To Tell or Not to Tell: Student Responses to Negative Behavior in Elementary School

ABSTRACT

In this article I examine the factors that influence fifth grade student decisions regarding whether or not to report negative interactions to adults. Data from observations and interviews with students and adults show that there are many factors influencing the reluctance to tell on others. Among them is a school context in which verbal attacks are downplayed and telling is seen as ineffective and stigmatized. This context prevents bystanders from reporting what they have observed and places those with a lack of social support at a significant disadvantage when dealing with negative behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Children and youth
• social psychology
• education
• sociology

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Laura Backstrom, Bill Corsaro, Donna Eder, Tim Hallett, and Craig Lair for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this work. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Montreal, Quebec.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used for all names and places.

2. The IRB insisted that questions about direct student involvement in situations remained hypothetical. For a more detailed examination of the IRB’s effects on this and other studies of children, see Harger and Quintela (2017).

3. As noted earlier, hiding negative emotional reactions is an important coping strategy that students use to deal with negative behaviors that also makes it more difficult for adults to detect them (Gamliel et al. 2003; Thornberg and Knutsen 2011). Because a discussion of the full range of coping strategies used by these students is beyond the scope of this paper, my focus here is on the ways that these behaviors impact students’ willingness to report behaviors to adults.

4. Adults in these schools did the best that they could but the number of students per adult made it difficult for them to effectively deal with student reports of behavior. See Harger (Under Review) for a more detailed description of these challenges.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brent Harger

Brent Harger is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Gettysburg College. His research interests include social psychology, childhood, adolescence, education, and media. Combining a number of these interests, his primary research examines peer interactions within school cultures.