Bullying is a covert problem, buried in he subculture of a school. But what kind of child becomes a bully or a victim, and why? What family and social context produce them? How important are the factors of race and gender in the bullying cycle?

Bullying at School is the definitive book on bullying/victim problems in school and on effective ways of counteracting and preventing such problems.

Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have "asked for" this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance and collective shrug when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate. But bullying is not developmentally appropriate; it should not be considered a normal part of the typical social grouping that occurs throughout a child's life. Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bulling has occurred at school, the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for an entirely new type of digital electronic aggression, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication. Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.

Bullying is now widely recognised as a serious problem that affects many children in schools. It can take many forms, including direct verbal and physical harassment and indirect forms such as deliberate exclusion and the targeting of individuals using cyber technology. Continual and severe bullying can cause both short term and long term damage, making it difficult for victims to form intimate relationships with others and for habitual bullies to avoid following a delinquent lifestyle and becoming perpetrators of domestic violence. Even though this type of abuse affects many of our school children, Ken Rigby believes there are grounds for optimism. This passionate and motivating book shows that there are ways of reducing the likelihood of bullying occurring in a school and effective ways of tackling cases when they do occur. Using up-to-date studies, Bullying in Schools helps us to understand the nature of bullying and why it so often takes place in schools. Importantly, it examines and evaluates what schools can do to promote more positive peer relationships within the school community and take effective and sustainable action to deal with problems that may arise. Teachers, parents, school leaders, policy makers, and health professionals will find it invaluable and empowering.

This book focuses beyond the bully-victim dyad to highlight how bullying commonly unfolds within a complex system that involves many individuals interacting with one another. As the vast majority of bullying episodes occur in front of a peer audience, this book examines the ways in which bystanders can act to either fuel or deter bullying. Each chapter highlights a particular participant role: bully, assistant, reinforcer, outsider, defender, and victim. Attention is also devoted to the important influence parents and teachers have on the peer ecology and bullying dynamics. By viewing bullying through the eyes of each individual role, the authors provide an in-depth exploration of bullying as a group process with special attention to implications for prevention and intervention. This book refreshes and expands our understanding of bullying as a group process by highlighting classic research while integrating new findings with attention to changing technology and the modernization of our society. It provides a unique resource that will appeal to teachers and educational psychologists in addition to researchers in the areas of psychology, public health, and education.

Grounded in research and extensive experience in schools, this engaging book describes practical ways to combat bullying at the school, class, and individual levels. Step-by-step strategies are presented for developing school- and districtwide policies, coordinating team-based prevention efforts, and implementing targeted interventions with students at risk. Special topics include how to involve teachers, parents, and peers in making schools safer; ways to address the root causes of bullying and victimization; the growing problem of online or cyberbullying; and approaches to evaluating intervention effectiveness. In a convenient large-size format, the book features helpful reproducibles, concrete examples, and questions for reflection and discussion. This book is in The Guilford Practical Intervention in the Schools Series, edited by Sandra M. Chafouleas.

`This is a worthwhile read and many of the ideas could well be used in schools to address the issues of bullying. There is something for everyone in the book, and it should be on any reading list for student teachers and certainly for the senior manager with responsibility for pastoral systems in every school′ - Emotional & Behavioural Difficulties `This book is a must for all teachers in secondary school throughout the country. The value of this book lies in the potential for its application in a realistic school setting by staff from the head teacher, to teachers, to pupils and all those who are in the school environment′ - Dr L F Lowenstein, Clinical and Educational Psychologist `The authors of this book adopt a new approach to dealing with bullying. Instead of discussing how often it occurs, who bullies and who is bullied, they see bullying as part of a social dynamic and unsafe school culture. This book is an essential practical guide to dealing with bullying for teachers, teachers trainers, counsellors, pupil and families′ - Childright `This book is an important and comprehensive resource dealing with school bullying issues in a practical way, with strategies designed to be used easily in the classroom. It gives valuable advice to teachers on dealing with bullies in the most effective way, using victims and bystanders as part of the solution. It should be required reading in every secondary school′ - Liz Carnell, Director, Bullying Online This book is a practical guide to dealing with bullying in secondary schools. The authors present what we know about bullying, describe development issues for adolescence and discuss the social context of the school. They analyze key features of healthy and unhealthy schools, and set out a whole school approach to bullying and other social problems that arise in the secondary school. The authors show that by empowering the bystanders through providing effective teacher support, much of the bullying can be stopped at an early age and a healthy and safe school can be created. Their suggestions are based on student-centred responses and on programmes developed specifically to deal with bullying. This book is written especially for secondary school teachers, administrators and students, and the families and caregivers of the students. It is also for those who train teachers, for counsellors and for educators at all levels.

The author explores common concerns about bullying, provides sample dialogues with parents of bullies and victims, and presents an eight-point plan for communicating with parents.

Bullies & Victims explores the context of teasing and the power of relationships between children, as well as the roles of adults, schools, the media, and society at large.

Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 Through interviews and case studies, Klein develops an explanation for bully behavior in America's schools In today’s schools, kids bullying kids is not an occasional occurrence but rather an everyday reality where children learn early that being sensitive, respectful, and kind earns them no respect. Jessie Klein makes the provocative argument that the rise of school shootings across America, and childhood aggression more broadly, are the consequences of a society that actually promotes aggressive and competitive behavior. The Bully Society is a call to reclaim America’s schools from the vicious cycle of aggression that threatens our children and our society at large. Heartbreaking interviews illuminate how both boys and girls obtain status by acting “masculine”—displaying aggression at one another’s expense as both students and adults police one another to uphold gender stereotypes. Klein shows that the aggressive ritual of gender policing in American culture creates emotional damage that perpetuates violence through revenge, and that this cycle is the main cause of not only the many school shootings that have shocked America, but also related problems in schools, manifesting in high rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-cutting, truancy, and substance abuse. After two decades working in schools as a school social worker and professor, Klein proposes ways to transcend these destructive trends—transforming school bully societies into compassionate communities.