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.

While teachers are obliged to report and investigate incidents of bullying, harassment, and degrading treatment in Swedish schools, research suggests that they sometimes struggle to decide which incidents to report. In this study, we investigate Swedish schoolteachers’ reflections on dealing with bullying, harassment, and degrading treatment, and on balancing their pedagogical work with juridical demands to report. The study is based on qualitative interviews conducted with teachers at three comprehensive schools in Sweden, which were analysed in relation to Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological framework. The findings demonstrate that teachers make judgement calls regarding which incidents to report and that these influence and are influenced by micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chronosystem factors. The findings also suggest that increasing demands for professional accountability negatively affect the professional responsibility of teachers and may lead to them making judgement calls that are not always in the best interests of the children for whom they have responsibility. 

The current study examined whether different motives for entering teacher education and different coping strategies in distressful situations during teacher training were associated with teacher efficacy among student teachers. A sample of 517 Swedish student teachers completed a questionnaire. According to the findings from multivariate regression analysis, student teachers who scored higher in intrinsic and altruistic motives and cognitive restructuring, and lower in self-criticism, tended to show greater teacher efficacy.

In this article, we contribute to a discussion of ethics within school bullying research by reflecting on our own recent ethnographic study into the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling conducted at three elementary schools and one lower-secondary school in Sweden. We argue for a reflexive, responsive, and flexible adult researcher role when conducting ethnographic research into school bullying; what we term the caring adult role. The caring adult role provides a means of ethically conducting research by helping to facilitate access, navigate power relations, provide a consistent starting point for deciding when to intervene in ethically questionable situations, and a way for adult researchers to differentiate themselves from those adults in schools who may be perceived by students as non-caring. We argue that this is an ethically sounder approach than one that suspends all adult-like characteristics and avoids directing or correcting the behaviour of children.

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]