Aggression in schools show up in many forms, It can be hitting, kicking, name calling or the more extremes like bullying, school shootings, self harm. A lot of these types of aggression stem from specifically bullying, Bullying can be direct and indirect. Indirect is more so cyber bullying which is any form of bullying online. Because of the advances In technology that we get every year bullying has been able to take place in many different forms. Rather than bullying being face to face and a matter of strong or week and popular a non popular. This gives a platform for anyone to bully.
In the textbook they explain why kids may bully and bring aggression to school and how it effects the other student, teachers, and the school environment in general. Kids tend to bully for a couple of reasons but one of the main reasons is what they learn from home. When a child is disciplined at home for something that may be normal in other homes they tend to reflect what they learn at home in school. You also as a child learn social norms and what it normal etiquette and what isn’t based off of what goes on at home as well so when children come to school and see other kids acting different or being different they do not take it quite easy. Kids in school also may to feel say due to aggression of others due to the nature of the school changing. School is known to be a safe place and to know that things like this occur in school make other children feel weary of there surroundings.
Social psychology can be used to explain the phenomena of bullying due to the fact that kids can learn from each other and what is around them. This ties straight to Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory (Bandura, 1983). Which basically says that children can learn from observing others behaviors and adopting them. Especially in new environments that they are unfamiliar with children may for to what they see around them abusing them to partake in aggression, or bullying without even noticing and thinking the stay be normal for this area that they are in. Children may also follow others lead in bullying to gain a likeness from others.
There was a study to reduce bullying done in Finland. This was called the Kiva Anti Bullying Program ( Salmivalli & Poskiparta, 2012). This study consisted of observerving the kids and treating bullying different. They flipped the script in this study and instead of the bully getting rewarded or getting rewarded by friendship for bullying they encouraged the children to support the bullied kids. They also created programs for the kids that promoted anti bullying and rewarded the kids for being kind to each other. this tidy also proved to reduce cyber bullying as well amongst the children in the schools that had the program rather than the ones that were in the control schools.
https://www.kivaprogram.net/
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2005). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Sage Publications, Inc.
Hello, I enjoyed reading your post, especially the part where you mention the Kiva Anti-Bullying Program. I was wondering how they got the children to participate in the program. While I know they were rewarded I am wondering how long that reward system will last when it comes to bullying. If the rewards stop will they stop being friends with the children who are bullied? I am a toddler teacher and while they are still young and do not bully they can still sometimes exhibit aggressive behaviors. I found that teaching them kindness and how to use their words to communicate their feelings is very effective in reducing those aggressive behaviors. The time when we see an increase in bullying tendencies seems to be around when children enter middle school. Researchers Waters et al., (2020) found that a way to combat bullying more specifically cyberbullying was to implement a lesson on character education in social studies class.
They will be taught how to be responsible and caring, to respect others, and the concepts of fairness and trustworthiness. I feel as though when I went to school these things were not taught during school, but we had an assembly once a year on the dangers of it. If it was built into the curriculum then I could see this being an effective strategy to deal with bullying.
Reference
Waters, S., Russell, W. B., & Hensley, M. (2020). Cyber Bullying, Social Media, and Character Education: Why It Matters for Middle School Social Studies. Clearing House, 93(4), 195–204.
Hi, I enjoyed reading your post, especially since I am interested in alternative and unconventional social programs. The Finland program relates to injunctive norms from the text very directly in my opinion. Injunctive norms dictate what we should do in certain situations and the rewards associated with it. (Gruman, 2016, p. 247) In the case of violence there it was found that there was a very strong correlation between injunctive norms and aggressive behavior in the classroom. The Finland study does a great job breaking down these norms by removing negative attention and dismantling positive reactions such as popularity gain and replacing it with individual support. It is true that students who bully others may be a product of their environment and thus need help rather than punishment, but I am curious about how we maintain fairness with regards to the victims? Is this type of program only viable for minor bullying or is there a way to ensure the safety and well-being of the victim while working towards correcting the bully’s bad behavior?
References
Gruman, J. A. (2016). Applied Social Psychology. Washington DC: SAGE Publications, Inc.
The textbook explains that students may bully or act aggressively due to factors they observe at home. For instance, children often mirror disciplinary styles and social norms they learn at home. If a child is disciplined harshly or unusually compared to their peers, they may display similar behaviors at school. Similarly, students may become targets if they are seen as “different,” as children often struggle to accept differences when they haven’t been exposed to diverse behaviors at home. Such aggression disrupts the perceived safety of the school environment, leaving many students wary of their surroundings.
Social psychology helps explain bullying behavior, particularly through Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory (Bandura, 1983). This theory suggests that children can adopt behaviors by observing others, especially in unfamiliar settings. For example, if a child sees others bullying, they might mimic these behaviors to fit in or gain social acceptance without fully realizing the harm they cause.
A notable anti-bullying study, the KiVa Anti-Bullying Program in Finland (Salmivalli & Poskiparta, 2012), provides an example of how social learning principles can be leveraged to reduce bullying. In this program, rather than allowing bullies to gain social rewards, students were encouraged to support victims and rewarded for kindness. The program demonstrated reductions in in-person and cyberbullying in participating schools compared to control schools.