Understanding Bullying Among Primary School Students with Learning Difficulties in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia by Applying Bronfenbrenner's Theory

Abstract

It has been acknowledged that about 25% of Saudi students are struggling with bullying (Saudi National Family Safety Programme, 2016) due to an academic environment that appears not to be sufficiently supportive (AlBuhairan et al., 2016; Alsaleem et al, 2021). This, therefore, raises questions about teaching students with learning difficulties (LD), the only group of special education students who have been fully taught in Saudi mainstream classrooms since 2006 (Alnahdi et al, 2019), in an educational environment that seems to reinforce bullying. This mixed-method research explores the bullying experiences of students with LD in primary mainstream schools in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. This study also examines the environmental issues behind bullying behaviour by investigating the role of students with LD in bullying incidents, and how the Saudi school social climate contributes to school bullying. Bronfenbrenner’s Bio-ecological System theory is adopted as a framework to guide this study through guiding the development of data collection methods and interpretation. The study adopts a pragmatic philosophical approach, and an explanatory sequential design with two phases. The first phase collected quantitative data from 113 primary school girls with LD using an adapted version of Swearer’s Bully Survey and the What’s Happening in This School? (WHITS) questionnaire and found that about 13% of the participants reported school bullying, 16 as victims, 1 as a bully, 1 as a Bully/Victim and 15 as bystanders. Furthermore, 19% of bullying victims and 27% of bullying bystanders reported taking lessons in the resource rooms as a factor that contributed to bullying. Moreover, quantitative data indicates that experiencing bullying was negatively associated with students' perceptions of their school climate. However, the quantitative findings also suggest that having reading, writing and mathematical difficulties were not associated with bullying victimisation. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted, in the second phase of this study, with four stakeholder groups: 10 students with LD, 10 teachers, 10 school counsellors and 6 mothers of students with LD. The interviewees reported that having LD, particularly reading difficulties, contributed to the bullying experiences. Moreover, they described how part-time special education support delivered in the resource room and collaborative learning could potentially reinforce bullying. Drawing on the latest version of the Ecological Systems Theory, specifically the PPCT Model, it is concluded that bullying is intricately linked to complex interactions within the immediate environment of students with LD. These interactions occur reciprocally and synergistically between the individual characteristics (e.g., LD) and contextual factors at various levels, including immediate environments (e.g., school and family), distant environments (e.g., society and culture), and the interactions within and between them over time. Thus, the study provides a useful conceptual framework for practitioners to understand bullying among students with LD, improve their inclusion, enhance school climate and address bullying in Saudi primary schools. The implications and recommendations of this study can also be useful for policymakers, teachers, school counsellors and researchers. Better guidelines are needed to encourage positive communication between school members, celebrate diversity and differences, and address social problems. Anti-bullying interventions should be developed to support bullying victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, instead of focusing only on disciplining bullying perpetrators. Furthermore, students with LD can be protected from bullying by receiving special education services in more inclusive classrooms designed to provide them with specialised and differentiated support alongside their peers, rather than relying on resource room-based support.