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The prevalence of bullying at high schools in Lesotho: perspectives of teachers and students

ABSTRACT This article seeks to explore the concept of bullying through the eyes of teachers and students. Although teachers are very important in monitoring and controlling students’ behaviour, they can also unwittingly reinforce aggression by the manner in which they react to students who are either perpetrators or victims of aggression. Similarly, students may ‘enable’ bullying by not reporting every incident they experience or by failing to be assertive. The study used the qualitative approach to collect and analyse data. Questionnaires were used for teachers and students to find out how participants individually and collectively view and deal with bullying in their respective schools. Quantitative data from questionnaires was first analysed using the SPSS descriptive (i.e. simple frequency counts expressed in percentages) methods before being interpreted qualitatively, while responses to an open-ended question from teachers were analysed qualitatively. The findings of the study indicate that verbal bullying is the most common type of bullying. Teachers are mostly reactive and not proactive in dealing with students’ ill-behaviour. Bullying happens mostly in classrooms where teachers are supposed to be in total control. Some incidences of bullying are not readily reported by students. Most schools have regulations that control students’ unbecoming behaviour in general and teachers punish incidents of bullying as they see it fit.