Bullying and Special Needs. a Handbook
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Bullying and Special Needs. A handbook edited by: Jacek Pyżalski & Erling Roland Łódź, 2010 ISBN 978-83-926719-9-2 © Copyright The Pedagogy Academy in Lodz & Centre for Behavioural Research, University of Stavanger Table of Contents Moduł 1. Erling Roland, Gaute Auestad and Grete S. Vaaland Bullying Moduł 2. Erling Roland and Grete S. Vaaland Prevention of bullying Moduł 3. Erling Roland and Grete S. Vaaland Intervention to stop Bullying Moduł 4. Erling Roland and Grete S. Vaaland The ZERO PROGRAMME: A whole school approach Moduł 5. Jacek Pyżalski Electronic Aggression and Cyberbullying. An Old House with a New Facade? New Communication Technologies in Young People’s Lives Moduł 6. Piotr Plichta Intellectually Disabled Students as Victims and Perpetrators of Peer-to-peer Aggression – the Educational Context Moduł 7. Dorota Podgórska-Jachnik A Student with Hearing Impairment as Aggressor and Aggression Victim Moduł 8. Iwona Chrzanowska Learning Disability as a Source of Adjustment Problems and Peer-to-Peer Aggression at School Moduł 9. Beata Jachimczak A Student with ADHD as a Perpetrator and Victim of Aggression Moduł 10. Bogusław Śliwerski School as an Environment Conducive to Aggression Introduction This publication concerns two closely related issues: peer aggression in schools (bullying) and special needs arising from conditions such as ADHD, hearing impairment, intellectual disability and learning difficulties. Why have those two areas been presented together in a single volume? The main reason lies in research data (pretty scattered in the literature) showing that children and adolescents with special educational needs are relatively often victims and perpetrators of peer aggression. Such problems may occur particularly when special needs students and students with no such problems learn together within the same educational setting. Due to this we believe that an awareness of individual and social mechanisms that can lead to peer aggression when special needs children become perpetrators or victims is vital for every professional working with such children. As editors of this publication we have been coordinating two scientific teams for the past 1,5 years. In the Pedagogy Academy in Lodz, Poland the researchers have been working mostly on issues of selected groups of special needs children and their connection to peer aggression. Additionally, they focused on electronic aggression (cyberbullying) and socio-cultural factors that may cause aggression in schools. In Norway , the team at the University of Stavanger worked directly on the topic of bullying – its definition, causes and consequences. The researchers there also worked on the presentation of Program Zero, which is a comprehensive prevention and intervention solution to bullying in Norwegian schools. We have compiled a total of 10 educational modules – four of them have been prepared by the Norwegian team and six of them by the Polish team. Each of the modules consists of: 1. A text based on the most recent research data concerning the subject of the chapter 2. An educational film – with reference to the module, it presents educational methods, mini- lectures, interviews with practitioners, etc. 3. A workshop conspectus – the scenario that can be used for training of teachers or other professionals working with special needs students. 4. Test questions concerning the issues presented in the chapter. The publication may be treated as a comprehensive course concerning bullying and special needs. At the same time individual units may be used as components of other courses, e.g. a special education course where the particular disabilities are studied. Materials may also be used for self study – practitioners may broaden their knowledge on the issues presented in the book. We encourage everybody to take advantage of the materials and hope that they will contribute to reducing the number of incidents involving special needs young people as victims or perpetrators of school bullying. Editors Jacek Pyżalski & Erling Roland Lodz-Stavanger, winter 2010 2 Erling Roland, Gaute Auestad and Grete S. Vaaland University of Stavanger Centre for Behavioural Research Bullying Illustrations Ben wakes up with tummy ache. Again. He usually does. Not at weekends or during the school holidays, but on the days he has to go to school. It is particularly bad the days he knows the boys in the other year arrive at the same time as him. Like today. As so many times before, Matt and John are waiting for him behind the garage at the end of the lane. First they jump out and frighten him. And he is frightened. Really frightened! Because he knows there is more to come. Matt pulls his bag off him. As he does so, he yanks Ben’s arm round so it hits John. That’s all John needs. ‘Hit me, would you?’ he yells. ‘No,’ answers Ben. ‘Ben tells lies too,’ says John. So Ben deserves the beating he gets. Matt and John run off to school. Ben drags along afterwards. The teacher notices that Ben seems out of sorts in the first lesson. Is he staying up too late in the evening maybe? The girls in 6A are skipping together at break time. They stand in two long rows, jump in from alternate sides, pass each other, and then out. At the back of one row, stands Laura. The girls in front of her bunch together. They don’t want to touch Laura or her clothes. Then it is Laura’s turn to jump in. From the other side, it is Chloe’s turn. But as Laura jumps in, Chloe stands still. When Laura has jumped out again, the others carry on. Nobody wants to jump with Laura. It’s always the same. In the corridor, nobody wants to hang his or her coat too close to hers. If her coat comes to close, they move their things away to a safe distance. They don’t often say anything nasty to Laura, but they often bunch closer together and whisper when she comes near. Around her it is like a charged electrical field, which keeps others at their distance. In the art room, they sit two to a table, except Laura who sits alone. It’s been like this since year 2. Laura often wonders if it will be different at secondary school. It is nearly time for lunch. The pupils in woodwork take a break. Sam is happy with the box he is making. It is almost finished. They get out their lunchboxes in the canteen, but Sam can’t find his. He knows he had it in his bag, but now it’s gone. He looks in the bin and finds it there. This isn’t the first time. After the break, they are to carry on with what they are making. In the corridor outside the classroom, Paul and Josh make remarks about Sam’s hairstyle and clothes. They make everyone laugh. Sam tries to take it in good part, and laughs too, but that must just look stupid, because then they laugh even more. Someone adds that Sam eats out of the bin too. Sam is faced with a mixture of disgust and laughter. Back in woodwork, he finds his box. Someone has been ‘helping’. The box, which looked really good an hour ago, is completely destroyed. Sam sighs. He has experienced things like this before. Yet again, he has to take a piece of messed up work and ask the teacher for more 2 materials. The teacher is irritated because Sam, who occasionally shows some ability, continually upsets the teaching plan! With a resigned sigh, he starts Sam off again, asks him to pull himself together and use his ability. Sam just stands there and listens helplessly. Sam, Laura and Ben are victims of bullying. Paul and Josh, Chloe, the other girls around Laura, Matt and John are all active participants in bullying. They are bullies. Background A Swedish doctor of medicine, Peter-Paul Heinemann (1973) was the first to describe bullying among humans, and he did this based on his own observations in school yards. Shortly thereafter, the Swedish psychologist and professor Dan Olweus, published his now famous study of bullying among Swedish preadolescent boys (1978) and concluded that approximately 5% were victims of serious bullying. About the same percentage bullied others persistently. In addition, he identified a much smaller group, the bully-victims that had both roles. A third Swede, psychologist Anatol Pikas, followed up with the first book written on how to stop bullying (1976). These three books obviously had a great impact in the Nordic countries. In Finland professor Kjersti Lagerspetz and colleagues started around 1980 a strong research tradition (1982), which not at least professor Christina Salmivalli (2005) and colleagues have carried forward in an excellent way. Council of Europe hosted the first international conference on bullying, which was arranged in Stavanger, Norway, in 1987. This event was obviously very important for the spread of interest and competence in Western Europe, as about 35 researchers, professionals and policy makers from the member countries worked together for one week under the supervision of the council official representative, Mona O’Moore, now professor at Trinity College in Dublin (O’Moore, 1989). Few of the researchers present were at that time particularly familiar with the topic of bullying, but their theoretical competence on different forms of antisocial behaviour was crucial for taking up research and practical work on bullying, which many did. A book in English mostly based on the conference lectures, was published (Roland & Munthe, 1989). Since about 1990, research and public concern about bullying has become international, and this interest continues to spread. 3 The OECD-conference “Taking fear out of schools” took place in Stavanger, Norway, in 2004 with participants from all parts of the world.