Aggressive conducts, bullying and social adjustment of children

Abstract

In recent years, either aggressive behaviour or bullying has come to be a growing concern for the educational community. There has been much research on this phenomenon but most have focused on schools in urban contexts. This investigation sought to: Obtain data that allow knowing the type and frequency of bullying on children, as well as identify the places where it occurs most often in a rural school. Know the relation between the social adjustment in the peer group (through the sociometric status) and the several patterns of social behaviour, namely prosocial behaviours, leadership, social isolation and particularly, aggression and victimization (either in the self perspective or the peer perspective). Thereby, two questionnaires were administered to 87 children: An adaptation of the self-report about aggressiveness between students in school (QAEANE) by Pereira (1994), consisting of 10 questions about bullying occurrences from the victim and aggressor’s perspective and the places where it occurs; A questionnaire for the peers based on peer selection (QNP), consisting of two parts: the first one, with 4 questions, studies the sociometry (index of preferences and rejections) and the second one, with 5 questions, studies the attributes perceived by peers (aggression, social isolation, leadership; prosocial behaviour and victimization). The results allowed to conclude that bullying also occurs in rural contexts but less frequently when compared with Pereira’s data (2008), obtained in urban areas, where the most recurrent place for bullying is the playground. It has also been found that both bullies and victims are more rejected by peers than those not involved. We discuss some ways to prevent these behaviours in Primary School.