A Construction of Bullying in a Primary School in an Underprivileged Community: An Ecological Case Study

Abstract

This article is based on a master's dissertation completed through the University of Pretoria. Conversations around behavioural problems in three primary schools in Mamelodi, an underprivileged community in South Africa, explored contextually relevant ideas, in the form of discourse, focusing on the experience of bullying from the perspective of the participants (children identified by the school as engaging in bullying behaviour, school staff, and the children's families). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principals (school gatekeepers), and with other participants identified by each other during the interview process. Two figures prominent in the media on the topic at the time of this study were also included to provide discourses on bullying from wider society. An ecological approach within a post-modern social constructionist theoretical framework was used. In this article one ecological case study from one of the three schools was used to explore the aims. Discourse analysis was used in the construction of the various discourses emerging from the conversations. The participants' ideas around bullying are described, focusing on the discourse themes of "community and bullying", "profile of teachers in the community", "bad child, good child", "undefined problems" and "family discord". The aim of this article is to provide an ecological description of bullying, through discourse, in the context of this case study by exploring the participants' ideas on and experience of bullying in a primary school situated in the township of Mamelodi. Implications for intervention are considered.

Multiple perspectives on the targets and causes of school bullying

“…Inviting staff or teachers to identify students with specific participant roles of bullying is common in previous studies (Cranham & Carroll, 2003;Timm & Eskell-Blokland, 2011). It helps to find appropriate informants who are viewed as typical bullies or victims.…”

When bullying victims are also perpetrators: A qualitative study in high schools in Tshwane District, Gauteng Province

“…In extreme cases, bullying has been directly linked to suicide among adolescents (Cooper, Clements & Holt, 2012). Whilst evidence has identified bullying as one of the key contributors to violence and abuse among school children (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017;UNESCO, 2017), it has been argued that the increasing rates of bullying among South African learners mimic and are influenced by the spiralling levels of violence and crime in the country (Timm & Eskell-Blokland, 2011) This article is part of a bigger mixed-method study conducted to understand the impact of bullying on perpetrators and victims of bullying among 460 public high school learners in theTshwane District township, South Africa. The quantitative arm of the study reported 21,96% as victims, 9,57% as perpetrators and 42,39% as both victims and perpetrators (Shiba & Mokwena, 2023).…”

Early adolescent bystanders' experiences of school bullying in a South African school

“…The Youth Research Unit at the University of South Africa reported that in 2012, 34.4% of learners in schools sampled in Gauteng confirmed that they had been victims of bullying and 67.7% of participants reported that bullying had increased in the past two years preceding the report (Lass & Boezaart, 2014). The increasing rate of bullying in South African schools could be explained as being in response to the many violent acts in South African communities with which the in-school adolescents are conversant and that are mimicked in school contexts (Timm & Eskell-Blokland, 2011).…”