Bullying

Bullying in schools

[Ken Rigby] When I began to research bullying in the late 1980s there was hardly any literature on the subject available. The chief exception was the work of Dan Olweus whichprovided the inspiration for much that followed. Even when I began to see the value of providing information about bullying on the Internet (around 1995) there was not a great deal of information todraw upon. This site began as an attempt to raise awareness abut bullying in schools and inform people about the research that was being done in the area.
The site was also intended, and still is, tohelp schools, children and parents in practical ways to overcome the serious problem of bullying.
To anyone who has looked on the Net for information about bullying it is evident that there is now atruly massive amount. Much of what you can find is (I’m afraid) uninformed opinion, sometimes (I think) sensible, sometimes misleading. But in addition, there is a good deal of research-basedliterature. So much so, that I have long abandoned any hope of doing justice to it all !
Hence my aim as a researcher has become much less grandiose – and more personal. As I continue with my research and mywork in schools in the hope that it can be applied, from time to time I fancy that I have contributed something that some researchers and some educators would like to know about.
For instance, Ithink I have something useful to say about a relatively new area, that of bystander behaviour in schools. I also think we are making important progress towards discovering how successful anti-bullyingprograms can be and I would like to tell you what I and others have found out about this. From time to time I find that new resources to counter bullying are being used by schools and I want to drawattention to them. These include a new survey instrument to assess how schools are responding to the cases of bullying – How teachers and counsellors handle cases of bullying

Especially I want to...