Girl Bullying and LGBTQ Harassment: Shared Experiences

Girl Bullying and LGBTQ Harassment: Shared Experiences

Some of the blame for ignoring these events and the withdrawal of responsibility for taking action to prevent these events lies in the continued external mandates for standardized curriculum to raise test scores, “teacher-proof” classroom practices, and increased accountability for faithful implementation of scripted lessons (Jaeger, 2006). Such practices decrease the chance that teachers will act as advocates against social injustices. Teachers are less likely to intervene in harassment events because the perceived cost of intervention is too high (Schrader, 2004). In the current high-stakes climate, intervention leads to the loss of instructional minutes. If their intervention is more than superficial and the teacher attempts to engage students in a meaningful discussion of the relational issues that are at play in a harassment or bullying event, the teacher loses valuable teaching time that would be “better” spent on preparation for testing (Jaeger, 2006).

Similarly, girl-on-girl bullying is typically ignored by school personnel. Many people believe that harassment is normal and intrinsic to the process of developing friendships. Adults may believe that youth “grow out of it” and that bullying is a rite of passage (Barone, 1995). The dominance and oppression of bullying have been passed off as “kids will be kids” (Ophelia Project, 2006).

In terms of both girl bullying and homophobic harassment, the assumption that bullying and harassment is “normal” is especially problematic because the long-term effect of this behavior on the victims is devastating. These effects included poor school performance and attendance, failure to graduate, mental health concerns, and, in the most extreme circumstances, suicide (American Association of University Women [AAUW], 2001; Delfabbro et al., 2006; Kelley, 2007; Kosciw & Diaz, 2006; Ophelia Project, 2006; Rederstorff et al., 2007; Thurlow, 2001). Like random dot stereograms, more commonly known as “magic eye puzzles,” such bullying becomes unrecognized and, therefore, unseen, due to a flattening of the visual cues and fusing of disparate images (Siegel, 2004). The problems only become visible when we are able to separate the appropriate background behaviors from the inappropriate bullying behaviors.
Girl Bullying

Girl bullying has been described as psychological warfare characterized by name-calling, gossiping, character assassination, and banishment from social circles or activities (American Association of University Women [AAUW], 2001; Chu, 2005; Meadows et al., 2005; Simmons, 2002). Girl-on-girl bullying is difficult to study because it does not involve physical aggression. It is, however, akin to relational aggression, a psychological and emotional form of abuse that uses relationships to inflict injury upon another. In fact, upon close inspection, girl bullying can be found in the halls, locker rooms, girls’ bathrooms, lunch tables, and backs of classrooms, as well as on cell phones and in cyberspace chat rooms (Rose, Swenson, & Waller, 2004; Werner & Crick, 1999).

Female teachers make up the majority of adults in school, especially in elementary schools where the role models are predominantly female. Because of their formerly held “membership” as either victims, bystanders, or perpetrators of girl bullying, they are both insiders and outsiders of the bullying culture. For those who do nothing to help their younger-gender “sisters, ” they hold what Adams, Bell, and Griffin (1997) describe as horizontal hostility. Horizontal hostility occurs when members of the same group, who have newfound power, do nothing to help those who need help. They act as bystanders and, due to their inaction, they perpetuate the oppression of girls on girls (Soohoo, 2004). If teachers do not act on the behalf of victims, they in essence become covert bullies (Schrader, 2004).

Girl bullying is particularly distinguished by individuals’ lack of recognition of dehumanization on the school grounds. The denial of girl bullying allows adults in schools to assuage themselves of guilt and responsibility. Thus, girl bullying becomes the implicit curriculum (Eisner, 1994; Osler, 2006): unofficial lessons learned about bully dominance. Many teachers work in these bully environments and deny the existence of the phenomenon as well as any responsibility for its curtailment or for creating possibilities for girls to re-author their identities (Kennedy, 2007; Osler, 2006).

Both Osler (2006) and Simmons (2002) suggest that schools are systems that avoid classifying girl bullying as genuine aggression, thereby trivializing reports on girl bullying. Some counselors view girl bullying as harmless teasing because it is not physically violent and there are no procedures for advisors and counselors to address hurt feelings. Thus, schools often prefer to focus on the physicality of bullying and the misconduct of boys, rather than on the covert action of girls. As such, girl bullying flies below the radar (Osler, 2006).

Birkinshaw and Eslea (1998) surveyed and interviewed 76 primary-school teachers. They found that physical bullying was perceived by teachers as more significant than indirect forms of bullying such as social exclusion. Because teachers perceive physical bullying as more serious than verbal bullying or any act of harassment, teachers were more likely to take disciplinary action, such as calling the family, when the harassment was physical. Yet, students in the Birkinshaw and Eslea (1998) study who had experienced bullying felt that social exclusion was the worst form of bullying. These data suggest a disconnect between adult and student perceptions regarding the seriousness of different kinds of bullying. For adults, girl bullying can be left invisible, undefined, and unmarked. Ultimately, one cannot address that which one chooses not to see.

Schools reflect the values of the surrounding society. When that community gives credit to a heterosexist world view, then the school environment mirrors, and often amplifies, negative perceptions about LGBTQ populations (Adelman & Woods, 2006; Robertson, 2005). Schools are often difficult environments for all youth because students are often unaware how their own misconceptions or unthinking actions can bring harm, both physical and psychological, to their peers (Adelman & Woods, 2006). Additionally, students (and often teachers) bring with them unexamined values that reflect the culture of their home environments, and these values may be at odds with the articulated expectations of the school administration. The values of the members of the school community may overpower the official administrative expectations of diversity and tolerance and, thus, the school community may be actively hostile to LGBTQ youth (Kelley, 2007; Kosciw & Diaz, 2006; Saufler, 2004). Thus, while over 25% of all middle- and high-school students report victimization by bullying (Saufler, 2004), over 60% of LGBTQ students experience verbal and physical harassment and bullying. Of these LGBTQ incidents, over 80% are observed and ignored by teachers and other responsible adults (Kosciw & Diaz, 2006).

In such an unexamined environment, sexist myths are common and homophobia is either tolerated, not recognized, or not acknowledged as serious (Hazler et al., 2001; Morrow & Gill, 2003). Homophobic harassment is deemed less problematic by non-LGBTQ school staff and students as compared to LGBTQ staff and students (Harris et al., 2002; Robertson, 2005; Thurlow, 2001) perhaps because LGBTQ youth are recognized as “different” from mainstream youth, but not explicitly identified as sexual minority youth. Thus, the expressed “reason” for the acts of marginalization and bullying is not articulated as or associated with homophobia by the perpetrators of or witnesses to the acts. However, LGBTQ students experience such words and actions as threatening and potentially deadly (Kosciw & Diaz, 2006; McFarland & Dupuis, 2001; Morrow & Gill, 2003; Rankin, 2005; Robertson, 2005; Saufler, 2004). In contrast, both minority and nonminority students and faculty agree that any form of racism is inappropriate and wrong (Adelman & Woods, 2006; Robertson, 2005).

Many schools of education actively encourage preservice teachers to incorporate a variety of social justice and anti-bullying practices into their teaching repertoires (Brigham Young University, 2005; Campbell, McNamara, & Gilroy, 2004; Pace University School of Education, 2004; SUNY-Oswego School of Education, 2004; Wheaton College Teacher Education Program, 2004). The aim is to change the traditional school environment by ensuring that preservice and newly graduated teachers are able to incorporate diversity, fairness, and unbiased educational practices into their professional personae and offer all students, including LGBTQ students, a safe, supportive environment in which to learn (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE], 2002; Teacher Education Accreditation Council [TEAC], 2004). Preservice teachers themselves recognize the importance of ensuring that their classrooms and their schools are safe environments for all (Bernhard et al., 2005; Gutstein, 2006; Kennedy, 2006). The realities of school include managing unexpected student and administrative concerns, balancing the requirements of the classroom with the expectations of their teacher training program, and working with teachers who have little knowledge of appropriate responses to homophobic bullying behaviors. Thus, when preservice teachers join the school community, issues of social justice, diversity, and fairness, and explicit discussions with students about safety for all become some of the earliest casualties (Romo & Chavez, 2006).

Similarly, many adults are unable to recognize LGBT bullying due to their own experiences as students (Rienzo et al., 2006). LGBT bullying is often understood as an unexamined response to difference and is perhaps associated with students’ discomfort with questions surround the development of sexual identity. As youth, LGBT bullying may have been a way of protecting themselves from their own questions. As adults, they continue to be uncomfortable with these questions and are unable to stop actions that they do not fully understand.

This comparative analysis is an initial attempt to understand and elucidate how and why teachers fail to recognize or articulate targeted bullying events. These analyses are placed within the broader context of unacknowledged and/or administratively ignored harassment events. Within this framework, we have compared and contrasted girl-on-girl bullying to LGBTQ hassment as specific examples of bullying events that are typically invisible and/or ignored.

Three broad questions help frame the concerns raised by harassment and bullying in schools:

1. How do teachers recognize, acknowledge, and intervene to reduce targeted harassment and bullying behaviors in school settings to ensure that the school remains a safe environment for all students?

. 2. What happens when the values of a school community within which teachers work are at odds with the practices professed by the professional education program in which they are enrolled (Garmon, 2005; Romo & Chavez, 2006)?

3. How do these targeted harassment and bullying behaviors inform preservice teacher understanding of their own responsibilities to their students (Lenski, Crawford, Crumpler, & Stallworth, 2005)?

To address these questions, we compared and contrasted two studies that addressed these concerns from different perspectives. Study 1 addressed how preservice teachers characterized girl-on-girl bullying in their own educational histories and explored their intended responses to this bullying in school settings. Study 2 considered preservice teachers’ recognition of and responses to LGBTQ harassment in a public school setting. The impetus for this shared analysis was the recognition of the coincident results that have not been fully explored in the literature. While there are a plethora of reports discussing ways to break the cycle of bullying and harassment, little work has addressed the role of teachers’ own histories in terms of recognition of and responses to these types of less visible harassment events. The joint interrogation of these two studies allows us to begin to articulate important questions about the role of teachers’ pasts in relationship to the acknowledgement and prevention of bullying in schools.
Study 1: Examining Girl Bullying

The catalyst for this study came from former preservice teachers who critiqued the Soohoo’s original manuscript of Talking Leaves (Soohoo, 2006), which described multiple forms of “otherness” in professional and other communities. The book addresses race, gender, ethnicity, language, ability, sexual orientation, physical differences, and religion. However, preservice teachers requested that more research be conducted on the topic of girl bullying because there was not much literature in the field about the phenomenon.

A reflective journal, also part of a teaching portfolio, was maintained by Soohoo to document her professional growth as an instructor and researcher. Her objective was to document her willingness to make her scholarly work available for student critique prior to submitting it for publication. The mission statement in the teacher credential program indicates that students should aspire to become scholarly practitioners. Thus, Soohoo reasoned that a professional imperative to make her work public and to model how one thinks and studies about complex issues in multicultural education would contribute to the professional growth of both her and her students. The methodological framework used in this study is based on Manke and Alexander’s (2004) model of self-study that includes artifacts, reflection, improvisation, re-analysis, performance, collaboration, and relational research as benchmarks of self-study.

Candidates in the study read a manuscript about girl bullying, Bully Blindness written by Soohoo in 2005. The essay described the existence and persistence of the problem of girl bullying at schools. It did not include any solutions to the phenomenon; it merely laid out the issue for discussion. Candidates first responded to the article on an electronic discussion board, using an adaptation of Freire’s (1971) critical pedagogy: read, reflect, and act. Using this format, candidates selected a passage from the writing, summarized it (read), connected the passage to their own thoughts and experiences (reflect), and described what they would do to address the issue (act; Martuza & Johns, 1986; Wilson, 1998).

Students were then asked to respond to at least two other classmates’ postings and engage in a dialogue about the manuscript. Following the online discussion, conversations followed in class about girl bullying. In addition to these data, three interested students volunteered to be interviewed by the instructor outside of class time.

Additionally, three students volunteered to be interviewed after class time. They also volunteered to write essays in richer detail about their recollections of girl-bullying experiences. The social phenomenon of girl bullying appeared to have great significance to them.

I feel these scars run much deeper than those from a physical fight with cuts and bruises that heal, but the words of a bully may remain in someone’s mind for a long time.

I remember so many times when teachers would look the other way when students were bullied at school.

Both female and male preservice teachers felt ill equipped to address girl bullying but for different reasons. The men doubted that they would recognize girl bullying if they witnessed it.

Maybe it is because being guys, we don’t have much personal experience to draw from, but I really feel like I don’t know how to stop this.
This issue is confusing to me because I honestly don't know what to do about it. I can easily break up a fist fight that I may happen to see. However, chances are that I am not going to SEE girl bullying happening right in front of me. I can try to stop the passing of notes and such in class, but even if I do that the bullying will occur outside the classroom, outside of school, or on the Internet. Although I believe it is good to study this and bring attention to it, being realistic with myself I can't honestly say that I ever see this being something that can be stopped. There are too many variables, and in my experience with sisters and other girls I know, females (especially in middle/high school) are just mean when interacting with each other.

The women, on the other hand, had not resolved bullying in childhood and therefore doubted their ability to resolve the issues as an adult.

It is somewhat difficult to stand up for myself and address the situation girl bullying when I was the one being bullied [as a child].
As a female teacher, I believe I am an insider and an outsider. I am an outsider because I am now a teacher and no longer feel the initial threat of being bullied. But I am an insider because if and when I witness bullying, I revert back to those feelings of victimization when I myself was bullied.
Girl bullying is passed down from mother to daughter.  I was bullied in grade school and my mom said that I was being bullied in school because it was normal. ‘Everybody gets teased,’ she said. ‘Pretend like it doesn't bother you and they will stop.’ She then said, “I was teased in school, and it is just stuff that mean girls do. You just be nice to everyone.’ I witness her still being bullied by her older sisters and people at work everyday. I tell her she should stand up for herself, but she never does.

Teachers also reported they did not deal with girl bullying because their days were filled with other priorities that needed attention.

Dealing with interfering [sic] with bullying means taking the extra time during my breaks to handle these problems.
When you have 180 students a day and more that you advise or coach, you can get overwhelmed. You start looking at what is essential, like finding parking, taking attendance, and just showing up. For example, I was here until 2:00 a.m. last night. It’s 10:00 a.m., and I have not yet taken attendance, but I did plan an after-school program, talked with our police officer, talked with two assistant principals and the principal, language tested a student, and supervised two student assistants and two adult assistants. You get the idea? It is very busy, all of the time.
With behavioral issues, many of them go on before or after school, at lunch, in the bathrooms, or after sporting events. We have ‘supervision’ during most of these times, except the bathrooms. We have three security guards and a violence prevention officer. We have a Code of Conduct. It includes a no foul language provision. If I took kids by the jacket, which I have, to the office every time I heard some student verbally assaulting another student, I would never eat lunch or use the restroom. 
Our police officer and assistant principal will listen when there is possible bullying, but they really need to handle the arrests and home checks to see if our students are safe. I don’t think they get very excited about dealing with a lot of this girl bullying stuff.
I choose to ignore girl bullying because there are more important things to attend to, like state mandates.

Call for Action. Virtually all the teachers in the study pledged greater vigilance in overseeing girl bullying now that they were made aware of the problem. They posed several ideas to deal with harassment and to promote girl bullying consciousness.

I vow to always be alert to any form of bullying, both boy and girl bullying. I also intend to always intervene in any form of bullying, so that I can assist my students to instead resolve their conflicts in a peaceful and respectful manner.

Teacher educators should encourage preservice teachers to be self-reflective and take a look at ways one might inadvertently perpetuate or even encourage girl bullying. This could be the first step in ‘repatterning’ the social order.

There is little research on the role of preservice teachers as mitigating agents who act to reduce bullying and other inappropriate behaviors observed outside of the practicum classrooms to which they are assigned. This study concerned the bullying behaviors that preservice teachers recognized in K-8 schools and asked whether they recognized or acknowledged homophobic harassment, and what action they took to stop or prevent such behaviors when they were observed.

During this third semester, participants in this study elected to complete their final practicum in an urban school serving a low-income, high-needs population. Most of these preservice teachers anticipated finding a permanent teaching position in an urban school and sought a practicum experience in a similar school to hone their pedagogical and social justice skills.

All 44 students were placed in practicum classrooms in the Greenwood School (a pseudonym), a K-8 school where the administration fosters, and the school staff embraces, a strong, professional learning community. The physical plant is well maintained and the staff works in teams that offer many supports to ensure that all students have opportunities to develop the skills needed for success. The school subscribes to the Community of Caring philosophy (National Center for Community of Caring, 2005); students and faculty participate in activities that support caring, respect, responsibility, trust, and community building. These activities include school-wide assemblies, specific classroom lessons, and mandated in-class morning meetings, during which Community of Caring concerns are raised, discussed, and responded to with the cooperation of all members of the classroom community.

Prior to joining their classrooms, all 44 preservice teachers met with the school principal and their cooperating teachers and students. They were formally welcomed and invited to become full-fledged members of the school community, encouraged to participate in all classroom activities as responsible, caring, and respectful adults and to actively join the classroom support teams to ensure the success of individual students. Teachers defined themselves as mentors to the preservice teachers and offered them many opportunities to hone their classroom skills. Additionally, the principal, teachers, and other staff members encouraged the preservice teachers to look for opportunities to take initiative to support students in various locations, including the hallways, library, cafeteria, and reminded the preservice teachers that they were members of the Greenwood School community and role models for the students.

In the college classroom, the preservice teachers generated lists of actions, behaviors, and words that would suggest that they were observing a homophobic bullying event. Additionally, they identified school common areas (e.g., hallways, library, cafeteria, bus waiting areas) where they could complete their observations. They recorded any bullying behaviors they observed and described the participants (e.g., approximate age, race or ethnicity, gender), any other observers (including school personnel), the circumstances surrounding the behavior (if known or observed), the words used and actions engaged in by the participants, and the response of any adults in the vicinity. Notes on these discussions were maintained by Garii.

Within two weeks after this discussion, the preservice teachers were asked to observe students in school common areas during two separate 30-minute blocks. The preservice teachers were told to specifically keep in mind the class discussion about bullying and the list they generated while looking for bullying behaviors among students. As part of the requirements during the previous two semesters, the preservice teachers had been trained in unobtrusive, guided classroom observation techniques.

Data Analysis. The study used phenomenological analysis (Creswell, 2007) of preservice teachers’ recognition and reporting of bullying and harassment incidents in school common areas. We queried the different ways preservice teachers characterized and articulated observed bullying behaviors and how preservice teachers conceptualized their understanding of the events (Linder & Marshall, 2003; Marton & Pong, 2005). Observation reports were collected and entered into a database that allowed manipulation and categorization of their thoughts and ideas about their observations. The constant comparison method was employed to identify core concerns and responses (Charmaz, 2006; Richards, 2005) that illustrated preservice teachers’ understanding of bullying events, adult responses to these events, and their own reactions to the bullying exchanges.

Three questions were considered as the lists generated in class and the preservice teachers’ journals were reviewed by the researchers:

1. What bullying behaviors and, more specifically, what homophobic bullying behaviors, were recognized?

2. Who responded to the acts of bullying?

3. What were the specific responses of the preservice teachers to the bullying behaviors?

The preservice teachers’ responses to the in-class discussions suggested some shared understandings of bullying in general and homophobic bullying in particular. Using questions raised by these discussions, the observation journal reports were categorized to identify how preservice teachers articulated support and challenges to their ability to recognize and respond to bullying events.

Using the LYRIC typology as an organizing tool (Denny David, Personal Communication, September 27, 2007), preservice teachers began by identifying offending words and phrases. Simultaneously, they also identified the power dynamics associated with the use of these words (Table 1). They also discussed the roles of the victim, bully, and bystander, and adults’ recognition and responses to bullying behaviors and associated vocabulary. Yet the preservice teachers minimized their potential effects by couching their reports in such phrases as “we only used these words among friends,” “we didn’t mean anything when we said this stuff,” and “everyone knows it’s really nothing.”

More specifically, Table 1 suggests an interesting contrast between preservice teachers’ articulation of racist and homophobic terms. The preservice teachers, predominantly White, distanced themselves from racist terms, disavowing their own use of such terms, while questioning their ability to intervene when/if they heard African-American students use the words among themselves. After one class session, the two African-American students in the class expressed their discomfort around the racist terms regardless of whether the speakers were African American or White. These two students were clear that such words were always inappropriate. However, they elected not to discuss this during the class session because they “just didn’t want to get into it” with their peers.

Yet when discussing homophobic vocabulary, all the preservice teachers 1) minimized the import of the words (“we only use it among our friends”); 2) recognized the potential power these words held (“we never use it if someone is really gay”); and 3) endorsed immediate action if they heard such words being used.

School Observations. The 44 preservice teachers reported 96 separate harassment incidents, 51 (53%) of which were predominantly physical behaviors (pushing or pulling, fighting, hitting, throwing food), and 45 (47%) were predominantly verbal (name calling, racial slurs, put downs, arguing). Among the 96 incidents, only 3 included a description of teacher responses. An excerpt from a preservice teacher’s journal exemplifies these responses.

A student walked through the door and hit a girl. The girl ignored the boy but [the teacher] told the boy to stop being disrespectful.

In fact, all three teacher responses were mild verbal reprimands, with teachers asking students to stop bothering other students.

As a rule, preservice teachers did not bring inappropriate behaviors to the attention of other professionals in the area. They reported difficulty separating bullying from “playing around” (“I didn’t know if that was bullying or not, so I just watched”). When they did identify bullying behaviors, they expected others to step in, choosing not intervene themselves (“I saw the lunch aide, so I figured she knew what to do”). Only one preservice teacher reported intervening when a possible bullying event occurred, although the preservice teacher admitted that the only reason he intervened was because no other teacher was available to step in.

The bullier [sic] began talking to the victim in the hallway. The younger student seemed a little nervous but they also seemed to be acquaintances or even friends on some level. The bullier began slapping the victim multiple times on the head, arms, and chest. The slapping was hard but not brutal. No one in the hallway at the time except for me, so I told him to cut it out and go to class.

Nearly 1/4 of the 96 reported incidents (n = 23, 24%) were sufficiently described to be characterized as either racist (n = 12, 52%), sexist (n = 6, 26%), ableist (n = 3, 13%), or homophobic (n = 2, 9%) as characterized by the LYRIC typology described in Table 1. Racist, sexist, and ableist incidents were clearly articulated, as the following eight examples suggest:

1. Older White kids mocking stereotypical behaviors of African-American kids.

2. Black girl pushes a White boy and calls him ‘White boy’.

3. Spanish [sic] girl giving Vietnamese girl the ‘death stare’ and says, ‘I don’t want you looking at my stuff.’

4. Three girls taunting one boy.

5. Boy makes fun of mentally disabled kid.

6. One boy . . . leaves the table and goes to the [girl in the wheelchair] . . . and starts pushing her all over the place . . . Monitor didn’t do anything, just stared.

7. Boys were playing a slapping game. A smaller boy (less mature?) didn’t want to play [but he did]. When he was slapped he cried and the other boys laughed at him.

8. A boy made fun of another boy and called him a girl. The teacher laughed.

In classroom discussion, during which the preservice teachers shared their observations, the first six events were identified as racist (1, 2, 3), sexist (4), and ableist (5, 6). However, the preservice teachers were unable to identify an appropriate label that they felt identified the last two events. Even during guided discussion, during which the instructor reminded them of the LYRIC typology and their own definition of homophobic harassment, they denied the association.
Discussion

The very few reported incidents that could be construed as homophobic bullying suggests that the preservice teachers were unable to recognize the breadth of such events. Previous work suggests that homophobic bullying is a common occurrence even at the elementary school level (Saufler, 2004). This lack of recognition and reporting of events that could be construed as homophobic is consistent with prior evidence that suggests that school personnel in general are not sensitive to, aware of, or recognize the subtle behaviors associated with homophobic harassment (Kosciw & Diaz, 2006).

The juxtaposition of the preservice teachers’ ability to articulate racist, sexist, and ableist behaviors while avoiding recognition of homophobic harassment reflects the discomfort illustrated in Table 1. Homophobic bullying remains invisible, perhaps because these preservice teachers, predominantly young adults facing their own sexual awakening, would have to acknowledge their own culpability (Rienzo et al., 2006) in perpetuating these actions during their own students days.
Conclusion and Implications

The two studies described here address these issues within the separate contexts of girl-on-girl bullying and LGBTQ harassment. Together, these studies suggest that targeted bullying behaviors are both more insidious and less acknowledged than generally has been recognized (Carney & Cobia, 2002; Morrow & Gill, 2003; Rienzo et al., 2006). Study 1, which explicitly addressed girl-on-girl bullying, suggests that preservice teachers “get it”: they understand the negative effects of bullying and harassment and they can articulate the pain and suffering associated with relational aggression. Study 2, which explore preservice teachers’ responses to bullying in general and homophobic bullying in particular, raises a harsh reality: while the preservice teachers do “get it,” they fail to “see it.” Bullying in its many guises has been woven into the ways children interact in schools and, as such, targeted bullying incidents have become nearly invisible to many school observers. Therefore, like the magic eye puzzles (Siegel, 2004), it is difficult to see what has been ingrained in the schools for many years and it may difficult to differentiate between “playing around” and actual bullying.

Preservice teachers are being asked to help K-12 students identify and diminish their own bullying behaviors. Yet even with insights into their own past experiences and specific training to help correct socially inappropriate behaviors, the preservice teachers who participated in both studies continue to have difficulty recognizing and confronting bullying events. The evidence suggests that preservice teachers understand bullying, except in its most extreme forms, to be “merely” part of the typical school experience. As they suggested, these bullying words were “not important” and students “didn’t mean anything” when they used such negative words. Thus, preservice teachers may have limited ability to accurately recognize or give credence to these inappropriate behaviors because their own experiences desensitized them to the language: Homophobic bullying was “no big deal,” girl bullying was equally a part of the high school experience, and neither were considered important enough to warrant a response by school personnel.

Yet when preservice teachers recognize racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic language and acts, evidence suggests that classroom teachers diminished or ignored these incidents. Thus, the preservice teachers may question their own recognition and identification of peer-to-peer bullying interactions in the face of a minimizing response or no response to such events by recognized, responsible adults in schools. In other words, when preservice teachers see practicing teachers fail to intervene when troubling events are observed, then preservice teachers may understand this as license to disengage from active community participation as responsible adults, even though their academic training decries such isolation.

Together, the results of these studies ask teachers and preservice teachers to explicitly negotiate what it means to create a safe environment for all students in all school spaces. Two troubling outcomes are suggested, mirroring the work of Rienzo and colleagues (2006). First, while incidents of racism, sexism, and ableism are associated with a specific vocabulary (and, therefore, can be effectively described, if not actually named), girl bullying and LGBTQ harassment are seen merely as “inappropriate” behaviors or learned habits and are ignored by teachers and adults. Thus, the seriousness of these events was minimized and the long-term ramifications were ignored because the incidents were not deemed important or worthy enough for intervention. A consequence of this minimization leads to the second outcome.

Because responsible adults in the vicinity of these events responded sporadically, if at all, students, as well as preservice teachers, learned that these behaviors were relatively inconsequential. Potentially, this emboldens the harassers, heightens the long-term concerns and fears of the victims, and places the bystander in the unenviable position of recognizing that the taking of no action is the most common response. The preservice teachers, who were recent graduates of the K-12 system themselves, are, effectively, bystanders. In their teacher training, they had theoretically learned the long-term negative effects of bullying and harassment, but they also recognized that no response to such behaviors was supported within the school community.

What is particularly troubling about these bullying observations and the preservice teachers’ responses is the tension between the aims of teacher education programs, which seek to address issues of social justice and community development within K-12 school environments, and the continued non-response by members of the school community. Even in schools in which there are explicit programs in place to structure supportive school environments, responses to bullying behaviors become a reaction to overt symptoms, such as hitting, punching, or verbal abuse, rather than a consideration of the underlying causes (e.g., power inequities, homophobia). This reality puts students in traditional teacher education programs in a difficult position, trying to balance the new learning in their tertiary educational experience with the negative values that continue to be sanctioned in, public school environments.

Three specific recommendations are offered to redress this issue. All recommendations are well within the purview of traditional teacher education programs.

1. Enhance opportunities for preservice teachers to confront their own K-12 school experiences and recognize the ways in which bullying has become ingrained into the typical school experience. Preservice teachers have been acculturated, through their own K-12 experiences, to accept many bullying events as trivial and unimportant. However, preservice teachers must be supported as they re-examine and interrogate their own classroom and school experiences and understand the destructive nature of any bullying.

2. Homophobic bullying, which is recognized as particularly damaging to all students, is difficult to recognize because of its lack of clear, targeted vocabulary and the bully’s inability to articulate what is “different” about the victim. Additionally, preservice teachers, who are recently out of high school themselves, may be less comfortable confronting issues of sexuality because they, themselves, may be less certain of their own identities. Similarly, girl bullying, which is difficult to recognize because of its less visible constructs associated with relational bullying patterns, raises questions about teachers’ comfort when confronting a behavior that they may have experienced as either the explicit target or perpetrator. Giving preservice teachers specific, targeted, safe, and supported opportunities to challenge their own personal and professional beliefs about LGBTQ issues and girl-on-girl bullying must be integrated into teacher education.

3. To deconstruct girl bullying and homophobic harassment, we need to examine the conditions in schools that cultivate both phenemona. We suggest that there is an assumed normalcy of bullying in the schools, which contributes to its invisibility. Critical questions emerge from this study: What ideology and structural patterns in schools are reinforced when these conditions go unaddressed? What prevents us from challenging and changing long ignored social conditions in the schools? Why is oppression invisible and unchallenged in our lives? These questions disturb and challenge the status quo. We suggest that actively including school personnel, including teachers, counselors, and administrators, in ongoing discussions in college classrooms with preservice teachers, must be recognized and integrated as vital parts of understanding, responsing to, and changing the school climate. Such a dialogue will help preservice teachers recognize themselves as part of the greater school community, beyond the classroom. By bringing girl bullying into the light to be named, it becomes visible for critical examination by the community. Stories of bullying “speak out” and disrupt the unquestioned normalcy.

The background fabric of the school experience has become crowded with both positive and negative images and experiences, both of which have become normalized. Thus, simply recognizing girl-to-girl bullying and homophobic harassment will not necessary dismantle the abusive social phenomenon. We need to take responsibility for our complicity in maintaining the conditions that breed bullying and harassment and then take action to address these dehumanizing conditions. Teachers, counselors, administrators, and teacher educators must find ways to integrate opportunities to teach social responsibility and to replace apathy as a response to these two events. It means that we, as a learning community, assume the roles of allies to girls and members of the LGBTQ community so they can have an opportunity to reauthor their identities from victims, bystanders, or perpetrators to self-defining, responsible young people.

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