Teachers’ and Students’ Perception on Bullying Behaviour in Public Secondary Schools in Kisumu East District, Kenya

Abstract

World over, bullying subjects students to physical, social and psychological suffering. In Kenya, bullying in schools was banned in 2003 and guidance and counselling programme put in place to manage the behaviour. The purpose of this study was to establish teachers’ and students’ perception on bullying among students in public secondary schools in Kisumu East District, since bullying escalated from 200 cases in 2006 to 900 cases in 2009. Objectives of the study were to establish bullying prevalence and identify types and forms of bullying among students. The study adopted descriptive survey design. Target population was students, deputy headteachers and heads of guidance and counselling from 47 schools. Stratified sampling was used to select 37 mixed, 5 boys’ and 5 girls’ schools. Saturated sampling was used to select 16 deputy headteachers and 16 guidance and counselling heads. A total of 447 students were selected for the study. Main tools for data collection were questionnaires and interview schedule. A pilot study of the instruments established reliability and coefficient indexes of 0.79 for students, 0.75 for deputy headteachers and 0.76 for guidance and counselling heads. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentages. Qualitative data was transcribed, organized into themes and reported in text form. Findings of the study showed that bullying prevalence was 31%. Most common forms of bullying were name-calling, group isolation and use of technological visual messages. The conclusion was that school guidance and counselling should be strengthened to address verbal and emerging cyber-bullying by having trained teacher-counsellors.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p125