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DR. DOROTHY ESPELAGE: Now I’d like to shift us to two populations that are particularly
at risk. And the first population, and these do not necessarily represent all of those
populations that are at risk, certainly we just have highlighted two. And one is the
population at risk includes the students with disabilities. If you know anything about the
bullying research literature, you would know that in 1992 much of the research in the United
States was focused on students with disabilities.
And only now recently, now in the last few years have we begun to become as concerned
again. And what do we know? Well, students with disabilities were twice as likely to
be identified as perpetrators and victims than students without disabilities. In addition,
students with disabilities that are characterized or have diagnostic criteria associated with
low social skills or low communication skills have a higher likelihood for involvement.
So as the diagnostic criteria includes challenges around interacting with peers and integrating
into networks, we see an increased risk for those students.
In a 2009 survey of families of children on the autism spectrum found that almost 40 percent
of these students experience bullying. So this is something that we really need to pay
attention to and focus our research endeavors on. Next slide.
There was a meta-analysis conducted with children with learning disabilities and eight of the
ten children with a learning disability were peer-rated as rejected. And so we see that
the kids having academic challenges within the context of our classrooms appear not to
be integrated into peer groups. And eight of ten were rated as kind of deficient, if
you will, in social competence and social problem solving, which may be leading to the
further peer rejection that places them at risk for victimization. In addition these
students were less often selected as friends by their peers. And we know from developmental
research that as kids are isolated and do not integrate into the peer group that places
them at risk for serious, subsequent victimization, especially during early adolescence. Next
slide.
Now when we look at emotional behavior disorders among students, these students are three to
four times as likely to be identified as a bully then a student without a disability.
However, if you look at some of their most recent research that my colleagues and I have
been doing, we have to be concerned about how it is that we receive that. It could be
that they’re engaging in reactive aggression, given the social competence challenges that
they have. So much more research needs to be conducted on this. Also, students with
learning disabilities experience comorbid psychiatric diagnoses have reported significant
higher amounts of peer victimization. So it’s not just simply the diagnostic criteria and
the label but it may be the kind of comorbid psychiatric diagnosis that challenged their
integration within classrooms and school communities.
And so these children may stand out as targets. So there’s a number of concerns that we
have around students with disabilities and I encourage everyone to think about this,
but think deeply about how it is that the environment’s may be contributing to the
manifestation of both bullying perpetration and how we can create safe climates in schools
for kids to be included so we can prevent victimization over time.
The second group, (next slide), that I’d like to talk to you about are those LGBT,
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered or Gender nonconforming youth. And there’s
been quite a bit of interest in understanding how our schools and school climates may place
these students at risk. So what do we know? A large percent of bullying among students
in middle school involves the youth of homophobic teasing and slurs. And for the purpose of
this webinar we’ll call this homophobic teasing or victimization and really kind of
the use of homophobic epithets.
We also know that bullying and homophobic victimization occur more frequently among
LBGT youth in American schools than among students who identify as heterosexual. In
a recent study we found 85 percent of LBGT students reported being verbally harassed,
40 percent reported being physically assaulted in the past year because of their *** orientation.
So clearly the research is demonstrating that this is cause for concern. Next slide.
In a California study they found that 7.5 percent reported being bullied in the last
year because they were gay or lesbian or someone thought they were. So clearly the numbers
are specific to samples and the data collection method. But we do know that there’s a pervasiveness
of anti-gay language in schools that suggests that most school environments, not all, are
hostile for LGBT students and create negative environments for even hetero-straight identified
peers. Next slide.
I’m presenting some results here of a large study of seventh through twelfth graders.
And what was nice about this study in some ways is that it started to show some heterogeneity.
So as opposed to saying that all LGBT youth have risk profiles it was true that the findings
said that compared to straight identified youth LGBT were a greater risk for suicide
thoughts/attempts, victimization by their peers and unexcused absences. But follow up
results actually found that there were different types of risk profiles that not all LGBT youth
reported all of these outcomes. At the same time it highlighted that even when we consider
the victimization that they experience within the context of school there was still some
disparities for those most at risk LGBT youth. What does that mean? It means that other things
are happening in their lives beyond victimization that might be contributing to suicidal thoughts,
attempts, victimization, it could be issues around coming out to their family, it could
be you know the church that the belong to, faith based organization, or society in general
that’s contributing to some of these adverse outcomes.
So we have to be very cautious about pointing to just victimization, but recognize that
for the majority of LGBT youth they do experience victimization over time. But if they’re
placed in supportive school environments where there might be a gay straight alliance or
they come from a family that’s accepting then these kinds of adverse outcomes are minimized.
Next slide.
Okay, so we talked about two at risk populations and certainly there are others that we don’t
have time to discuss, so I apologize if I left out a group that someone and you can
ask questions about that. But I want to shift to, and is a nice transition because when
we think about lesbian, gay and bisexual student issues within the context of schools, it’s
not always the *** orientation, it could be those kids that are gender non-conforming
and that they’re not fitting into that box. It also could be a result of our schools not
being sensitive to different ways of gender expression. And it also could be that there’s
just an association between bullying victimization, this homophobic teasing and what we’re going
to talk about now is potentially subsequent *** violence.
So I want to take you through a study here where we have followed fifth through eighth
graders across five ways of data collection. And this is a sample in the Midwest. And there
are three cohorts, fifth, sixth and seventh. We followed them over a two year period. They
included 51 percent Black, students who identified as Black, and 34 percent that identified as
White, and 60 percent of the sample were receiving free and reduced lunch. We gave them self-report
measures across spring 2008 and 2010.
And given the time that we have, I can’t go exactly through the methods. But let me
give you some flavor for what these middle school students were reporting, as we think
about the extent to which bullying is associated with subsequent *** violence perpetration.
When we look at the entire sample of the 1,300 kids, we find that those, both males and females
that are reporting bullying others at high rates were about 12 percent. When we look
at the extent to which kids are reporting directing homophobic epithets at other students,
next slide, we actually find a nice contrast and differential. Here we have a middle school
sample thinking between the ages of 10 and 14, depending, but 34 percent of the boys
reported directing homophobic epithets at other students, whether their friends, not
their friends, someone they thought was gay, someone they didn’t know, someone they didn’t
even think about being gay, so 34 percent of them.
So you can see that this is as we have found in the last ten years of research homophobic
bantering is alive and well, at least within this middle school context in the Midwest
of the U.S. For females they’re also contributing to this banter as well. Twenty percent of
them are reporting this on a regular basis. And these figures are in the last month that
they’re engaging in these behaviors.
So when we look at the extent to which, next slide, on the ground *** prevention educators
are engaging in bullying prevention because it’s much more palatable for principals
and superintendents to have someone come in and say I’m going to help you with your
bullying problem, but yet we know that homophobic bantering and even *** harassment is quite
prevalent in our schools. Will those bullying prevention programs that might be garden variety
that do not talk about gender non-conformity or they do not talk about *** orientation
as being a target, will they be effective? Well, I think the jury is still out on that,
but this particular paper that we published here is clearly showing a connection longitudinally
between those kids that perpetrate bullying here where it’s defined as name calling,
rumor spreading, and some threats of harm is associated with *** harassment perpetration
over that two year period. Now *** harassment perpetration within the context of middle
school, we’re not talking about *** or *** assault, we’re talking about a lot
of commentary.