While the efforts of teachers are crucial for preventing and stopping degrading treatment, harassment, and bullying in schools, research has found that teachers’ understandings of such terms may vary significantly. In this qualitative study, we take a social-ecological perspective to investigate Swedish schoolteachers’ understandings of the terms degrading treatment, harassment, and bullying. The study is based on ethnographic research, which included participant observations and interviews conducted at three schools. The findings demonstrate not only the ways in which teachers blurred the conceptual boundaries between degrading treatment, harassment, and bullying, but also how such blurring was influenced by factors within the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem, and how the juridification of degrading treatment and harassment encouraged teachers to construct hierarchies of what they perceived to be more or less serious incidents.

This chapter draws on a Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) study in which I used ethnographic fieldwork in school to examine, analyse, and theorise school bullying. The chapter discusses the legacy of the Chicago School in CGT field research in four areas: (1) foreshadowing research problems as open, exploratory, provisional, and revisable; (2) adopting a loose and revisable theoretical framework; (3) negotiating access in fieldwork and field relations including in relation to critical reflexivity; (4) being iterative in my approach, moving back and forth between fieldwork and analysis, including theoretical sampling. The chapter provides helpful insights to readers interested in doing CGT field research aimed at exploring and conceptualising a theoretical understanding of children’s social life and perspectives.

In this first chapter, we introduce The Routledge International Handbook of Constructivist Grounded Theory in Educational Research. Following an introduction and overview, in Section 1.2, we trace the history and development of Grounded Theory (GT) through a brief examination of Glaser and Strauss’s seminal work, their subsequent divergence, the development of Charmaz’s Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) school, and Clarke’s Situational Analysis. Next, we examine core GT principles and features and discuss each with a particular focus on how they differ in the context of the various ‘schools’ or variants of GT. Section 1.4 briefly explores recent developments, texts, and concerns in GT and CGT. Finally, we end the chapter by previewing the contents of the five parts of the Handbook.

This chapter examines published Grounded Theory (GT) and Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) research in education. Following the introduction, we offer summary commentary on the practice of GT and CGT in educational research based on our review of relevant publications, pointing to trends in and some problematic usage of GT and CGT over time. Next, we briefly identify selected GT and CGT studies and their specific focus in terms of substantive topics across the educational landscape, including in early childhood education, schooling, and higher and adult education. Section 2.4 considers how these studies have engaged with core CGT methodological processes, including critical reflexivity about research positionality, co-construction through the involvement of participants, the iterative approach and theoretical sampling, and approaches to coding and memoing. Finally, Section 2.5 concludes the chapter.

Grundad teori är en forskningsansats som intresserar sig för sociala händelser och interaktioner. Denna metodansats passar bra att använda när forskaren vill utgå från ett empiriskt material i stället för en teori. Den används för att kunna utarbeta teoretisk modeller som bygger på data.

Det här är en oumbärlig handbok för dig som ska skriva en akademisk uppsats baserad på kvalitativ datainsamling. I Handbok i kvalitativ analys får du konkreta råd och en gedigen genomgång av grundläggande aspekter av kvalitativ forskning samt redskap för att analysera data. Boken redogör för olika former av kvalitativ analys och går även igenom forskarens roll, forskningsprocessen, metoder för datainsamling samt vilken metodinsats som kan vara lämplig att välja. I denna uppdaterade fjärde upplaga finns tre nyskrivna kapitel om reflexiv tematisk analys, teoretisk tematisk analys och diffraktiv analys. Till samtliga kapitel finns också tips om litteratur för vidare läsning.[Bokinfo]

In this paper, we draw on the concepts of figurations, capital, and hegemonic masculinity to analyse a bullying relation involving two fifth-grade boys at a Swedish comprehensive school. The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observations and group interviews with eight teachers and fourteen students (seven girls and seven boys) from the same class. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the relation between the boys and suggest that rather than constituting a straight-forward bullying situation involving a problematically aggressive 'bully' targeting a less powerful 'victim', it is part of a more complex figuration involving interdependent social relations that are tenuously balanced in terms of power dynamics and where the boys position themselves and are positioned in relation to the long-term symbolic norms of status dominant within their specific school field.

This paper explores how school-built factors and organisational dimensions contribute to bodily exposure, degrading treatment and bullying in school changing rooms. The findings in this study stem from an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling. The project focuses on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from pre-school class up to grade eight (i.e. approx. ages 5-15). In this particular study, we focus on participant observations and semi-structured interviews conducted at three elementary schools and one lower secondary school in Sweden.Analysis of the data was guided by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) [Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage].Findings reveal how the changing room was a vulnerable and unsafe space associated with an ever-present fear of experiencing bodily exposure, degrading treatment, and bullying. Our findings illuminate how social-ecological elements such as the physical design of the space and organisational factors such as staffing and scheduling can both increase and decrease the risk of experiencing bodily exposure, degrading treatment, and bullying in the changing room. This demonstrates that much more consideration needs to be given to how social interactions and experiences within school changing rooms are influenced by school-built factors and the ways in which they are organised within the different social-ecological systems beyond the microsystem setting.

In this final chapter of the Handbook, we summarise good Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) practice, interrogate and explore how to address challenges, and look to its future in educational research. Drawing on our review of the Handbook chapters, we highlight aspects of good practice relating to the use of the literature and extant theory, engagement in critical reflexivity and methodological self-consciousness, the development of intimate familiarity with research contexts, and the involvement of participants in the research process. Next, we identify, interrogate, and consider how to address key challenges in Grounded Theory (GT) research, including generating adequate data, appropriate engagement in theoretical sampling, and developing conceptual and theoretical analyses. Finally, we emphasise the importance of researchers who are interested in using CGT or GT having appropriate mentoring and support, and based on CGT evaluative criteria, we end by identifying a number of points upon which we encourage researchers to reflect as we look towards the future of CGT research in education.

I detta inledande kapitel berörs flera aspekter av kvalitativ forskning och kvalitativa metodansatser som vi menar är viktiga för dig som studerande att reflektera över under ditt examens- eller uppsatsskrivande. Att skolas in i att skriva uppsats, med allt vad det innebär, är en central del i en universitets- och högskoleutbildning. Inte minst ger sådan skolning redskap som bidrar till att utveckla en kritisk medvetenhet och ett vetenskapligt förhållningssätt.