Since class on Tuesday, I have been searching through articles, forums, and blogs, focusing on the complexity of bullying . So basically I am somewhat shifting my research to explore the perpetrators side. This is not to say I will not mention the effects placed on the victims. I am looking at the kinds of motivational factors that would promote an individual to engage in bullying. I found some literature discussing family structure, child abuse, cultural factors etc. I have not yet begun to really analyze the information, which I will do probably over this weekend. My plans are to definitely discuss all different aspects from the perpetrators side and I am hoping to find a common denominator among all the work I come across so that I can highlight that in my paper. Hopefully finding a common factor among them may lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon.
As Rene was saying in class, I am also struggling with the idea that we have not began writing, but to be honest, what am I to write about if I have no thesis? So over this weekend I have designated a day to really sit down with this information and try to form even an initial idea. It won’t be concrete, but I will try to test it among other theories that I come across. One of the things that is helping me, is writing things down as I read through articles. Also, it’s not just writing it down plainly, I am giving a little background on my thoughts of what I have just read. That way when I come back to it several weeks later I won’t feel so overwhelmed and I may be able to pick up on a recurring idea.
Last night, I began writing down a simplified list of the things I want to discuss. I want to begin by the basics and background, the frequency of the situation, the discussions that are happening; basically the fundamental parts of my paper. As of now things are still vague but I must admit narrowing my topic down in class has allowed me to search more productively for information.
Hi Marian,
I find myself doing the same thing as I am reading through my research. What I also have found helpful is as I am reading the craft of research, I have been writing down questions the book suggests and from there thinking about the kind of message I am trying to relay through the paper. I found this helpful because it allows me to focus my research so I’m not wasting time with research that isn’t relevant to my topic.
Have you been able to find any research on the different terms we suggested during class?
-Maggie
Have you visited the websites of Bully-related websites? Maybe their position with bullying will help shape and direct your research in a direction that makes you want to look deeper into their claims and reaffirm their claims or disprove them.
The Bully Project : http://thebullyproject.com
International Bullying Prevention : http://www.stopbullyingworld.org/
Bullying.org :Bullying.org
Cartoon Network’s “Stop Bullying” Campaign : http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/promos/stopbullying/index.html
Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center : http://www.pacer.org/bullying/nbpm/
(OCTOBER is also National Bullying Prevention Month!)
The Lifetime Channel also has a ton of bullying movies, that you might want to research the actual facts surrounding whatever situations they portray in their movies. (Most of their movies do revolve around bullying in high school-aged groups)
Lifetime Movies : Odd Girl Out, Girl Fight, She’s Too Young, Poison Ivy, The Fab Five
I know they may not necessarily be considered scholarly research, but it should help narrow down what you’re interested in.
Also, are you going to be looking at a specific type of bullying (verbal, physical, or cyber)? Or bullying targets (skin color, nationality, class, income, gender, “popularity”, size, religion, sexual orientation, etc)? And will your research center around bullying in suburban areas or urban areas?
I think bullying varies quite a bit depending on the area, classes, and bully-to-bullied situations. I feel that suburban-whites may bully others differently than say urban-blacks based on a set of (possibly) learned traits conditioned by their socio-economic surroundings, just a hypothesis.
Hope that helped a little 🙂