The Effects of Bullying on Middle School Students Attendance Dissertation

The Effects of Bullying on Middle School Students Attendance - Dissertation Example according to Smith and Sharp (1994, p.64), when successful interventions and policies are designed to counter school bullying, it improves â€Å"pupil achievement and attendance over time.† Samdal et al. (1997) studied how the middle school students’ judgment and perception of school affected their academic performance, attendance and school satisfaction. They found that middle school students were always less satisfied with their school environment as compared to younger or primary school students. According to them, â€Å"The most important predictors of students' satisfaction with school are students' feeling that they are treated fairly, that they feel safe and that they believe that teachers are supportive† (p.383). They concluded that unfair treatment like bullying decreased student satisfaction and eventually their attendance. They stated that the need is to give more attention to peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationship rather than focusing more on c ompleting the curricular requirements. Doing so would help in putting a barrier to bullying, school violence, and nonattendance. Smith et al. (2004) studied the behavioral patterns shown by 406 different middle school victimized students of bullying and concluded that continuing victims â€Å"more often missed school† (p.565) than escaped victims. Newsome (2004) studied group interventions to reduce middle school students’ academic underachievement and school non-attendance resulting from bully. 26 students were given the treatment and 26 were not. He found that although those students who were given treatment improved their grades, however there was no difference or improvement in non-attendance in both the groups. This showed that bully had serious effects on students’ psychology which made them turn away... This essay declares that bullying students are normally very sociable and bold without any idea of shame or guilt; whereas, the bullied ones are already very shy and unsure which makes the overall idea of going to school and attending classes disagreeable. This paper makes a conclsuion that unfair treatment like bullying decreased student satisfaction and eventually their attendance. They stated that the need is to give more attention to peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationship rather than focusing more on completing the curricular requirements. Doing so would help in putting a barrier to bullying, school violence, and nonattendance. Smith et al. studied the behavioral patterns shown by 406 different middle school victimized students of bullying and concluded that continuing victims â€Å"more often missed school† than escaped victims. Glew et al. studied how students experienced bullying and what effects bullying had on their attendance record. The research was a cross-sectional study using school data from 2001 to 2002, in West Coast public school district. He found that attendance was the primary predictor of a child being bullied and that there was a dire need for anti-bullying implementable strategies. A similar resear ch has been conducted by Benbenishty et al. who examined the effects of bullying on school attendance in middle school Jewish and Arab students. Rigby also asserts that boys, when bullied, tend to detach themselves from social gatherings and become reserved.