in two sixth-grade classes (i.e., ages 11–12). The findings presented in this article are based on a group interview with three pupils about their experiences of school loneliness and bullying. The interview responses are put into perspective using findings from the ethnographic fieldwork. The findings were analysed using methods from constructivist grounded theory and through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development as well as critical bullying studies. Results The findings of this study demonstrate the ways bullying interactions are tied to the different layers, or “settings”, of the bullying ecology as the pupils draw from a range of differential points of reference so as to socially evaluate themselves, their classmates, and their peers. Conclusions An important conclusion of the study is for principals, teachers, and other school personnel to consider more thoroughly the interdependent interplay of the bullying ecology.
... Moreover, the young people's acts of resistance towards such violence is discussed. Walton (2015) refers to narratives of bullying as 'difficult knowledge' and Tholander, Lindberg, and Svensson (2020: 372) propose that 'the difficult knowledge concerns both sides of the podium, the narrator as well as the audience' . Like Goodley and Runswick-Cole (2013), I acknowledge the dangers of (re)telling potentially traumatizing stories that may feed voyeuristic interest in tragic stories of disability, objectify embodied experiences of oppression, and contribute to victimising and pathologising young people with dwarfism. ...
Article
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This paper explores the first-hand accounts of disablist school violence experienced by young people with dwarfism during their secondary education in the United Kingdom. A narrative, qualitative methodology was utilised, which turned nineteen young people with dwarfism into the storytellers of their schooling experiences. Drawing together a poststructuralist approach to bullying and Critical Disability Studies, it presents and discusses stories of physical, cultural and systemic violence they experienced, as well as their resistance to it. In doing so, it challenges dominant discourses around disability and school violence, including the representation of disabled young people as ‘passive victims’ of school violence or disability being the trigger of such violence. Finally, it provides a sociological analysis of such violence, shifting the focus from the individualistic blame to the cultural, institutional and systemic underpinnings of such violence and the role of disablism in its perpetuation.
... Research on how social structures facilitate bullying has revealed how social processes related to normativity and deviance, social status, and issues related to gender and sexuality (e.g., Eriksen & Lyng, 2018;Thornberg, 2015;Rawlings, 2016;Ringrose & Renold, 2010;Walton & Niblett, 2013) are crucial in school bullying. However, school bullying research has long been focused on the individuals rather than on the social structures that facilitate bullying, which some believe explain why school bullying persists (Horton, 2016;Walton, 2015). One way forward is to conduct more research that attends to participants' perspectives and that tries to grasp how they make sense of their social worlds and how their perspectives can connect to wider social practices and conditions (Charmaz, 2021). ...
Article
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School bullying is a complex social phenomenon in need of further exploration regarding its connections to contextual aspects, group norms, and societal structures. This calls for research approaches that can get closer to participants’ experiences and the different social processes involved in school bullying. One such approach is the constructivist grounded theory (CGT) approach, which aims to be attentive to participants’ main concerns and social processes through both analysis and data collection. This approach comes as a theory-method package with its use of a symbolic interactionism perspective. In this paper, I will show how CGT as a theory-method package, as well as symbolic interactionism and sociology of childhood, has been helpful in my research on school bullying (focusing on social structures, norms, and processes). More specifically, I give different examples from the whole research process, e.g., maintaining a focus on participants’ main concerns, the coding process, being guided by sensitizing concepts, addressing issues of social justice and equity — and overall forming and maintaining a theoretically and ethically prepared researcher role. I also suggest that this approach is helpful in dealing with ethical and theoretical challenges when researching topics known to negatively affect people’s lives and wellbeing — and when the social context makes it difficult for participants to address victimizing structures, positions, and processes.
... Calling on pupils to intervene in or report bullying situations fails to adequately account for the stigma processes involved and the risks associated with intervening and reporting. This study highlights the importance of working preventively in schools, classrooms and peer groups, by acknowledging the interconnectedness of social categorisations, stigma processes and broader societal power relations, and promoting inclusive social relations based on understanding and openness to difference (Davies 2011;Horton 2019b;Jacobson 2007;Walton 2015). Thus, rather than simply encouraging individual pupils to intervene as 'defenders' , or to report bullying situations, our findings point to the importance of building caring and supportive school, classroom and peer cultures together with pupils, wherein there is a collective readiness to stand up for 'victims' and wherein there is no longer a need to fear being singled out. ...
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The article explores 5th and 6th grade pupils' reflections on why pupils may refrain from intervening in bullying, despite understanding that bullying is wrong. The findings are based on focus group interviews conducted with 74 Swedish school pupils, who were asked for their perspectives on the various participant roles depicted in a bullying vignette. The findings were analysed using methods from constructivist grounded theory and through the theoretical lens of Goffman's concept of social stigma. The interviewees emphasised the implications of being positioned as the 'victim' , including being socially stigmatised, isolated, denigrated and further bullied, and suggested that the fear of being 'singled out' would be a main concern for pupils, and hence the driving force behind why they may refrain from intervening in defence of a victimised peer. The study thus highlights the associated processes of social stigmatisation and the non-intervention of pupils in school bullying situations.
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The past 30 years has seen a significant increase in research interest and public discussion about school bullying and an associated diversification in perspectives on the issue. In attempting to bridge divisions between different research paradigms, there have been calls for cross-paradigmatic dialogue. In this short think piece, I seek to facilitate such dialogue by addressing the question of power and considering its analytical implications for school bullying research, anti-bullying initiatives, and education more generally. In doing so, I relate the discussion to the various systems of the widely used social–ecological framework. I argue that a focus on power suggests a need for more consideration of the various levels of the social–ecological framework, more consideration of the importance of social difference, and more consideration of the importance of the school context and issues of power and resistance therein.
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The article examines the potentials of the concept of othering to describe identity formation among ethnic minorities. First, it outlines the history of the concept, its contemporary use, as well as some criticisms. Then it is argued that young ethnic minority men in Denmark are subject to intersectional othering, which contains elements of exoticist fascination of the other. On the basis of ethnographic material, it is analysed how young marginalized ethnic minority men react to othering. Two types of reactions are illustrated: 1) capitalization on being positioned as the other, and 2) refusing to occupy the position of the other by disidentification and claims to normality. Finally, it is argued that the concept of othering is well suited for understanding the power structures as well as the historic symbolic meanings conditioning such identity formation, but problematic in terms of agency.
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The goal of this study is twofold: (i) to develop an explanatory model to examine the relationship between school environment/climate and peer victimization and (ii) to determine whether previous models of preventive strategies in a single school or district could be expanded to the nationally representative sample of adolescents across multiple schools. The analyses in the current study are based on data from the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) 2005-2006 US study, and the sample consists of 7,001 students from 195 different schools. The findings reveal that students attending schools in which bullying prevention programs are implemented are more likely to have experienced peer victimization, compared to those attending schools without bullying prevention. Study limitations and implications for future research are discussed.
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There is little agreement in teacher education as to what counts as knowledge and how individuals come to be affected by ideas, people, and events in their world. Whereas teacher education seems to debate questions about the adequacy of its structures, it has forgotten its place in the world and its obligations to world making. However, teacher education has not yet grappled with a theory of knowledge that can analyze social fractures, profound social violence, decisions of disregard, and how from such devastations, psychological significance can be made. Returning to an earlier history and drawing upon philosophers who were also concerned with the relation between teacher education and social reparation, this article advocates for a view of teacher education that can tolerate existential and ontological difficulties, psychical complexities, and learning from history.
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Bullying is a tenacious problem in schools. Usual strategies that attempt to regulate behaviour and improve interpersonal relationships have not yielded significant and sustained change in school cultures of violence. Usually overlooked in programmes, policies and research are indications of how social differences are a factor of bullying behaviours. Such differences mirror broader categories that are socially significant, such as race, religion, gender, physical and mental ability and sexual orientation. We employed photo elicitation methods to acquire and assess students' responses to images we collected of children and youth who represent a wide spectrum of human diversity. We asked participants to ‘think out loud’ about who would mostly likely be targeted for bullying and to explain why. Our analysis of the data indicates that our participants are aware of how social difference is linked to bullying. The themes we identify lead us to endorse bridging the gap between current anti-bullying strategies and theory and approaches that account for social difference.
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The emergence of minimally intrusive techniques for collecting biological data creates a case for the inclusion of these data into bullying research models. This integration would produce a more comprehensive understanding of the problems and better direct intervention and prevention techniques, which are currently based primarily on self‐report, peer nomination, and observational research data. The authors make the case for including biological measures in research on bullying and present sample research questions and potential counseling practice applications.
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James Scheurich argues that practices of policy – normalized over time through repetition – serve three purposes. They structure social problems for which policy is designed to address; construct certain people, implicitly or explicitly, as problem individuals; and shape policy solutions. Following Foucault, he offers what he calls Policy Archaeology Methodology as an approach to policy analysis that emphasizes how particular social problems (but not others) are socially constructed in certain ways within certain political and social contexts. The purpose of policy archaeology as a mode of analysis is ‘to investigate … the grid of conditions, assumptions, forces which make the emergence of a social problem … possible’. Drawing from his method of inquiry, I identify, through examination of policy documents, how the problem of bullying in schools has come to be understood in certain ways (the dominant narrative) and how policy solutions are constrained and limited accordingly, thereby confounding their purpose. I suggest that Scheurich’s perspective provides a way of addressing bullying that accounts for complexity in ways that current approaches mostly do not even consider.
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Bullying behaviours remain common in schools despite an abundance of policies and programs aimed at curbing them. In this paper, the author argues that such policies and programs are problematic not because they are flawed in themselves, but because they draw from the dominant and usual ideas about what bullying is taken to be. These ideas are presented as more fundamental problems that contribute to 'wheel-spinning' where efforts to reduce bullying are concerned. Key concepts that inform such ideas, specifically safety and diversity, are interrogated. The paper advocates for a new framework by which to think about and conceptualize bullying that moves away from those that highlight behavioural and developmental perspectives. Implications for education administration, especially with regard to supporting marginalized students, are explored.