Date of Award

8-2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Social Work (MSW)

Abstract

This thesis presents parental and student perspectives on a public school system's anti-bullying curriculum used during the 2001-2002 school year. This was a qualitative study based on data from personal interviews. The subjects for this interview were three different parents and their elementary school aged children. That allowed the researcher to gain necessary information from both the parents' and students' perspective.

The role of student subjects was irrelevant (i.e., whether the student was a victim of bullying, was a bully, or observed bullying). There were three mothers and four children who participated in this study. For the 2001-2002 school years, one child was in grade 5, one was in grade 6, and two in grade 4.

The analysis focused on the most prevalent themes and patterns of the interviews. The themes were: people not standing up for themselves and those displaying a lack of self-confidence; situation of a child being an insider or outsider, new kids coming into the school system; dysfunctional families, troubled home life (single parent households, divorce situations, etc ... ); children that do not have someone they can talk with about their experiences of the day or how they feel about certain things to help them deal with daily challenges; concern with less structured time when aggressive behaviors have a tendency to present themselves when unchecked by an authority figure. The results indicated that the anti-bullying program was controlling bullying better than before the program was instituted. The benefit of this information can be used to determine the suitability of the anti-bullying program in the research school and perhaps provide some insight for other schools adopting anti-bullying programs.

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