The importance of children's voices

Within the past few decades, a shift in the social sciences has been taking place. The old view which places “children as passive objects of study” has moved toward the notion of “children as researchers” (Punch & Oancea, 2014, p. 53). To some extent, this shift is related to what has been called “giving voice to children” (James, 2007), a project which involves methodological and epistemological issues that relate to the rhetoric of child voice, child voice as a social construction, space and child voice interrelations, evolving meanings through dialogue, accounting for silences, child voice as situated in complex power relations, the messiness of child voice, ableist assumptions and child voice, meaning as indexical, and child voice entanglements (Facca & Teachman, 2020). As James (2007, p. 262) explains: “giving voice to children is not simply or only about letting children speak; it is about exploring the unique contribution to our understanding of and theorizing about the social World that children's perspectives can provide.”.

Within the framework of our research, we were interested in the perspective of both teachers and students, taking a more inclusive view of culture and society. We agree with Bluebond-Langner and Korbin (2007, p. 2) that “in this more inclusive view, rather than privileging children's voices above all others, it is more productive to integrate children into a more multivocal, multiperspective view of culture and society.” In our attempt to incorporate this paradigm, we have solicited written descriptions in the form of essays from students. In analysing these texts, we work with the theoretical and methodological models of childhood as a social construction (Blundell, 2012; Norozi & Moen, 2016) as well as the ‘child’ as an active construction of experience (Punch & Oancea, 2014). We have simply sought out ways of working with children in which they can define their own reality (Punch & Oancea, 2014).

Data collection methods

The data were collected in a single classroom in the lower-secondary school within a broader school ethnography project implemented from January to September 2019 in eastern Slovakia. Ethnography has been described as a “creative process in which data generation, theorizing, reflexivity, different modes of writing as well as social relations in the field and epistemic community intersect” (Stöckelová & Abu Ghosh, 2013, p. 7). Ethnography entails an oscillatory process of ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ from data as well as a correlation between data and theory (Nicolini, 2009, pp. 120–138) as well as “a particular mode of looking, listening and thinking about social phenomena” (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 230). Data were collected using three research methods: participant observation of students and teachers, unstructured interviews with teachers, and essays written by students. The field notes consisted of research observations, interviews, thoughts, and research ideas. The procedure of using field notes followed widely used social anthropology procedures (Bernard, 2018).

Participant observation was chosen as an appropriate method for studying the school classroom. The observations took place before classes, during breaks, and during school lessons. During teaching time the observations generally were made from a chair at the back of the classroom. These have been described as basic conditions with regard to observing peer rejection processes as they unfold at school (Švaříček & Šeďová, 2014). The observer (the first author of the paper) took field notes, primarily regarding the peer rejection processes that he observed among classmates as well as among classmates and the teachers.

The observation method was complemented by unstructured interviews with the six teachers and one principal of the school, which were conducted by the first author and during which field notes were also taken. A variety of information about the school was obtained through the interviews. The eighth-grade class teacher was particularly helpful, as she became a key informant that provided valuable information about the students and their family backgrounds, school performance, their history and development from first to eighth-grade, friendship relationships, sympathies and antipathies, as well as the opinions about the school of all the actors of education. With this key informant, we were conscious of the risk of not taking on too much of her perspective (see Bryman, 2012).

Naturally, multiple sources were considered in analysing the information to avoid the risk of overrelying on a single key informant (Bryman, 2012). The researchers triangulated the information gathered from the class teacher with the information gained from other teachers, participant observations as well as the student essays.

The essays were elicited from fifteen students before the observations and interviews were conducted. These texts focused on the topic of “friendship among my classmates” and were implemented within the Slovak language lesson. All the essays were analysed with particular emphasis on the relationship to the girl Alexandra. The essays were written in Slovak. The translation into English was conducted and revised by the authors of this study, with the text also checked by a native English speaker who is fluent in Slovak. The essays were anonymous, with each writer indicating his or her gender on the page as the only descriptor of social characteristics. The students were informed that their essays would be used for research purposes only. Students were asked to honestly write what they really thought about their class and their classmates. There was no limit to the length of the essay. Most students worked for one entire lesson on this text.

Ethical aspects of research

The procedures complied with the ethical guidelines of the first author's institution and followed the principles of anonymity, sincerity, credibility of information obtained, protection of confidential communication, compliance with obligations as well as non-misuse of findings. In order to protect the identities of the students, teachers, and schools involved in the research, all names and locations have been changed and coded. In the text we have assigned names only to the main actors. For more clarity, the other students remain unnamed. The subject of the research was clearly and truthfully described to the participants.

The project also followed the guidelines for human participant research valid in the Czech Republic and the EU, with participant protection closely monitored. After the end of the data collection, a debriefing was conducted at which teachers were provided with basic information about the bullying case, and they were provided with practical strategies on how to deal with bullying. This procedure followed the best practice research methods in which the ethical obligation to help victimized or potentially victimized students is described.

Analyses

All information was recorded in a field diary (Bartlett & Milligan, 2020; Punch et al., 2012), with the findings then transcribed sequentially into the computer. During the transcription process, emphasis was placed on research ethics, thus the name of the school as well as all teacher and student names were changed. The data has not been manipulated in any way. The information was then processed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006) through a six-step thematic analysis procedure (see Braun & Clark, 2006). In order to organize, structure, and derive meaning from the collected data, information related to the research purpose was coded, also using thematic analysis (Adu, 2019; Braun & Clark, 2006). Hidden relationships, regularities, key themes, and characteristics of each topic were identified through the established codes. In the next step, the characteristics of the identified themes as well as relationships or connections among the characteristics were searched for and delineated (Corbin & Strauss, 2014). The coding was conducted in the data record without the use of specialized software.

Thematic analysis was also seen as one form of induction in our research and in doing so we relied mainly on induction as implemented in thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006). The inductive approach “provides an easily used and systematic set of procedures for analyzing qualitative data that can produce reliable and valid findings,” and “allow[s] research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant, or significant themes inherent in raw data, without the restraints imposed by structured methodologies” (Thomas, 2006).

During the data analysis process, we also used data and methodology triangulation to address our research goal and to enhance the credibility of our study (Denzin, 2012; Flick, 2014). We combined qualitative research methods (observation, interview, and essays) in a single case study. The case was analysed from three partially overlapping and partially complementary perspectives: the perspective of the participant observer, the perspective of the teachers as well as the perspective of students themselves as captured in the student essays. With the help of triangulation, it was possible to see if the methods produced the same results or if there were clashing results (e.g. the Roma vs. non-Roma dichotomy was mentioned only by the teachers, not by the students).

The fragility of friendships over time

The essays indicated that students themselves perceived friendships in the classroom as fluid and time-dependent. We may speculate that it is necessary to explore the development of peer relations over time because from the perspective of students, the dynamics of friendship markedly change within months and years. Moreover, the data showed that students thought of friendship formation as a complex task, as something that does not automatically come with entering a classroom, but needs to be gradually developed.

Sixteen children attended the eighth-grade—nine boys and seven girls. They were all 13 or 14 years old. All the students were Slovak except one boy who is ethnically Roma. The class was led by a teacher who had an office next to the classroom. During the data collection, it became clear that the class teacher was close to the students and tried to maintain friendly relationships with them. She gave us key insights into how the students' relationships developed over time and at one point described her classroom as “a fragile jug that can always break very easily and very quickly” (Teacher 1, a 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 2, 2019). In line with this perception, students perceived the teacher as someone who holds the ‘jug’ together. “When we argue or fight our great class teacher tries to patch up all relationships in our class” (Boy X. Y. 6, 14 years old, eighth-grade, essay, February 21, 2019). According to the students themselves, their class was “pretty bad-behaving” (Boy X. Y. 1, 13 years old, eighth-grade, essay, February 21, 2019), while at times it was described as “a good class, even if sometimes weird” (Boy X. Y. 7, 14 years old, eighth-grade, essay, February 21, 2019).

‘Annoying’: Positioning Alexandra as a misfit to the group and Alexandra's own perception of the positioning

This section covers the social positioning of Alexandra. First, the positioning by others is introduced, and then, Alexandra's own perception of the positioning is presented.

The main theme emerging was that Alexandra was perceived as a misfit to the group. This was especially apparent during the interviews with teachers where she was labelled as a troublemaker. Naturally, this label was not fixed and her position was not immutable, although it appeared so at first sight. The label ‘problematic’ was attached to her at her previous school, where she was given a lower behaviour mark for a petty theft. Nevertheless, at her current school she did not receive a lower behaviour mark and had no serious problems. On her report card she received B's or C's in most subjects, with only one D. In this respect, however, she is different from her classmates, who are more likely to be A students (Teacher 1, a 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 5, 2019). The teacher also indicated that she realized how difficult Alexandra's position in the collective was: “Her classmates don't accept her and she doesn't accept them” (Teacher 1, a 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 5, 2019). The data suggested that Alexandra was labelled as a troublemaker and this labelling was one of the reasons how her low peer status was constructed (for more reasons, see section called “Hanging out with Gypsies”).

These examples show how other students perceived Alexandra as a misfit to the classroom group or students, namely someone who (unlike the group) had negative characteristics, did not belong to the group, did not adapt to the group norms, and importantly also someone who threatened and disrupted group functioning. We may speculate that these shared negative perceptions contributed to Alexandra being rejected and increased the differences between her own status among peers and the status of other classmates.

Alexandra's essay provided deep insights into the first-hand experience of someone who was constantly marginalized in the peer group and often harmed by bullying. Most importantly, she described that it was difficult for her to fit in with her class (see Alexandra's essay: “I have been here for one year and I bother them. They push me away. I know I am strange to them”). This perspective of hers fitted with the situations first author observed in her classroom (see below). The main theme revealed in the essay the unfairness of her classmates' rejecting attitudes and bullying behaviours toward Alexandra. Alexandra felt treated differently that other members of the classroom and unfairly prejudged based on her looks as well as for reasons unknown to her, which made it impossible for her to change her own plight.

Passive responses of classmates and students

A significant theme related to the bullying incidents was how students and teachers responded to the incidents. The responses were identified from observations in the classroom and interviews with teachers. Over the period of our data collection, reactions to the bullying were passive. Bystanders overlooked and ignored the incidents and did not offer Alexandra help or emotional support. There was no official record of Alexandra being bullied at school and the school had not discussed the victimization with Alexandra and her parents, nor with the bullies and their parents. The incident described in the previous section and the interview with class teacher suggested that many students and even the class teacher knew about the bullying, but they ignored it. In this context, Dědková and Macháčková (2013, p. 57) pointed to the negative outcomes of ignoring bullying: “If bullying is silently tolerated […] it becomes a socially acceptable form of behavior by which the aggressor improves and strengthens his or her own position.” Thus, it is likely that the passive responses of students and teachers worsened the bullying.

Given the low status among peers that was shown, Alexandra was an easy target for her classmates. Students constructed Alexandra as different and annoying, as mentioned in the essay (cf. Bibou-Nakou et al., 2012; Mazzone et al., 2018; Thornberg, 2015a). Alexandra had no friends and no supporters. She remained on the edge of the student community. Aggressors were quite confident that they did not encounter strong resistance from this girl compared to other students, so attacks against Alexandra did not risk a counterattack or loss of prestige among others. It is reasonable to assume that thanks to her low position among the others it might be easier for teachers and her classmates to justify attacks on Alexandra by claiming that Alexandra's situation is her own fault.

Victimization of Alexandra

This was the most serious incident that was observed (and the researcher immediately informed the school staff about the incident). It showed the dynamics of the bullying incident initiated by a single student who was immediately joined and supported by several other classmates. The rest of the classmates only passively observed the incident and did not take the side of Alexandra even though it was clear that the behaviour is unfair and caused Alexandra harm. As a victim of traditional bullying and cyberbullying, Alexandra faced a range of negative immediate impacts, including anxiety, anger, fear, and helplessness. “Negative outcomes of victimization can deepen with the duration of the cyberbullying and distort the victim's self-esteem” (Dědková & Macháčková, 2013, p. 100).

“Hanging out with Gypsies”: Constituting Alexandra as being on the bottom of the classroom hierarchy

The observations and interviews with teachers suggested that the low social status of Alexandra continued due to the low socioeconomic status of her family as well as her long-term friendship with a Roma boy. Based on the observations, Alexandra's closest relationship was with Mário, the only Roma student in the class. The Roma ethnicity was generally viewed as marginalized in the Slovakia, and Alexandra was white as are most of her classmates. These two students were united by the fact that they were the only students who were not in the class with the other students since the first grade, as they both later transferred to the school under study from other schools: Mário transferred in the fifth grade, Alexandra in the seventh. In the Slovak school system, it was typical that students remain in the same class together from the first to ninth grades, and in this context their peer relations developed over the course of many years. These students also had in common the fact that they both sat in the back of the classroom. At first sight, it seemed that they both had a similarly low status among their peers. The eighth-grade teacher referred to this connection as “Alexandra is close to the Roma”, “girls don't take her because she hangs out with Roma” (Teacher 1, a 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 5, 2019). In the students' essays, however, no such perspective was indicated, although this does not mean that the students did not think along these lines, that is perhaps they were afraid to write something like that openly in the essays.

Although Mário, like Alexandra, was on the margins of the class, from an observer's point of view it seemed that this is mainly due to one problem, namely that both often disrupted the class and disturbed their classmates. During the observation, the ways that Mário provoked the teacher were frequently observed. In the back of the classroom, he talked loudly and made fun of the lessons and discussions. This could be considered a representative example: When the mathematics teacher asked a student on the blackboard how much the line AB measures, Mário shouted out “350 meters,” which was nowhere near the actual answer of 8.5 cm (observation records from the field diary, April 9, 2019). Some teachers asked Mário to keep such exclamations to himself, while others just shook their heads in disbelief and sigh resignedly. Many students did not like his behaviour.

There were some differences between Mário and Alexandra that affected their position at the school. While Alexandra's essay suggested that she felt that she had only one friend in the classroom, she was perceived as unpopular, and she was rejected by her classmates, Mário seemed to have experienced more friendships and popularity as well as lower levels of rejection. Based on the observation in the classroom, the most visible difference was that Alexandra had no one in the class who remained on her side or who comfort her when she was being excluded or bullied. In her own words, she had one good friend in the classroom and another classmate was even attempting to spoil this friendship.

Although Mário communicated with her, he did not consider her a close friend. Mário was considered the ‘class clown’ by his classmates, but he had one close friend and solid supporter in the class, Filip, whom he could rely on for everything. From an observer's point of view, this made Mário's position in the group much stronger and more secure, as Filip described: “I have a best friend here and we follow one thing: If your best friend has a problem, it is your problem too, so brother for brother” (Filip, 14 years old, eighth-grade). The two boys shared the same view of schooling, and both had very bad marks. “They don't need school. They don't care less – they think they've got it made” (Teacher 1, 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 1, 2019).

As one educator explained: “Filip's mother did not want him to be friends with Roma, but she relented when she found out that this was a decent Roma” (Teacher 1, a 53-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 1, 2019). In the perceptions of local students and teachers, Roma people could be divided into two categories: “decent gypsies” and the “bad gypsies”. Some teachers started referring to Filip as a ‘Roma’, mainly because of his behaviour and the fact that he was very friendly with Mário. “He is becoming a Roma” (Teacher 2, 38-year-old teacher. Personal communication. Interview by the first author, April 10, 2019). Some teachers seemed to conceptualize the ‘Roma’ category more based on behaviour and friendships than ethnic background.

Compared to Alexandra, Mário's social position in the classroom was also influenced by the positive relationship between the school and his family along with the high prestige of his father's profession. His father was a respected pastor and the teacher enjoyed working with the boy. In contrast, Alexandra's parents were not very active in communicating with the school and the teachers. In addition, Mário's popularity among his classmates seemed to be influenced by his good sports performance. His performance was valued in the boys' group. He was particularly successful in football and floorball. For example, in physical education class the eighth-grade played a floorball game against another class which Mário's team won 5–3, with four goals scored by the boy. In contrast, Alexandra was not perceived as athletically skilled and some of her classmates indicated that did not perceive her physical constitution favourably. Mário also experienced moments of glory in music class because he sang beautifully and the teacher pointed out his notable musical talent. Thus, compared to Alexandra, success in sports and music education improved his social position in the eyes of some teachers and classmates. This moved him from the lowest social status ahead of Alexandra in the hierarchical ranking of the eighth-grade indicated in the research results. From the students' perspective, these differences were important and had an impact on the peer rejection process.