Peer bullying and its management in high schools

The purpose of the present study is to determine the perceptions of the school principals, counselor teachers and the general high school students related to bullying behaviors experienced at school settings. Secondary purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between being bully or victim and some personal and family variables; and the emotional and behavioral reactions of school bullies and their victims. Certain experiences and thoughts of the school principals and counseling teachers were also investigated. For this purpose both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in the study. The sample consisted of 811 students attending general high schools in 2006-2007 academic year, the principals and the counseling teachers of the same schools in Erzurum, and Malatya the biggest cities of the Eastern Anatolian Region. Considering to increase the cultural variety of data, another big city of the region, Van, was also involved in the research. But during the process, only the principals and counseling teachers in this city were interviewed. In each city, three schools from different socioeconomic levels were selected by help of Province National Education Directorate. School principals and the counseling teachers were interviewed using a semistructured interview forms. A 5-point Likert-type scale developed by the researcher herself was administered to gather the data from the students. All subjects were assured of the confidentiality of their responses. ?School Discipline Council?s Punishment Decisions? about the students with discipline problems were also assessed to increase the variety of data. The collected data were analyzed statistically, using SPSS version 10.0 and both parametric and nonparametric tests were applied appropriately. Some of the striking findings of the research are presented as follows: ? The most commonly applied and suffered bullying behaviors by general high school students are categorized as follows: ?Bullying with a Weapon or Threatening, Verbal Bullying, Cyber bullying or Sexual Bullying, Simple Physical Bullying, Behavioral Bullying, Heavy Physical Bullying?. ? The rate of the students being bullied by their peers is 18, 3% in high school students whereas the rate of the students applying bullying behaviors in high school students is 15, 2%. But the rate of the students who reported to have witnessed bullying at school setting is 56, 9%. VIII ? The most common type of bullying among the general high school students is ?Verbal Bullying?. ? Sex has been found to be an important factor for being both bully and victim. Boys apply all kinds of bullying behaviors more than girls do. ? Academic performance of the students has also been found as an important factor for being both bully and victim. ?Successful? students apply and suffer less from bullying behaviors than the ones classified as ?average? and ?unsuccessful?. ? Parents? marital status (living apart or together) has been found as an important factor for both being bully and victim. Students whose parents live apart apply and suffer more from bullying behaviors than the students whose parents live together. ? Substance addiction is another important factor for being both bully and victim. Students depending on a substance are more often bully and victim for all the kinds of bullying behaviors than the students who don?t. ? Both school principals and counseling teachers agree that bullying is a problem at their schools. ? According to the school principals and counseling teachers bullying happen on the way to school or home and bullies are usually the young adults coming from school neighborhood or the students of other schools around. They also added that families rarely complained about bullying problems that their children experienced at school setting. ? The school principals and counseling teachers claimed that students? being deprived of communication skills, conflict resolution skills, being able to express themselves through some cultural and