Bullying involves harmful behaviors that undermine a person's sense of control over themselves and their lives. It is defined by its impact of making the target feel helpless, rather than the intent or persistence of the behavior. Responding to bullying should focus on restoring the target's sense of agency by involving them in decisions and solutions. Labels like "bully" or "victim" should be avoided to prevent self-fulfilling identities and maintain focus on addressing problematic behaviors.

1. What do we mean by bullying?
There have been many different definitions and theories about what constitutes bullying, but it’s not
helpful to define bullying purely in terms of behaviour, bullying is both behaviour and impact.
Bullying is not about just any kind of injury, nor just any negative impact. It involves a particular
kind of harm. It is aimed at engendering a kind of helplessness, an inability to act, to do anything.
It is an assault on a person’s agency (Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)
Bullying is a mixture of behaviours and impacts which can impact on a person’s capacity to feel in
control of themselves. This is what we term as their sense of ‘agency’. Bullying takes place in the
context of relationships; it is behaviour that can make people feel hurt, threatened, frightened
and left out.
This behaviour can include:
• Being called names, teased, put down or threatened
• Being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked
• Having belongings taken or damaged
• Being ignored, left out or having rumours spread about you
• Receiving abusive messages on social media or phone
• Behaviour which makes people feel like they are not in control of themselves
• Being targeted because of who you are or who you are perceived to be
This behaviour can harm people physically or emotionally and, although the actual behaviour may
not be repeated, the threat may be sustained over time, typically by actions: looks, messages,
confrontations, physical interventions, or the fear of these. Bullying is both behaviour and impact.
Online bullying
Online bullying, or Cyberbullying, is often the same type of behaviour but it takes place online,
usually on social networking sites. A person can be called names, threatened or have rumours
spread about them and this can (like other behaviors) happen in person and can happen online.
Advances in technology are simply providing an alternative means of reaching people – where
malicious messages were once written on school books or toilet walls, they can now be sent via
social media sites on mobile devices making their reach greater, more immediate and much harder
to remove or erase.

2. Some online behaviour is illegal. Children and young people need to be made aware of the far-
reaching consequences of posting inappropriate or harmful content on forums, websites, social
networking platforms, etc. If a child or young person is being treated or threatened in a sexual way
or being pressured into doing something that they don’t want to do, this is not bullying. There are
laws to protect children from this very serious type of behaviour.
Persistence and Intent
Bullying is not defined by persistence or intent. This is relevant because if you were to look up
definitions online and in peer reviewed articles, the vast majority of these will refer to bullying as
persistent and deliberate behaviour.
We would argue that these are unhelpful criteria to apply to all situations. So much time can be lost
trying to apply a range of situational factors, many of which are in fact subjective. Many incidents of
bullying will include deliberate and repeated behaviour but these are not in our view, essential
criteria to define bullying.
Making these an essential criteria to be met excludes a significant amount of incidents of bullying
that are not deliberate or necessarily repetitive. We know from our work with children and young
people , that bullying takes many forms and something need only happen once to have a severe
impact.
Let’s look at intent – if you tell me bullying must be deliberate and then accuse me of bullying, what
is my first response? - That I didn’t mean it. Intent is difficult to prove. It can tie situation up in knots
and the focus on responding to what someone did and the impact it had is lost.
Schools can waste a lot of time trying to prove intent –I have been involved in examples when intent
is denied the adults are stumped and do not know how to proceed. We must look at what someone
actually did and the impact it had. If it wasn’t deliberate then they may be in a position to apologise
or make amends sooner – of it was it may merit a more serious response.
Bullying is usually deliberate but not always – sometime children use language they hear at home
and have no idea of how offensive or inappropriate it is. We should not get caught up in using this as
qualifying criteria though – it’s too easily re-framed
Let us now consider persistence – that the behaviour must be repeated before it can be considered
bullying – again this is something we do not agree with and neither do most young people we have
spoken to. Persistence is difficult to define and also, is it more than once? twice? daily? weekly?
Who defines when it’s persistent enough to intervene? Me, the person it is happening to or the
intervening adult? Something need only happen once and the impact can be severe; a child may not
get changed for PE after one incident were they were picked on, humiliated or threatened.
Is being humiliated by having your shorts pulled down in front of a class with 15 people laughing and
pointing, some possibly taking a picture, bullying? Of course it is, is it repetitive? It doesn’t matter,
we focus on the behaviour and the impact it had.
The fear of repetition can be sustained through looks or perhaps threats or just the fear of it
happening again.

3. What you do about bullying is actually more important than how you define it.
We respond by asking;
What was the behaviour?
What impact did it have?
What do I need to do about it?
Every situation is unique. You might over hear some name calling in the corridor and discover this is
chat between to close friends who are ‘winding’ each other up; it is not part of any power or
dominance game.
What was the behaviour? Name calling
What impact did it have? None – made them laugh
What do I need to do about it? Nothing – perhaps remind them about language or being
overheard
You may hear the same name calling ten feet further on but the person on the receiving end is upset
and embarrassed in front of her peers.
What was the behaviour? Name calling
What impact did it have? Left someone embarrassed and fearful – who ran off
What do I need to do about it? Help this person get back into her routine, listen to how she feels
and decide on next steps – you will need to challenge the people who called her names and look at
possible consequences too
This does not mean we only focus on the impact behaviour has – this means that if someone shouts
a homophobic or racist slur at someone and it bounces off them and they don’t care –this does not
mean you do not need to do anything about the language used and the attempt to bully. Just
because a person is not affected does not mean the behaviour they experienced should be ignored.

4. Just as not all attempts to bully are successful, people can feel bullied but not be – it is possible some
people over react –you still need to deal with their reaction and their feelings but you might not
need to do much about the behaviour the experienced – it could have been a harmless comment not
aimed at them but they have assumed it was and got into a terrible state over it.
Focussing our response
Bullying and Agency
So when we look at impact – things like feeling hurt, angry, scared, frightened, that knot in your
stomach- what is happening there? What do these reactions tell us?
Young people have reflected to us over the years in a range of ways that they feel unable to speak
out and feel trapped when bullied – they draw pictures of themselves in large rooms feeling caged
and so on. This learning helped us articulate the notion that bullying actually takes something away
from people.
All of these feelings which are regularly articulated reflect a loss of being in-charge of yourself, of
being capable of taking effective action, of making choices and of being an effective actor or agent in
your own life.
When we use our agency, we have a degree of choice over what we do and how we respond within
structures like families, communities and schools.
Young people get this notion - as it can be a bit if a head scratcher the first time you hear it - though
when you explain a ‘typical day’ of meeting friends, going to school, laughing, joining in and knowing
what is happening and how you’ll respond most children and young people recognise this day.
Bullied children don’t have the same kind of day. Someone else is in charge of how they feel, where
they go even or how they will participate in certain things, if they get on the bus or eat alone. They
cannot exercise the same choice nor have the same autonomy as when they were not being bullied.
We learn from our past experiences, from imagining what we would do in future similar situations
and what is happening to us now – these elements combine and enable us to make choices and
act – this is agency.
Managing change and responding to challenges requires hope, a belief you can handle things - and
agency and these underpin resilience.
If we re-visit the quote -

5. Bullying is not about just any kind of injury, nor just any negative impact. It involves a particular
kind of harm. It is aimed at engendering a kind of helplessness, an inability to act, to do anything.
It is an assault on a person’s agency (Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)
- we can see bullying is not even the establishment of dominance. The person bullying is not satisfied
with dominance. Bullying can involve the attempt to deny another any settled place, even a
subordinate one. It goes beyond subjection. In bullying, the goal is abjection
What does this mean for how we respond?
Considering that bullying is both different types of behaviour and a particular impact this should re-
focusses our understanding of the dynamic - this can re-define an approach to bullying in a way that
helps practitioners’ responds to feelings and actions. This is always more effective than checking off
criteria and having uniform sanction based responses based on our view of the person who is doing
it.
If we can accept that bullying takes something away from people, that they can no longer take
effective action our response must focus on helping get that back.
This is the real shift in anti-bullying practice – how do I help someone get back a feeling of being in
control of themselves and in a place to take effective action to feel safe and get on with their day?
Things like moving desks or even just excluding people won’t on their own help restore agency –
young people must be included in what will happen next and given the chance to steer what
direction it goes in. They need to be asked what they would like to happen and we need to take that
seriously.
This is not always easy but it must remain our goal with every intervention – to help young people
get back to a place where they are in control and can take effective action.
In reality – what does that look like? What does it sound like? You will need to ask questions like
What would you like to happen?
What do you think will happen if I tell his or her parents?
What will happen if I tell your teacher?
What are you worried about?
Be prepared for them to say
Don’t tell my dad – you will out me to him and I’m not ready for that
I just want you to know what is happening and if I need you I will come and get you
If you talk to his dad he will get a doing/beating and it’ll get worse

6. So you explore what options they do have and sometimes that means pointing out that you need to
do something as not doing anything is dangerous
Open conversations like these promote communication – this promotes positive relationships and
they promote and role model problem solving behaviours –these relationships can become
stronger and children become more resilient to what is happening because of this strong
purposeful relationship – even with just one person.
The process of listening and consciously trying to get back agency – a sense of being on control –
won’t always lead to a perfect outcome but it will help the person being bullied
Labelling
Bullying is not defined by the type of person who did it either
Care needs to be taken because labelling is not without its risks, labelling a child or young person on
the basis of bullying behaviour can result in a confirmed identity as a ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ resulting in
ongoing behaviour patterns based on this identity.
This is not to dilute behaviour but is to keep the focus of the adult’s responses on the behaviour that
is problematic, rather than the assigning characteristics to those involved. This is a solution focussed
approach that is designed to help people change the way they behave, rather than attempt to
change who they are. We help people change by telling them the behaviour that is unacceptable,
being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.
It is a fundamental part of behaviour management that we tell people what the behaviour was they
did, why it is not acceptable and help them figure out what to do the next time they feel that way.
All of this promotes respectful relationships, this approach builds a young person’s capacity to
respond more effectively, when we are helping young people learn to negotiate tricky relationships
and when we involve them in finding solutions and repairing those that can be fixed, we help them
to become more resilient.
Brian Donnelly

7. So you explore what options they do have and sometimes that means pointing out that you need to
do something as not doing anything is dangerous
Open conversations like these promote communication – this promotes positive relationships and
they promote and role model problem solving behaviours –these relationships can become
stronger and children become more resilient to what is happening because of this strong
purposeful relationship – even with just one person.
The process of listening and consciously trying to get back agency – a sense of being on control –
won’t always lead to a perfect outcome but it will help the person being bullied
Labelling
Bullying is not defined by the type of person who did it either
Care needs to be taken because labelling is not without its risks, labelling a child or young person on
the basis of bullying behaviour can result in a confirmed identity as a ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ resulting in
ongoing behaviour patterns based on this identity.
This is not to dilute behaviour but is to keep the focus of the adult’s responses on the behaviour that
is problematic, rather than the assigning characteristics to those involved. This is a solution focussed
approach that is designed to help people change the way they behave, rather than attempt to
change who they are. We help people change by telling them the behaviour that is unacceptable,
being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.
It is a fundamental part of behaviour management that we tell people what the behaviour was they
did, why it is not acceptable and help them figure out what to do the next time they feel that way.
All of this promotes respectful relationships, this approach builds a young person’s capacity to
respond more effectively, when we are helping young people learn to negotiate tricky relationships
and when we involve them in finding solutions and repairing those that can be fixed, we help them
to become more resilient.
Brian Donnelly