Bullying in secondary schools: through a discursive lens

Abstract

This paper analyses students’ constructions of bullying from a social constructionist perspective. Interviews were conducted with 24 students at a small semi-rural secondary school in New Zealand. These were taped, transcribed and a discourse analysis, informed by the work of Foucault, was carried out. It was found that students made sense of bullying by drawing on constructions that included bullying as a consequence of differences and as a form of discipline. These constructions had the effect of legitimizing the school's institutional power imbalance. This was supported by students and teachers who both played an active role in simultaneously enforcing, and being subjected to, the disciplinary technologies of normalization characterized by bullying. The goal of this research is to provide a critical focus to the political nature, power relations and ideological effects of these prevailing discourses that function to both create and support bullying behaviour in our schools.

Keywords:

• bullying
• secondary school
• Foucault
• discourse analysis
• social constructionism

Introduction

Bullying is a familiar phenomenon in New Zealand secondary schools (Clark et al. 2009). However, for much of our educational history it was constructed as a ‘normal’ part of growing up, character-building even (O'Moore 2000), which has had the effect of obscuring both its prevalence and impact. It is only in the past 30 to 40 years that the normalization of bullying has begun to be challenged. Intense media attention has placed a number of New Zealand schools under the public spotlight and succeeded in undermining a culture of denial.

Research specifically on bullying was initiated by the seminal work of Professor Dan Olweus in Scandinavia during the 1970s. However, the conceptualization of the construct of bullying has been fraught with ambiguity and contradictions. For example there has been much debate about what behaviours constitute bullying. While some researchers would include teasing as a common form or subset of bullying, others would make a clear distinction between the two (Olweus 1978, 1999a 1999b; Land 2003). Stuart (2000) pointed to the problematic situation of trying to find an operational definition of bullying because no two people will have the same experience, despite the fact that they may use the same terms to describe what happened; and researchers themselves have used many different definitions of bullying (Olweus 1991; Robinson & Maines 1997; Raskauskas et al. 2010). Esbensen and Carson (2009) comment that this lack of consensus in the definition and measurement of bullying has contributed to a lack of understanding of many of the issues surrounding this phenomenon.

The definition that has been adopted by many researchers in the field is based on that developed by Olweus (1991:11). This definition focuses on three main criteria: ‘It is (1) aggressive behaviour or intentional “harm doing” (2) which is carried out “repeatedly and over time” (3) in an interpersonal relationship characterized by an imbalance of power’. Olweus also adds that often there does not appear to be any provocation. However, the furnishing of a standardized definition of bullying can also be challenged methodologically as it may shape and limit the responses of subjects (Guerin & Hennessy 1998). Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that students of different ages, teachers and parents all have differing perceptions of what constitutes bullying (Smith & Levan 1995; Madsen 1996; Boulton 1997; Guerin & Hennessy 1998; Nairn & Smith 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Monks & Smith 2006).

Despite these discrepancies, numerous international studies have found a significant incidence of bullying in schools (Smith 1991; Olweus 1993; Nansel et al. 2001; Solberg & Olweus 2003; Sapouna 2008; Analitis et al. 2009; Wang et al. 2009). Furthermore, research in New Zealand indicates a comparatively high rate of bullying compared to other Western countries (Coggan et al. 2003; Raskauskas 2007; Carroll-Lind 2009). In an extensive New Zealand study (Adair et al. 2000), it was found that when a self-defined measure of bullying was used, 58% of students reported having been bullied, which increased to 75% when a more extensive research-defined measure was used. Similar high incidence rates have been reported across the Tasman (Slee 1995; Rigby 1997; Forero et al. 1999).

There is substantial research evidence to suggest both the wide-ranging and devastating effects of bullying. Studies have indicated a link between experiences of frequent bullying at school and both poor mental and physical health (Rigby 1999; Lien et al. 2009). Similarly, Gini and Pozzoli (2009) found a strong relationship between bullying and psychosomatic health. Milligan (2008) identified that students who had been bullied often felt intense anger that was frequently channelled into violence against others. Coggan et al. (2003) in a randomized, cross-sectional study of over 3000 New Zealand secondary students demonstrated a significant association between chronic bullying and negative mental health. Clark et al. (2009), reporting on the extensive Youth '07 study in New Zealand, found that students who were being bullied regularly were nearly four times more likely to display significant depressive symptoms and had an attempted suicide rate three times higher than students who were not bullied or reported infrequent bullying. Other studies have also indicated increased levels of depression and suicidal ideation in students involved with bullying (Kaltiala-Heino et al. 1999; Roland 2002) and an increased risk of developing psychiatric symptoms (Schreir et al. 2009). There are some suggestions also that there may be a complex interaction between bullying and later criminal behaviour (Olweus 1993; Sullivan 2000; Sourander et al. 2007).

There has been considerable research focused on identifying a typology of victim and bully based on a variety of features including personality and family relationships (Olweus 1978, 1980, 1993; Stephenson & Smith 1988; Sullivan et al. 2004). This has culminated in guides for parents and teachers to the identification of such individuals. The research focus has also widened to consider the role played by bystanders (Hazler 1996; Salmivalli 1999; Adair et al. 2000; Salmivalli & Voeten 2004) and the apparent reluctance of victims and bystanders to report bullying (Whitney & Smith 1993; Sharp & Smith 1994; Rigby 1997; Adair et al. 2000; Nairn & Smith 2002; Boulton et al. 2007).

The high degree of concern about the level of bullying in New Zealand schools has led to the development and implementation of a wide range of intervention programmes. For example: the No Blame Approach (Robinson & Maines 1997); the Method of Shared Concern (Pikas 1989); and in New Zealand the Kia Kaha Programme (NZ Police Department); the Cool Schools Peer Mediation Programme (Foundation for Peace Studies); and the Eliminating Violence – Managing Anger Programme (Special Education Services). However, issues of different research design and variability of outcome measures used can present significant challenges in attempting to assess the effects of these approaches (Rigby et al. 2004).

The wealth of information we now have regarding bullying comes almost entirely from studies representing the quantitative research paradigm and has been based on a preoccupation with the individual as the proper object of study. Hepburn (1997b) criticizes much of the traditional research on bullying in that it focuses only on fixed personality traits of the individual and their interpersonal relationships (Olweus 1978, 1980, 1993; Smith & Sharp 1994; Fox & Boulton 2005). Hepburn (1997a) also argues that the definition of bullying used in many studies, which is closely based on the Olweus questionnaire (Olweus 1991), focuses only on the behaviour of children or young people. It specifically excludes any consideration of bullying that might take place between adults, or adults and children. It is unsurprising, therefore, that despite this large body of research that has accumulated over the past 30 odd years we still do not have a good understanding of the concept of bullying or how to deal with it effectively.

Qualitative studies, although limited in number, have presented an opportunity to provide a greater insight into the nature of bullying. For example, Terasahjo and Salmivalli (2003) used a social constructionist approach that illustrated students’ common use of the repertoires that constructed bullying as harmless or justified. They suggest that these ‘bully-positive’ repertoires, which are driven by bullies and their associates, can become the dominant construction and accepted as ‘truth’. Similarly, Hepburn (1997a) used a post-modern discursive approach to examine the way teachers construct ‘being human’ and the use of this construction in explaining bullying. The findings showed that many of the discourses focused on the individual in relation to bullying. A more in-depth analysis (Hepburn 1997b) looked at the way secondary school teachers drew upon commonly used discourses to make sense of students, misbehaviour, bullying and discipline. The focus of teachers’ talk was very much on the individual student as the source of the problem, with the need for control and conformity being a feature. Teachers used a variety of strategies around such things as normalization, classroom control and considered rational responses to account for and justify teacher intimidation of students.

Theoretical framework

Viewing bullying as a discursively constructed phenomenon, rather than a function of an individual and their personality, has the advantage of placing individual behaviour in its social context and eliding the potential of more positivist approaches to maintain the problem of bullying by continually reproducing it as a naturalized, individualized phenomenon. In this present study, a discursive perspective has allowed for the identification of various discourses constituting bullying. Furthermore, the parameters of research have been expanded to include the consideration of the power relationships operating within our educational institutions.

Social constructionism and discourse analysis

The adoption of a post-modern social constructionist framework in this research seeks to counteract the limited focus of empirical studies, which have done little to alleviate the misery of bullying. Social constructionism takes a critical approach that argues that knowledge is constructed between people in their everyday conversations and interactions with each other, and is maintained by social processes. Language not only constructs our world but who we are as a person because the categories available to us in language are the categories through which we come to understand ourselves and our world. These categories, however, are ever changing because they are always specific to, and a product of, particular cultures and periods of history (Gergen 1985; Burr 2003). Social constructionism is inherently political because it challenges taken for granted knowledge and those who have a vested interest in this knowledge being accepted in society.

The research design for the current study employed discourse analysis as a technique because of the importance social constructionism gives to language; in particular it follows a poststructuralist tradition in line with Parker (1990), which is informed by the work of Foucault. It focuses on the identification of prevailing discourses and the power relationships involved.

Foucault and power

The link between power and discourse and particularly the relationship between knowledge and power was crucial for Foucault (Burr 2003). Foucault reasoned that this relationship was associated with the historical development of a new regime of power termed ‘bio-power’, which was linked to the objectification of the human subject. A range of ‘disciplinary technologies’ arose in various institutions such as schools to ensure a ‘docile body that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved’ (Foucault 1975:198). The process of ‘normalization’ by which individuals are ordered around the norm (Wetherell et al. 2001) is also a very important aspect of this bio-power as there is the need to regulate life by a system of identifying and judging what is normal or abnormal. Foucault saw this as leading to the implementation of ‘corrective procedures’ in the nineteenth century through the influence of such apparatuses as medicine, psychiatry and education.

Theoretically, bullying can be interpreted as a manifestation of the operations of power within traditional educational institutions. Thus, particular discourses of education that prevail in our society today and are accepted as ‘common sense’ are what Foucault termed knowledge and are intrinsically linked to power. They provide the potential to act in certain ways, while marginalizing alternative practices. This knowledge allows the exercising of power to obtain control while simultaneously masking that power by representing such acts as reasonable and acceptable. The aim of the current research is to interrogate the operations of power that lead to subjection and control in our schools through attending to the discourses at work in students’ talk about bullying.

Method

Background

The research was carried out at a small, semi-rural secondary school located in a provincial New Zealand town. The interviewer was positioned in a dual role as both researcher and a member of the school's teaching staff (on sabbatical). This was a double-edged sword as while the ‘insider’ status allowed for the support of teaching staff and a high proportion of participant uptake, it also intensified the power imbalance of the interview situation.

Participants and ethical and safety issues

Twenty-four students, 13 young women and 11 young men, out of a total of 35 students from Year 13 and one Year 14 student at the school, volunteered to participate. The ethnicity of the students included 11 who identified as Māori, 12 as Pakeha and one as Asian. Only those students not intending to return to school were invited to participate to avoid any direct classroom involvement between the researcher and students in the subsequent academic year and thus minimize any possible conflicts of interest. School Counsellors were fully informed about the research and made themselves available for any students who experienced discomfort due to their participation. Any possible cultural concerns arising from the participation of Māori students were addressed by seeking advice and support from the School Kaumatua. All student participants, their peers, teachers and the school were assured of confidentiality and have had their identity protected through the use of pseudonyms in this report. This study was approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee (MUEC approval 04/51).

Data collection procedure

Potential participants met with the researcher and were given an information sheet which was explained in student-friendly language. Students wishing to participate signed a consent form and self-selected into an interview pair. The interviews took place in the School Counsellor's office in the Student Centre and participants signed a confidentiality agreement prior to the joint interview. Twelve interviews, which lasted between 20 minutes and 1 hour in duration, were audiotaped. The tapes were transcribed by the researcher using a very simplified format of transcription conventions based on those developed by Jefferson (1985) for conversational analysis (Wetherell & Potter 1992). The researcher then met again with the participants in their interview pairs. The interview transcripts were given to the participants to read, while listening to the tape. Any alterations, deletions and additions that were requested were then made.

The analysis

The overarching research question of ‘how students construct bullying in schools’ provided a focus in undertaking the first step of preliminary coding in which any irrelevant data were eliminated. Following this, the remaining data were sorted into five meaningful groupings that emerged from the text. The two categories of constructions that are of particular interest here are bullying as a consequence of differences and as a form of discipline. (The research also identified constructions of bullying as ‘disparity’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘inevitable’. However, these were not the focus of this present paper.)

Differences

Talk of differences was at the very core of students’ constructions of bullying and is closely linked to Foucault's concept of ‘normalization’. Technologies of normalization developed hand-in-hand with the establishment of such institutions as schools. In bringing together a large number of people in a set area the opportunity was provided for the observation and identification of differences. However, large numbers of people also required efficient management and co-ordination, hence individuals and their differences were organized and distributed around a ‘norm’ according to their degree of conformity (Rose 1990; Rabinow 1991; Wetherall et al. 2001).

In the following extracts some of the strategies participants used for identifying differences are discussed:

Interviewer: You talked a little bit before about students who are different. I guess I'm trying to get at a definition of what's different (.) how do I know he's different?

Will: Not doing what everyone else is doing and so like people who are usually for like rugby and that, people playing rugby that's sort of like cool, and people that play are normal and that. But people that are playing like chess or something, they have different abilities, they might be good at that game, but other people will think ‘oh, he must be a nerd or something, he's not doing what everyone else is doing’ so …

The norm here is clearly established as ‘doing what everyone else is doing’ thus emphasizing it as a common-sense shared notion about which activities students should participate in. Will makes it clear that the norm of ‘playing rugby’ is something that students should aspire to. He evaluates it as ‘sort of like cool’. This is linked therefore to a shared cultural norm as playing rugby is something that is admired in the cultural context of adolescent boys. He also reinforces that students who adhere closely to these common sense, cultural norms can therefore be identified as ‘normal’.

Although Will clearly constructs students who choose an activity that deviates from the norm as possibly displaying attributes of skill and ability, these are different to those required in the dominant game. More importantly, this is not what the vast majority of other students are engaging in as an activity. The choice of this particular activity lends emphasis to the extremely low value attached to it within this shared meaning of norm. Hence, students who choose the game of chess are identified in a negative context, ‘he must be a nerd or something’ as they fail to measure up to the norm.

In a similar fashion other anomalies are identified that deviate from the norm in the following extract:

Interviewer: What do you think about students who are different, how do you define someone who's different?

Sam: If they wear glasses…

Dave: [laugh]

Sam: … people always pick on them.

Interviewer: O.k. yeah.

Sam: And if they've got like braces and they like, they wear the uniform but it's like, looks real crusty or something, like got holes in it and stuff …

Dave: Or they're gothic.

Sam: Yeah (.) just different from the crowd, if they're different from them then they're (.) classified as [inaudible].

Interviewer: Classified as?

Sam: Like nerds and stuff (.) outcasts.

It is apparent that in order to bring about normalization a rather narrow set of criteria based on appearance is being utilized. While in the previous extract, sporting activity was discussed as a reference point, here there are physical features that you may be judged on; glasses, braces, wearing of uniform and being gothic. However, the defining point is again a deviation from the shared meaning of majority, ‘just different from the crowd’. The language used to describe this deviation is significant in that it portrays the similarities to the previous case where students who do not conform to the common-sense perception of norm are classified as ‘outcasts’.

Rabinow (1991) claimed that an essential element of the normalization process in the nineteenth century was the gathering of vast amounts of information in order to obtain more accurate records about individuals so that the criteria for normalization could be both more encompassing and refined. Students also are part of this ‘vast documentary apparatus’ (Rabinow 1991:22) in their endeavours to seek out and gain precise knowledge about other individuals. In the following sequence of extracts, students are responding to a general question from the interviewer about how they would go about determining differences and the acceptance of these individuals:

Lewis: And (.) you can ask them all sorts of questions really (.) and if they're not really the right answers to the questions that you asked them then you automatically think they're, this person is weird.

The strategy for identifying differences in this extract is quite explicit as it has been formalized into a list of questions. It is also interesting that Lewis is clear that there are both correct and incorrect answers, with a corresponding failure to pass the test resulting in an automatic classification as ‘weird’. This construction lends support to the notion of obtaining accurate knowledge about individuals as part of the technologies of normalization.

A related strategy requires a more subjective approach:

Ann: We'd probably (.) talk to them and (.) see what they were like and …

Yvette: Mm (.) Yeah, we'd see what they're like before we accepted them.

Ann: Yeah like (.) sooner or later they'll find their little group [laugh] like we have, but yeah.

In this construction, there is a sense that a little more time is required to measure and calculate ‘what they're like’ before judgement is made. The criteria for acceptance are unclear to the listener although talking and observing appear to be central forms of acquiring knowledge. Failure to meet these obscure criteria will preclude membership to ‘their little group’. It should be noted, however, that other groups appear to be available to those who don't measure up.

The role of normalization is to first identify and isolate differences so that these so-called anomalies can be normalized ‘through corrective or therapeutic procedures’ (Rabinow 1991:21). The construction of differences is closely aligned to this function in students’ constructions of bullying and is a constant theme running through the analysis. The following extract illustrates this point:

Jan: Cause there's like an, the T.V. puts out an image, you know if you, you don't kind of fit to their image, people are just gonna bully you. Like there's a certain standard that people, like must have.

The notion of the norm in this instance has been created by a media image but the importance of conforming to this image is very apparent. It is also described as a ‘certain standard’ that it is imperative for people to attain. Failure to ‘fit to their image’ is inevitably connected to bullying.

Through the function of identifying differences, bullying is constructed as a ‘corrective technique’ required for the normalization of the student body within an educational institution. Students are a fundamental element of the institutional system as they are called upon to seek out precise knowledge of their fellow students. The individual can then be judged according to a shared understanding of social and cultural norms that are applicable in our schools. However, the consequences of non-conformity are clear to all. Failure to achieve the institutional goal of homogeneity of the social body inevitably leads to bullying of those members who continue to deviate.

Discipline

The relationship between discipline and bullying underpins the power inequalities in our educational institutions. As discussed previously, a defining aspect of bullying is that it is an interpersonal relationship characterized by an imbalance of power (Olweus 1991). Although this is a very salient feature of school discipline, the prevailing educational discourses of discipline and the associated social practices function to disguise this relationship. The students’ construction of discipline illustrates the role that both students and teachers play in ‘disciplinary technologies’ like those that Foucault identified. Students construct discipline in such a way as to emphasize the notion that it must prevail. In a similar manner to the identification of differences, an institutional norm of discipline is set to ensure the effective control of the student body. Any deviation from this norm must be attended to with strong corrective procedures being applied to the deviant.

Students develop this construction of discipline by drawing initially on linguistic resources of lack of discipline and punishment.

Interviewer: What about discipline here at the college, what do you think? What's that like?

Shayne: What detentions and stuff?

Interviewer: Well yeah.

Shayne: It doesn't work. It's stupid. It doesn't do anything.

Ali: Nah detentions [inaudible].

Shayne: It's stupid. Just sit and write lines.

A noticeable feature of this extract is the use of the three-part list (Jefferson 1985) by Shayne in her assertion, ‘It doesn't work. It's stupid. It doesn't do anything’. These three descriptions work in a systematic way to draw attention to the general unsatisfactory nature of the school discipline. There is also an expectation that discipline should be capable of some undefined task. This is linked with an implied metaphor of a non-functioning appliance or machine to give emphasis to the fact that ‘it doesn't work’ and therefore the task has not yet been accomplished.

In the following extract, Julie is discussing the response from a teacher following an incident she had described as ‘a serious breech of discipline’:

Julie: Yeah [laugh] but he's going on and on at me.

Cathy: // Oh, I heard about that.

Julie: // But he was repeating the same thing over and over again. It's like he's not doing anything, you know, you're not going to do anything about it if you're just gonna sit there and talk.

In a similar fashion to the previous extract, there is a concern with the apparent powerlessness of the discipline, ‘he's not doing anything’. However, the construction personalizes this impotence to the teacher rather than to the system itself. As in the previous extract and in other examples in the analysis, the use of the extreme case formulation (Pomerantz 1986) ‘just’ portrays a deficiency of action in the discipline, ‘you're just gonna sit there and talk’. The emphasis on the word ‘talk’ also reinforces this lack of consequence.

The theme of a perceived lack of discipline is constructed as a concern about control over students’ actions:

Yvette: I don't think the discipline at this school is good enough.

Ann: Nah, put your name on the board.

Yvette: Yeah.

Ann: Get a tick, // get a detention.

Yvette: // We get (.) we get away with so much (.).

Ann: Yeah.

Yvette: We're not strict enough.

Discipline is seen as a standard that schools must aspire to achieve, with River Valley High falling short of the mark, ‘I don't think the discipline at this school is good enough’. Failure to uphold this standard results in students’ movement away from the criterion, ‘we get away with so much’. There is a sense here of an escape that has allowed students to place some distance between themselves and this yardstick of a ‘docile body’ compliant to the institution's control. It is also interesting to note the dual use of the pronoun ‘we’ to refer to Yvette and Ann as students getting away with so much and also in the final sentence as part of the disciplinary process itself, ‘We're not strict enough’. This dual positioning of students as part of the social body and also a key element in the disciplinary technologies is a frequent feature of this discipline talk. Although they may be subjected to the power of the school, they are also part of the exercising of that power. This is particularly evident when students draw upon the linguistic resource of teacher weakness:

Interviewer: So how do you choose the teachers that you bully, or do you bully them at all?

Linda: We choose the weak ones [laugh]

Paula: Yeah, sus out the teachers you could get away with it and which ones you wouldn't be able to.

Linda: Yeah, like Mr. Price, oh don't bully him [laugh] wouldn't work.

Interviewer: So how do you pick them?

Linda: You try things; like you try a little each time a little more each time to try and push them and if they just like (.) yeah, they just, they just ignore it then you do it a little more harder until they break, you know like ‘cool’. I think it comes down to the power, like how we've got power over the teacher.

In much the same way as students observed and classified other students in the construction of bullying as differences, there is the perceived task of identifying and distinguishing between ‘weak’ teachers and those that ‘you wouldn't be able to … get away with it’. The metaphor of continuing to push them harder and harder until the weak ones break is very evocative of a physical struggle. The victor then is able to seize power, which in the following extract is constructed as being intrinsically related to control:

Ann: Miss Shaw will try and tell her off (.) and she must seem so weak around us, ah?

Yvette: Oh, I, I, I reckon she doesn't like (.) she's not in control of our class. Like we're, like more controlling over her.

Ann: Mm. Like we tell her what we're going to do.

Students are able to wrestle power from the teacher by positioning the teacher as weak. In doing so, they are able to take up the relinquished subject position of being in control. In terms of disciplinary technologies, this functions as a need to exert control over teachers in order to ensure that discipline and the orderly behaviour of students is maintained.

The way in which students pit weakness against strength ensures that the strict teacher is given a more privileged position:

Angie: Maybe it's the strictness of them, or sometimes it's the way they teach like (.) you find mainly the strict teachers everyone likes.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Angie: But ones that you can walk all over, kids don't really (.) like (.). Like Mr. Fisher, he's quite strict but everyone likes him.

For teachers, the effect of being located as strict carries with it the right to be respected, listened to and not to be bullied. This is because they are efficiently fulfilling their role within the existing institutional context of education and discipline. However, for teachers located as weak, there is a corresponding loss of rights to respect, to be free from harassment and indeed to teach:

Sam: The weak ones you just start like picking on them and yeah, throwing things at them.

Dave: You just make it hard for them to teach.

Sam: Yeah, and like talk all the time (.) yeah, whistle in class [laugh].

Dave: Just make their job as hard as possible.

In this construction, discipline must be upheld at all costs and for this to happen, behaviour that deviates from a desirable norm must be linked with a significant response. Thus, students act as agents of the institution to harass weak teachers in order to ensure the maintenance of discipline and consequently the orderly behaviour of students. Discipline insists that teachers must exert their power over students in order to control them. The failure by any teacher to preserve the status quo of power relationships in the institution must be remedied. Students therefore can be seen as having a valid institutional responsibility to bully weak teachers.

It is also essential that the disciplinary technologies utilized in the exercising of power by teachers are justified, even by those subjected to them. They must be constructed as being a fundamental part of the necessary social practices linked to this prevailing educational construction of discipline. The failure to legitimize such teacher behaviour would place it in danger of being recognized as unacceptable and in doing so could possibly contribute to the unravelling of the institutional power relationships. Students’ constructions of teacher behaviour then function to achieve this objective:

Interviewer: Do you think that any of the teachers bully students?

Reg: Nah.

Lewis: If they do it's really for the student's own good. Like I know Mr. Ames, he, he bullies a few of them, but he only does it to help them out.

Interviewer: So when you say bully, what sort of stuff does he do?

Lewis: Like if people are behind on their work then he'll put them in the senior class, like take them out of class and put them in a senior class.

Reg: Yeah, cause we get smart // to them.

Lewis: // And yeah, he knows that us senior kids give them, give them shit (.) and I think he does that for their benefit. Like, cause you don't want to be in a class with senior students that are all yelling at you for getting kicked out.

The behaviour of the teacher is couched in terms of his good intentions; his motivation is entirely centred on the student's welfare, it is all for ‘the student's own good’ and ‘to help them out’. The collusion between the teacher and senior students is an interesting feature of this extract. It supports the idea of a closeness developing between students and teachers as a function of maturity. As they move closer together to form a more homogenous group, they serve a complementary role in the exercising of power, ‘he knows that us senior kids give them, give them shit, and I think he does that for their benefit’.

Even those students who are at the receiving end of these technologies construct a classic justification:

Interviewer: O.k. what about some of the teachers, do you think that they actually bully students?

[Long pause]

Ali: Nah.

Shayne: I reckon they can be hard out against you though.

Interviewer: Is that bullying?

Shayne: I don't know.

Ali: Feels like they are sometimes, but they're not, just doing their job.

This question obviously presents quite a problem for Shayne and Ali as the idea that teachers’ behaviour may be constructed as bullying is quite a foreign concept and is further exacerbated by the fact that the question has been posed by a teacher. Although they both describe experiences that could be interpreted as bullying, they are unable to label it as such. This can be understood as it would have the potential to challenge the apparatus of power itself within the school. Instead, Ali handles this incongruence by utilizing the justification that teachers are ‘just doing their job’.

According to Foucault (1976), it is important that we do not recognize the operation of power as people would not knowingly allow themselves to be controlled in such a way. The construction of discipline therefore serves the purpose of social control within our schools. Power is exercised when this construction allows the behaviour of teachers to be justified as a necessary part of the educational process. Indeed, students contribute to the process through their bullying of weak teachers to ensure the continuation of this institutional power imbalance. The recognition by students that the teachers’ actions are acceptable within the framework of this construction continues to ‘mask’ the power behind them. ‘Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms’ (Foucault 1976:86).

Summary

The construction of bullying as a function of differences is a central feature in the process of normalization. Institutions such as schools provide the ideal opportunity for the identification of differences. They also require the efficient management of large numbers of students and the achievement of this goal is ensured by a range of normalization technologies that inevitably lead to the procedure of individualization. Students are both part of and subject to these technologies. Accurate and detailed information is sought about each individual so that they can be compared to a shared social and cultural norm of how students should look, think and behave. Deviations from this majority view justify correction by bullying as a normalizing technique for standardizing social anomalies. Hence the need is developed to ‘fit in’ and be accepted by one's peers. The power of the educational institution then can be exerted through the techniques of normalization of which students are an integral part.

Students’ constructions of discipline work in close co-articulation with constructions of differences. The focus on individualism is inherent within the educational process of our institutions. Thus, individuals are also seen at the centre of issues of discipline and must take responsibility for their problem behaviour. However, constructions of discipline do not recognize these disciplinary interactions between adults and students as bullying because there is a common sense presumption that adults have a right to behave in this way. Hepburn (1997a) points out that this taken for granted acceptance of what is essentially a ‘systematic abuse of power’ functions to culturally and socially legitimize bullying.

Furthermore, students play an active role in the functioning of disciplinary technologies. They become part of the school's power apparatus by applying corrective procedures to any teachers who are identified as failing to conform to the ideal norm of ‘strictness’. Students are able to contest subject positions with deviating teachers by positioning them as weak, thereby taking up a controlling position. Thus, contrary to a typically Marxist analytical perspective whereby teachers maintain a position of power over students, it can be seen that students can change the power dynamics in their favour in order to bully weak teachers. In such situations students are acting as agents of the institution to ensure the control of the student body and in doing so function to maintain the status quo of power imbalance.

Bullying in schools effectively maintains the inequalities of power relationships in our educational institutions. The dominant educational discourses that are socially and culturally entrenched in these power relationships function both to support this inequality and legitimize it. They continue to receive the ‘stamp of truth’ because they successfully obscure the operation of power. By highlighting these discourses that need to be challenged, this analysis may offer some insight into our understanding of bullying and the ways in which we perpetuate it. It may also allow us to recognize other discourses that have been marginalized within our schools and the possibilities offered to us by accepting or resisting various positions within discourses. More importantly, it may give a voice to students who are effectively disempowered by prevailing educational discourses. Future research that examines more cultural sources and meanings would further strengthen our understanding of bullying.

Where to from here?

This has been a small-scale study involving only 24 students from a single school, therefore it is recognized that the findings are limited and the methodology we have used does not permit generalization. However, our analysis has delivered a discursive lens through which to view bullying as a social construct and, as such, it is important to discuss the implications of these findings as articulated in the following recommendations.

Schools need to be able to move beyond the problematization of bullying that is at the centre of current educational pedagogy. In much the same way as Quinlivan and Town (1999) identify the limitations of equity discourses for queer youth, the similar constructions of students bullying and being bullied as ‘at risk’ and the individualization of the ‘problem’ contribute to and support continued bullying.

Intervention strategies adopted by schools also need to be carefully examined in light of these findings. Unfortunately, a number of programmes designed to reduce bullying function to sustain and strengthen the very practices within our schools which act to both normalize and legitimize its occurrence. This study raises the possibility of involving students in the co-construction of intervention strategies. While this would contribute in a small way to addressing the power imbalance in our schools, we also need to be mindful of the ways in which students’ discourses are complicit in maintaining this status quo.

The recent initiative from the Ministry of Education (2010), ‘Positive behaviour for learning’, needs to be challenged on the grounds that it continues to take an individualistic approach that focuses on disruptive student behaviour and ‘appropriate’ teacher discipline. This emphasis will only serve to further reinforce the hegemonic discourses and power dynamics within our educational institutions that lead to bullying of both students and teachers.

Educators need to have the courage and tenacity to call for the dismantling of structures within our system of institutionalized schooling that are characterized by these inevitable power inequalities. We need to work towards a new paradigm of education that appreciates the fundamental relationship between prevailing discourses of schooling and the exercising of power. It is only through the recognition that bullying is in fact a manifestation of this insidious power-base, which is discursively constructed and maintained, that it can begin to be targeted effectively.

Transcription key

(.) A full stop in round brackets indicates a noticeable pause, though not timed.

// A double forward slash marked the start of speech overlap.

Really Underlined words represented an emphasis in speech.

[Laugh] Words in square brackets signify the speaker's actions.

(a teacher) Words in round brackets are for clarification or explanation.

… Three dots indicate that the speaker omits material.