Bullying through students' narratives in a 6th grade EFL classroom

Abstract

This qualitative inquiry attempted to describe bullying from sixth graders’ representations. To reach this goal, the teacher-researchers used students’ narratives, semi-structured interviews, and teachers’ journals to collect data. As English teachers at secondary schools, we play an important role as educators, so our classes must be oriented to use language as a means to solve this kind of problems. When students were given the opportunity to express themselves about bullying, they displayed their thoughts and reflections without feeling judged. Thematic analysis served as the method of study of the narratives. It allowed the researcher to focus on the content and on the intention of the writer, not on the form of writing. The participants wrote and shared their experiences of bullying, even if they had not been bullied. They wrote on someone else who had experienced it. They could write the experience in the style in which they felt more comfortable. In this study, it was found as expected narratives revealed that common features of bullying are depicted by students, such as exclusion, language and physical abuse and power imbalanced roles in the classroom, these findings could allow further studies to tackle bullying at schools’ environments.