Pastoral Care to Regulate School Bullying: Shame Management among Bystanders

Bystanders can reveal valuable information about bullying to school personnel to take action on it. If they remain reluctant, of course, they frustrate our efforts to stop bullying. But then, why would they get involved if doing so might make them victims of aggression too? This paper investigates the importance of adaptive shame management in encouraging bystanders to prevent bullying. Data were collected through the Cross-national School Behaviour Research Project from 1452 secondary school students (49% girls) in grades 7–10 (mean=8.42) in Bangladesh. As predicted, students who scored higher on shame acknowledgement (admitting shame, accepting responsibility, making amends) were more likely to intervene to prevent bullying. Those with low shame displacement (blaming or hitting out at others) were also likely to intervene to stop bullying. Implications of these findings pertaining to pastoral staff, counsellors and school teachers working with students to encourage coming forward against bullying are discussed.