One of the ways in which school bullying can be reduced is by inducing students who observe bullying taking place at school to act in such a way as to discourage it. This appears to be a promising strategy for several reasons:
1. Most bullying takes place when bystanders are present
2. Although most bystanders do not act to discourage it, when any one of them
does there is a good chance (around 50%) that the bullying will stop
3. Teachers generally do not have the opportunity to take any action because
they are typically not present and are not told about it.
4. A large proportion of students would like to see bullying stopped
There is now some important research on how children respond when they observe bullying taking place. Probably the best known is that undertaken by Debra Pepler and co-workers in Canada in the 1990s in directly observing bystander behaviour among primary school children. More recently, further valuable work on the roles that bystanders play has been reported by Tina Salmivalli in Finland. My own work in Australia, Israel, Italy, Bangladesh, South Africa and England with Bruce Johnson has focused on what children think they would do in bystander situations and the reasons they give for their intended actions (see 1. below).
I believe that a good starting point for promoting positive bystander action on the part of students lies in teachers seeking to understand bystander situations from the students’ point of view and facilitating informed discussion about what class members think should be done and how. A sample of our research and a discussion of its practical implications can be accessed below (2.):
1. Expressed
Readiness of Australian School children to Act as Bystanders in Support of
Children who are Being Bullied (PDF)
2. Innocent bystanders
(PDF)
3.
Playground heroes
(PDF)
How the findings from this research can be used to improve student bystander behaviour