School bullying: the (in)visibility of phenomenon and children protagonists

Abstract

This article focuses on school bullying, a complex and active phenomenon in schools. With innovative character, also because it is structured on qualitative research. It brings results from a study developed with three classes - preschool, 1st and 3rd year - of a Portuguese primary school. The methodology involved daily observations in leisure and formal time, focus groups with children and individual interviews with teachers and staff. It was noticed that bullying practices, in many ways, are common in all three classes and they are rarely noticed by adults. Children of both genders play the roles of aggressors and victims. In the context, the victims occupy a social place of disability and non-belonging. Habitual aggressors show impossibility for a playful participation in games and children’s play. Participating in games and children’s plays is a determining condition of belonging and avoids possible victimization. It is common for a pair or a trio with great academical performance incite the other peers for bullying practices. Belonging to a gipsy ethnical background is an automatic factor of discrimination. Children are capable of a deep and purposeful reading of the institutional context. A model of schooling, inattentive to uninvolved to concrete children and their right to participate, must be questioned.