Children's strategies in addressing bullying situations in day care and preschool

Abstract

Bullying is a common phenomenon in early childhood education. It is also difficult to erase from the classroom activities and it may have long-lasting effects on children. In this article, bullying is studied from the perspective of the victims. Three-to seven-year-old children answered the question 'another child comes to tease you, what do you do?'. Children's strategies were classified as accommodative, participative, dominant, withdrawn or uncertain [Reunamo, J. T. (2007). Adaptation and agency in early childhood education. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 15(3), 365-377]. The classified interview data were inserted to the observation data of children's activities. The participatory strategies for tackling bullying increased with age. The different strategies described in the interview were connected with children's observed action. These tendencies resulting in different kinds of learning are discussed. Both the victims and the bully should get practice with a rich variety of strategies for participation to find more positive strategies for interaction.

Methodological Strategies to Listen to Children’s Voices: A Systematic Critical Review

“…Evidence from our review strongly suggests that interviews are the preferred-or at least the most common-strategy to listen to children's voices. The most prevalent types of interviews found in our review were semi-structured (Fekonja-Peklaj and Marjanovič-Umek, 2015;Koller and San Juan, 2015;Northard et al, 2015;Reunamo et al, 2015;O'Rourke, O'Farrelly, Booth and Doyle, 2017;Wernet and Nurnberger-Haag, 2015;Wu, 2015), and only two studies used structured interviews (Correia and Aguiar, 2017;Kotaman and Tekin, 2017). It is interesting to note that while interviews were the main strategy to listen to children's voices, we found a great variation in their use with regards to conditions, circumstances and material used to elicit children's views.…”

“…It is interesting to note that while interviews were the main strategy to listen to children's voices, we found a great variation in their use with regards to conditions, circumstances and material used to elicit children's views. For instance, we found reasonable evidence that interviews were conducted with the help of pictures and images (Baird and Grace, 2017;Baker, Tisak and Tisak, 2016;Cheng Pui-Wah Reunamo, Cooper, Liu and Vong, 2015;Correia and Aguiar, 2017;Li, 2016;Penderi and Rekalidou, 2016), hypothetical situations (Cheng Pui-Wah et al, 2015;Reunamo et al, 2015), with photos children took (Adderley et al, 2015;McEvilly, 2015;Wahle et al, 2017;White, 2015), using dolls (Baird and Grace, 2017;Correia and Aguiar, 2017;Koller and San Juan, 2015;White, 2016), having children drawing while being interviewed (Fleer and Li, 2016) or by using children's drawings (Adderley et al, 2015;Katz and McLeigh, 2017;Leigh, 2015;Wahle et al, 2017). However, there was less emphasis in the use of the "draw and tell" method (Fluckiger, Dunn and Stinson, 2018;O'Rourke et al, 2017;Wahle et al, 2017;Wong, 2015), play-based interviews (Koller and San Juan, 2015), and interviews including a story-telling (Gunnestad, Mørreaunet and Onyango, 2015).…”

“…One of the most common places to carry out observations was the classroom, as evidenced by a range of studies which followed this approach (Cheng Pui-Wah et al, 2015;Fekonja-Peklaj and Marjanovič-Umek, 2015;McEvilly, 2015;Northard et al, 2015;Reunamo et al, 2015;Wu, 2015), while only in one study the observations were carried out in outdoor spaces (Merewether, 2015) and another where the researchers observed children at home (Wernet and Nurnberger-Haag, 2015). Two studies combined observations with other methods, such as interviews (Wu, 2015) and child evaluations (Reunamo et al, 2015), although in the latter, there was no explanation about the way in which the evaluation took place. Two studies used video-observations (Fleer and Li, 2016;Wu, 2015), and only one (White, 2016) reported to have observed children by following a standardised measure such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-class (Pianta, La Paro and Hamre, 2008).…”

Beyond Bullying: Understanding Children’s Exploration of Inclusion and Exclusion Processes in Kindergarten

“…Earlier research has revealed that children most often seek adults for help (Reunamo et al, 2015). However, all the while that Sjur awaits his turn to draw, he does not ask the practitioners for help.…”

Kindergarten Teachers’ Perspectives on Young Children’s Bullying Roles in Relation to Dominance and Peer Relationships: A Short-Term Longitudinal Approach in South Korea

“…Bullying is a pervasive phenomenon across all age ranges. Research on bullying has predominantly focused on middle childhood or adolescence, but some studies have reported that bullying clearly occurs among young children in preschools or kindergartens [1][2][3][4][5]. Detecting bullying among young children is necessary to prevent social and behavioral developmental problems.…”