Researchers: Stop using the word 'bullying' in school
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| A man who described himself as a "disgruntled dad" walks in front of the Ector County Independent School District administration building on Dec. 9, 2011, in Odessa, Texas.(Photo: Mark Sterkel, AP) |
SAN FRANCISCO – Schools that want to do a better job fighting bullying ought to start with one key step, a group of researchers said Tuesday: Stop using the term "bullying."
Because it's "being used for everything from rolling eyes to 'not wanting to be your friend' to sexual assault, the word 'bullying' has really obscured our ability to focus on what's happening" to children, said Dorothy Espelage of the University of Illinois.
Educators have been "spinning our wheels for decades" in a bid to treat bullying, but they're often hampered by policies that require mistreatment to be repetitive, for example, part of the classic definition of bullying. That focus also obscures whether specific acts are happening more or less, she said.
Espelage co-led a group of researchers that worked for a year to produce a new primer on bullying, released here on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, the USA's largest education research organization. The association commissioned the research last year in the