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.

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.

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.

This comprehensive, authoritative handbook covers the breadth of theories, methods, and empirically based findings on the ways in which children and adolescents contribute to one another's development. Leading researchers review what is known about the dynamics of peer interactions and relationships from infancy through adolescence. Topics include methods of assessing friendship and peer networks; early romantic relationships; individual differences and contextual factors in children's social and emotional competencies and behaviors; group dynamics; and the impact of peer relations on achievement, social adaptation, and mental health. Salient issues in intervention and prevention are also addressed.

Research evidence on bully-victim problems has accumulated rapidly in recent years. From this, there is little doubt that prolonged involvement in bullying, as a perpetrator, victim, or, not uncommonly, as both a perpetrator and target of bullying, conveys risk for many aspects of development. As in many emerging areas of psychological science, diverse research efforts evolved more or less independently, producing a very large and rich body of knowledge, but making it difficult to gain a comprehensive, integrated view of the overall evidence base. Preventing and Treating Bullying and Victimization looks across the sometimes disparate perspectives from school, clinical, and developmental researchers and professionals with an eye towards describing and integrating current knowledge into a guide for evidence-based practices and further research. The authors offer new directions for understanding this complex problem and for enhancing intervention approaches. This edited book is comprised of three sections: Theoretical Perspectives, Assessment and Intervention, and Recommendations for Policy, Practice, and Research. It is of interest to a number of professions and disciplines including clinical, developmental, counseling, and school psychologists, social workers, school administrators and educators, and public officials involved in setting policies.

Discusses the aggressive behavior known as bullying, covering causes, types of bullying, and ways to respond to a bully.

A comprehensive examination of theory, research, prevention and intervention, and professional practice issues - in one source. Teasing, shunning, and bullying can have serious detrimental effects on both victim and perpetrator. Bullying, Victimization, and Peer Harassment: A Handbook of Prevention and Intervention comprehensively gathers emerging research, theory, and effective practice on this subject into one invaluable source. This thorough review of a wide spectrum of innovative, evidence-based practices targets the complex problems of victimization, peer harassment, and bullying in our schools. Interventions range from individuals and their peers to broad, systems-level change within schools and communities. The challenge of prevention is also explored, using the latest studies as a practical foundation. Suggestions are provided detailing effective strategies to make changes in the culture within schools while offering directions for future research and practice. Bullying, Victimization, and Peer Harassment discusses research on current intervention programs now in place that, until now, has never been evaluated. Several of the studies address middle school issues and multi-ethnic populations, including those from the United States, Canada, and Europe. Peer sexual harassment and dating-related aggression are examined that includes and goes beyond traditional views of bullying and peer intimidation. This valuable handbook provides concise yet extensive information on the most current theory, empirical research, practice guidelines, and suggestions for preparing schools for programmatic initiatives. Topics in Bullying, Victimization, and Peer Harassment include: theory and conceptual issues in victimization, bullying, and peer harassment assessment results from a four-year longitudinal study on peer victimization in early adolescents youth perceptions toward bullying high school students’ victimization profiles immigrant children and victimization evaluating an adolescent violence prevention program a school-based intervention program peer group intervention interventions for victims multiple perspectives involving sexual harassment school-wide approaches to prevention and intervention and much more! Bullying, Victimization, and Peer Harassment is a crucial resource for researchers and mental health professionals who work in schools and who work with children and their families, such as school psychologists, counselors, clinical child psychologists, social workers, and community psychologists.