This article examines how women retrospectively experience the treatment they have received regarding their sexuality from staff during their time in HVB-homes as teenagers. Five women have been interviewed. The results of the study show that the women have a collective experience of shame, guilt, and sexual deviance resulting from the staff’s treatment. Conversations regarding sex, sexuality and sexual abuse were limited by staff in different ways. The treatment caused an ambivalence for the respondents where they both felt they needed to discuss these subjects but also felt a disinclination to discuss them with the staff. The respondents’ experiences testify to a lack of competence in the staff in dealing with sex, sexuality and sexual abuse, and an institutional culture with a lot of avoidant behavior.

In this chapter, I attend to how a Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) approach has guided the design of some of my interview studies on school bullying. I focus on three key aspects in the constructivist approach that have been crucial in the design of the studies in question, including: (a) the theory–methods package combining symbolic interactionism and pragmatism; (b) how I included the sociology of childhood to explore students’ main concern(s) and develop my researcher role; and (c) the call for methodological self-consciousness to deal with issues of positionality. Throughout the chapter, I point to how these key CGT characteristics have offered me analytical tools for selecting what to attend to during data collection, for reflecting on myself as a researcher, and in shaping actions taken in the (re)design of the interview studies. I also examine how these aspects helped me reflect on positionality during my interview studies with students and use examples from some of my interview studies on school bullying for illustrative purposes.

När elever i fjärde till sjunde klass intervjuas om hur de reagerar som åskådare till mobbning framkommer att sociala processer såsom vad som räknas som mobbning, sociala relationer och skuldbeläggande av den utsatta påverkar om de hjälper till eller inte.

School bullying is a complex social phenomenon in need of further exploration regarding its connections to contextual aspects, group norms, and societal structures. This calls for research approaches that can get closer to participants’ experiences and the different social processes involved in school bullying. One such approach is the constructivist grounded theory (CGT) approach, which aims to be attentive to participants’ main concerns and social processes through both analysis and data collection. This approach comes as a theory-method package with its use of a symbolic interactionism perspective. In this paper, I will show how CGT as a theory-method package, as well as symbolic interactionism and sociology of childhood, has been helpful in my research on school bullying (focusing on social structures, norms, and processes). More specifically, I give different examples from the whole research process, e.g., maintaining a focus on participants’ main concerns, the coding process, being guided by sensitizing concepts, addressing issues of social justice and equity — and overall forming and maintaining a theoretically and ethically prepared researcher role. I also suggest that this approach is helpful in dealing with ethical and theoretical challenges when researching topics known to negatively affect people’s lives and wellbeing — and when the social context makes it difficult for participants to address victimizing structures, positions, and processes.

This article is based on pair and group interviews with 40 girls in lower secondary school in Sweden and examines their perspectives on friendship forming. Constructivist grounded theory was used throughout the study. The findings address girls trajectory perspectives on friendship forming and how the school setting, gender norms and social exclusion anxiety influence their friendships over time. In particular, they highlight a fear of being excluded as associated with the school setting. This fear shows how friendship forming and bullying connect to each other by highlighting how the need to socially belong is the most important thing in school.

The aim of this study is to explore pupils perspectives on school climate, with a focus on help-seeking from teachers when experiencing unsafe incidents. Fifty-nine focus group interviews were conducted with pupils from two public schools in grades 1-9 (i.e. ages 7-15 years) in Sweden and analyzed with constructivist grounded theory. The findings address how the organizational support structure was crucial and three main categories were conceptualized from pupils perspectives: (1) teachers as sources of support; (2) availability of support; and (3) consistent and responsive support. The way in which pupils perceived these three dimensions, and thus the organizational support structure, were crucial to whether they considered help-seeking from teachers when they experienced unsafe incidents such as violence, bullying or conflicts. To conceptualize the pupils perspectives on the organizational support structure and help-seeking we adopted a social-ecological perspective as a theoretical framework. Social-ecological factors such as scheduling, and information provided (exosystem) and the pupil-teacher relationships (microsystem) were found to be especially important in relation to the organizational support structure and pupils help-seeking. Our findings suggests that it is imperative for schools to pay attention to the organizational support structure and especially consider the teacher-pupil relationship quality and how scheduling, information about support sources, and a consistent and responsive approach from all teachers affects pupils help-seeking and the building of a supportive school climate and safety for all pupils at school.

School climate is crucial for understanding everyday school life. For pupils, breaktime seems to be associated with how they feel about their school climate. To better understand school climate and what social processes pupils address, this study explores pupils perspectives on school climate with attention on how they perceive their breaktimes. The study was based on 29 focus group interviews (n = 164) with pupils from two public schools in grades 1-9 (i.e. 7-15 years old). Constructivist grounded theory guided data gathering and analysis. Findings revealed how breaktime was an indicator of how pupils perceived their school climate, but their perceptions were dynamic. We conceptualised breaktime as a social process influenced by three main categories: peer climate, levels of unsafe incidents, and availability of activities. We adopted a social-ecological perspective to conceptualise how pupils perceptions of breaktimes varied due to how breaktimes were nested within different social-ecological systems.

Elever i årskurs tre till sex känner sig tryggare i skolan om lärare finns närvarande, är vaksamma och ingriper mot framförallt mobbning och ensamhet på rasten. För att öka elevers trygghet i skolan efterfrågar eleverna därför insatser i relation till rasten. En aspekt som elever efterfrågar för att öka deras trygghet på rasten är att lärare finns närvarande. Utöver att finnas närvarande på raster behöver lärare också vara vaksamma på vad som händer mellan elever. I synnerhet behöver lärare vara vaksamma på att ingen är utsatt för mobbning eller ensam. Dessutom menar eleverna att det inte räcker med att lärare är närvarande och ser vad som händer utan de behöver även behöver ingripa mot mobbning och ensamhet. Ibland behöver de ingripa mer än vad de gör idag för att öka elevers trygghet och få stopp på mobbning och ensamhet. 

We investigate the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch. The study is part of an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from preschool class up to grade eight (approximately ages 5-13). The findings in this study are based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with pupils at three schools in Sweden. Our findings illustrate how social-ecological elements of spatial, material, and organisational factors such as school design, the material construction of the pitches, and the temporal organisation of the space through scheduling promote gendered positioning and fevered interactions which influence peer relations and sometimes contribute to degrading treatment, harassment and bullying. Our study demonstrates how these processes need to be understood as complexly related to social-ecological factors beyond the football pitch setting.

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.

Teachers have a major impact on students social cognition and behaviors, and previous research has found that students who have positive relationships with their teachers tend to be less bullied by their peers. However, this line of research is limited in that it has been (a) Dominated by cross-sectional studies and (b) Treated bullying victimization as a global construct without differentiating among its different forms (i.e., verbal, physical, and relational). The links might be reciprocal but further studies are needed to investigate the directionality. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the longitudinal associations between student-teacher relationship quality and two forms of bullying victimization, namely verbal and relational victimization. Three waves of data from 1885 Swedish fourth- through sixth-grade students were analyzed with cross-lagged panel models. The findings showed that the student-teacher relationship quality predicted and was predicted by verbal and relational victimization. Our findings thus underscore the importance of striving for caring, warm, supportive, and respectful student-teacher relationships as a component of schools prevention efforts.

Creating and sustaining a positive school climate is not done in isolation but requires continuous ongoing work by several people within the school, and one of the most important actors are the teachers. In order to fulfil this very important task, the teachers need to collaborate with colleagues at school in an organized manner. In this study, we aim to explore and analyse teachers' perspectives on how their teacher team might be linked to their school climate work, and what team characteristics facilitate their work to create and maintain a positive and supportive climate within their school. To understand teachers' comprehension of their team, we applied a social psychology framework, using social interdependence theory and the concept of psychological safety. Data were collected by means of 14 semi-structured focus group interviews with 73 teachers from two compulsory schools in southeast Sweden. The findings revealed that teachers perceived the team as the most significant support structure when it comes to school climate work. According to them, the team was associated with shared responsibility, support and help, as well as safety and an open climate. By elucidating teachers' insider perspectives regarding their working conditions aligned to their work with school climate, we conclude that well-functioning teacher teams are experienced as a safe place to work on creating and maintaining a positive school climate.

The aim of this study was to explore and analyse teachers’ perspectives on factors influencing the school climate, to better understand teachers’ everyday efforts in influencing the school climate, including obstacles they might experience. Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological theory was utilized as the overarching theoretical perspective. Data were collected by means of 14 semi-structured focus group interviews with 73 teachers from two compulsory schools in southeast Sweden. Findings revealed that teachers experienced the school climate as both positively and negatively influenced by a number of internal and external factors, perceived as influenceable or uninfluenceable. According to the teachers, four types of factors affected the quality of the school climate: social processes and values in school (i.e. influenceable internal factors), school premises and support structures (i.e. uninfluenceable internal factors, external relations (i.e. influenceable external factors) and external means of control (i.e. uninfluenceable external factors). A grounded theory of teachers’ perceptions of factors influencing school were developed. Our conclusion is that the teachers talked about a multidimensional and malleable phenomenon, emanated by a complex interplay across multiple agents and contexts both within and outside the school, aligning with all domains and features and acting as preconditions for the school climate. 

Skolmobbning är ett utbrett problem som fortsätter att negativt påverka livet för skolbarn, föräldrar och skolpersonal. Trots mycket forskning kring fenomenet är forskning om skolmiljöns betydelse för skolmobbning eftersatt. Syftet med projektet var att undersöka hur olika skolfaktorer påverkar skolmobbning och skolpersonalens förmåga eller vilja att ingripa samt vilken betydelse genus har för mobbning och ingripande mot mobbning.

Relational issues at school, including bullying, tend to be interpreted primarily in terms of the behaviour of individual students. Whilst research has broadened this focus, more needs to be understood about how the design and management of the school environment and its resources may influence peer relations. The study sought to consider interconnections between the physical and organisational environment, resources, and social relations in school settings. Ethnographic research was conducted at three schools in Sweden, consisting of 6 to 8 weeks of participant observations at each school, and interviews with school safety or health teams, 21 teachers, and 121 students from preschool class (ages 6–7) to sixth grade (ages 12–13). Field notes and interview data were analysed using an approach based on constructivist grounded theory. In-depth analysis of data identified a complex network of interconnections between the school environment, resources and peer relationships. In particular, it illuminated how competition for limited resources can influence social relations negatively. This may lead to brief minor conflicts, which, in turn, could potentially precipitate or become part of more systematic school bullying situations. Our findings highlight the significance of decisions about the uses of space in schools, including choices in design (e.g. of play spaces) and the distribution of resources (e.g. equipment). Deeper understanding of the interconnections between the school environment, resources and peer relations can help inform efforts to support student wellbeing.

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.

Mobbning bland elever har ökat i de svenska skolorna. Mobbning utgör en allvarlig kränkning som kan få stora konsekvenser för elevers liv och hälsa och påverka trygghet och studiero i skolan. Mer behöver därför göras för att motverka och förebygga mobbning och de sociala processer som bidrar till mobbning. I det här kapitlet beskrivs hur mobbning hänger samman med sociala processer och hur lärares ledarskap samt ett positivt skolklimat kan göra skillnad och skapa en tryggare skolmiljö som främjar studiero och motverkar mobbning.

This 1-year longitudinal study examined the association between student-teacher relationship quality and school liking in a sample of 234 students from two public schools in Sweden, who completed an online questionnaire on two separate occasions. The age range was 9-15 years in Time 1 and 10-16 years in Time 2. A path analysis showed that students who were younger, liked their school more, and had more positive, warm, and supportive relationships with their teachers were more inclined to score high in school liking one year later. In addition, younger students and students who liked their school and had better relationships with their teachers at Time 1 were inclined to have better relationships with their teachers one year later.