School Counselors' Perceptions and Approaches on Bullying
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Authors
Broberg, Janel
Issue Date
2011
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate school counselors' perceptions of school bullying and the approaches used by school counselors with their adolescent students. Individual questionnaires with open-ended questions were completed by 16 school counselors recruited from 11 middle schools in Northern California. These data from the open-ended questions were subjected to open coding and thematic analysis of coding categories and narrative contents within a grounded theory approach. This qualitative study allowed school counselors to report their perceptions, feelings, and thoughts about their counseling interventions with their student clients who have experienced bullying. Counselors reported that the most common type of bullying among middle school adolescents is verbal bullying. The school counselors indicated that bullying not only disrupts the school's learning environment, but also disrupts the lives of adolescents when they are victims. The school counselors highlighted that they can provide substantial support for adolescents in helping them overcome verbal bullying, with fewer cases of negative outcomes. School counselors reported that they most often used multiple interventions in their help to bullied victims. The school counselors stated that they use a combination of empathy, validation, and identification in their counseling roles in helping bullied students. School counselors noted success with the use of role reversal interventions involving bullies. This study found that school counselors are fully capable of identifying bullying and applying anti-bullying strategies to help victims of bullying and to decrease bullying within a middle school environment. From the reported findings of this study, I would like to suggest that a group intervention involving both the bully and his/her victim be considered in helping victims of school bullying. This type of intervention might further the objective of reducing the negative outcomes for those who are victims, along with preventing other students from becoming victims of bullies.