Sixty university students in three different participant roles--perpetrator, the target and the bystander--took part in a role-play incident of bullying. Participants were asked to describe (i) their perspective on the incident; (ii) their views of the target and the perpetrator and (iii) their solution to the problem. The findings suggest that…

Over the past 25 years, a burgeoning literature has emerged which concentrates on the antecedents, experiences and effects of peer victimisation and bullying in schools. Although many advances have been made in this research area, there remain relatively few research papers in the academic literature that discuss the complexities of research (a)…

This article arises out of a 3-year qualitative-interpretive study (January 2008-January 2011) which focused on identifying the experiences of children and parents of Eastern European heritage and their teachers, where migrant children enter primary schools which have previously had limited exposure to cultural and linguistic diversity. This paper…

This study is grounded in a research project, the CARITAS project (Collaborative Application of Research Into Tutoring for Autonomous Study), which ran in our university from 2007 to 2009. Tutors from a variety of programmes collaborated to review literature and to investigate both formal and informal support for students involved in…

This case study records the voices of a group of young people from an isolated rural community as they reflect on their experiences of secondary school. The study was driven by a desire to develop an understanding of the human connections young people make (or not) at school, to help develop understandings of how schools can be better places for…

This article assesses the literature in relation to youth bullying in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and North America, focusing in particular on female aggression as it is expressed in adolescent peer relationships. It addresses the escalating problems of indirect aggression, especially those involving social networking interchanges such as…

Reports from schoolchildren across a range of countries indicate that interventions by teachers in cases of bullying are commonly unsuccessful, especially with older students. This article provides a brief description and critical examination of six major intervention strategies employed in schools and points to the need for better training of…

Whilst traditional forms of bullying have and continue to receive considerable attention in the literature, research on technology-enabled bullying remains in an embryonic stage and considerable deficits exist in our understanding of the nature, extent, dynamics and consequents of this new form of bullying. Of the limited studies that exist on…

This article considers the implications of a small-scale research project, undertaken by the authors, which used the example of the Massage in Schools Programme (a simple peer massage programme) to ascertain whether the planned use of touch-based activity can support the growth of social and emotional skills in the primary classroom. Such claims…

Over the past 10 years, mentoring of children and young people has become an increasingly important feature of social policy in the United Kingdom. This is evidenced in the rapid growth in the number of mentoring schemes operating in a range of educational settings. In 2006 the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation was contracted by the Department…

It is well known that many pupils are bullied and suffer in a variety of ways as a result. This study looks at a largely overlooked outcome of bullying that may have direct consequences for academic success--disrupted concentration and attention to school work. Using pupil perceptions as the source of data, the two main aims were to quantify the…

The research reported in this article was carried out in four secondary schools, two with a peer support system (PS) and two without (NPS) and involved a total of 931 pupils, (49.5 per cent males, and 50.5 per cent females). Participants were aged between 11 and 15 years of age, mean age 12.8 years. The aim was to compare the perceptions of safety…

This article opens with a review of current research on peer interventions and their capacity to impact on school climate and bystander behaviour, as well as to meet the aims of fostering altruism. The main focus of the article is a study of an email support group in an all-boys school in the United Kingdom. It was set up in response to an…