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Disrupting "bully" talk : progressive practices and transformative spaces for anti-violence work in schools Moy, Lisa Christine
Abstract
Bullying in schools is the target of much attention from scholars, the media, educators, policy makers and families. At the same time, there is sparse discussion about how bullying is constructed and little critique about the hegemonic assumptions that shape popular notions of bullying. The primary goal of this study was to challenge discourses that relegate violence in schools to the realm of the private, thus obscuring the role of structural inequalities. Through the lenses of feminist post-structuralism and post-colonialism, data were collected and analyzed including individual and focus group interviews with 15 social justice educators who work with high-school students—seven community-based educators and eight school-based educators. Other data include scholarly literature, media stories, and British Columbia Ministry of Education resources. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I traced four overarching discourses about bullying: the first, a discourse of deficit and deviance, pathologizes young people by focusing on a problem set of behavioural traits; second, a discourse of production and reproduction turns a critical gaze to the family as a site for producing bullies and victims; third, a discourse of amalgamation and conglomeration constructs bullying as an all encompassing explanation for violence; and, in the fourth discourse—a discourse of tokenism and tolerance—care and respect are given only superficial and depoliticized consideration. At the same time, emerging from the interviews with the participants, I identified a marginal, more hopeful, oppositional discourse that is built from a critique of difference and dominant masculinity and centres on critical notions of citizenship, community, and safety. With an aim of nurturing counterpublics in which violence with young people can be problematized and disentangled, strategies of resistance—such as rewriting relationships with young people, cultivating connections and coalitions, and working organically—are highlighted. It is clear that bullying, as currently constructed, constrains young people and those who act with and for them in particular ways. I conclude the dissertation with reflections on the implications for both educational policy and pedagogical practice of a re-worked approach to school violence, one the foregrounds inequality, difference and exclusion and aims to promote social critique and positive social change.
Item Metadata
Title |
Disrupting "bully" talk : progressive practices and transformative spaces for anti-violence work in schools
|
Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
|
Date Issued |
2008
|
Description |
Bullying in schools is the target of much attention from scholars, the media,
educators, policy makers and families. At the same time, there is sparse discussion about
how bullying is constructed and little critique about the hegemonic assumptions that
shape popular notions of bullying. The primary goal of this study was to challenge
discourses that relegate violence in schools to the realm of the private, thus obscuring the
role of structural inequalities.
Through the lenses of feminist post-structuralism and post-colonialism, data were
collected and analyzed including individual and focus group interviews with 15 social
justice educators who work with high-school students—seven community-based
educators and eight school-based educators. Other data include scholarly literature, media
stories, and British Columbia Ministry of Education resources.
Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I traced four overarching discourses about
bullying: the first, a discourse of deficit and deviance, pathologizes young people by
focusing on a problem set of behavioural traits; second, a discourse of production and
reproduction turns a critical gaze to the family as a site for producing bullies and victims;
third, a discourse of amalgamation and conglomeration constructs bullying as an all encompassing
explanation for violence; and, in the fourth discourse—a discourse of
tokenism and tolerance—care and respect are given only superficial and depoliticized
consideration.
At the same time, emerging from the interviews with the participants, I identified
a marginal, more hopeful, oppositional discourse that is built from a critique of difference
and dominant masculinity and centres on critical notions of citizenship, community, and
safety. With an aim of nurturing counterpublics in which violence with young people can
be problematized and disentangled, strategies of resistance—such as rewriting
relationships with young people, cultivating connections and coalitions, and working
organically—are highlighted.
It is clear that bullying, as currently constructed, constrains young people and
those who act with and for them in particular ways. I conclude the dissertation with
reflections on the implications for both educational policy and pedagogical practice of a
re-worked approach to school violence, one the foregrounds inequality, difference and
exclusion and aims to promote social critique and positive social change.
|
Extent |
4996236 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-09
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0067049
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
2009-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Rights URI | |
Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International