This secondary study surveyed head teachers and interviewed nursery, primary and secondary teachers on their perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) pupils in one rural Scottish Education Authority.  The study focused on the understandings of masculinities and the silence on (homo) sexuality in the hidden and taught curriculum.  It further aimed to problematise institutional heterosexism. The outcomes of the survey indicated that reference to LGB pupils was missing in policy and generic policies were sufficient to deal with all aspects of equality.  All head teachers surveyed stated homophobic bullying would be dealt with in the same way as other kind of bullying. Whilst LGB pupils were perceived as ‘just the same’ as other pupils they were also depicted as victims in need of specialist support and engendered sympathy in teachers.  Whilst prejudice, attitudes, lack of knowledge and training was reported to be the main barriers to inclusion of LGB pupils some head teachers perceived being silent on the subject was respectful of individual privacy. Analysis of the survey indicated themes of assimilation, contradiction, and ambiguity, set within a liberal discourse of “we treat all pupils alike” “they are all the same”.  These themes were developed in more depth in the interview to reveal institutional heterosexism and structural barriers to teachers’ discourse on LGB pupils.  The data was organised into the following themes: ‘Gender roles and families’, ‘Moral Panic’, ‘Institutional heterosexism’.  The study revealed that whilst teachers aimed to treat all pupils alike they did so by treating them as though they were heterosexual.  As a consequence teachers seemed to lack the language to talk about different sexual orientations. This study suggests that there are structural and institutional barriers to inclusion of LGB pupils in school and limits to programmes of reform based on the individual, identity politics, and anti-oppressive approaches.  Nevertheless the outcome of this study indicates that for social change to occur anti-oppressive approaches remain the next stage in the process.

In this thesis I present a snapshot of the university lives and experiences of 17 gay male undergraduate students attending an institution in the UK.  I draw upon thematic analysis of data obtained from individual, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews.  My focus is the ways participants’ higher education biographies compare and contrast with dominant accounts of the gay student experience, which are characterised by intolerance, harassment, victimisation, heterosexism and homophobia. My theoretical framework is derived from university space being, like all non-gay-specific space, pervaded by discourses of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1980) and the workings of the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990). I am interested in how participants produced, expressed, managed and negotiated their alternative identities in these higher education settings.  I therefore interrogate the role and importance participants ascribe their gayness at university, the effect and influence of their sexuality on their university choices and on their relationships with flatmates, their coming out narratives and experiences in higher education. Findings often contrast with those typically reported in academic literature, both in participants’ marked decentralisation of their non-heterosexuality in self-identification, and in portrayals of gay students as other than victims of harassment, discrimination and persecution. Although participants are very much aware of the regulatory heteronormative mechanisms of straight discourse operating within university spaces, they are highly sensitive and skilled in expressing, monitoring, adapting, asserting, and negotiating their identities in these environments.  In fact, participants framed university as a generally positive, tolerant, accepting and happy place in which to be gay. I therefore argue that these ‘new’ stories and ways of ‘living differently’ should be acknowledged to enrich and further understanding of this population’s experiences within higher education.

This research examines 8 – 11 year old children’s knowledge of bullying including their coping strategies and the effects of bullying on their self-concept. In the pilot study, a semi-structured interview developed from the work of Harris, Olthof and Terwogt (1986) was used to collect information on children’s experiences of bullying. In addition coping strategies which cold be used in the face of bullying, social support networks and the emotional experience of being the victim of bullying were also elicited. The children’s responses were categorised and Bullying Experience Scale and Coping with Bullying Scale were generated. These scales were used to investigate children’s bullying experiences and coping strategies in the main study. In the main study, the profiles of children identified as bullies, victims, both or neither, were investigated using these two new scales and two further scales, the Harter (1985) Self-Perception Profile for Children and the Butler (1994) Self-Image Profile. The aim was to categorise children into bully/victim groups and to determine how the self-perception, self-image, bullying experience and coping strategies of the children in these groups differed and whether there was an effect of gender. The results suggest, contrary to expectation, that it was the children who perceived themselves to be bullies who had the lowest self-esteem and also had more negative self-image compared to the other groups of children. Children who perceived themselves to be bullies, experienced higher levels of bullying than the other groups of children. Primary coping was the most subscribed coping strategy for the ‘bullies’ with the ‘victim’ and those uninvolved in bullying reporting more secondary coping strategies.

The primary aim of this study was to see whether there is a relationship between the experience of being bullied and violent offending in later life. It was proposed that someone being bullied could be traumatised by the experience and display symptoms akin to PTSD, including hypervigilance and heightened threat perception, which may influence the likelihood of their involvement in violence. The study considers the relationship between the experience of being bullied, trauma symptoms and violent offending. Attributional style in relation to all of these variables is also considered as hostile attributional bias was proposed as a possible outcome of being bullied and a factor in increasing the likelihood of violent offending. Research concerned with childhood bullying, its effects, offending, and trauma is reviewed. The study and results are discussed in the context of literature to date. A relationship between the level of bullying experienced and the level of trauma symptoms currently experienced was found. There were no differences found between violence and non violent offenders on any of the measures used but there was a relationship between violent offending and a tendency to make negative attributions about their own actions relating to events. A similar relationship was also found for participants who had experienced bullying but not for those who had bullied others. Possibilities for future research and the implications for intervention and bullying prevention programmes are discussed in light of the findings.

Bullying in schools has become an increasingly recognised problem. Since Olweus (1978) there has been an increase in research dedicated to this area, highlighting the ways bullying can be defined and its impact on the psychological well being of children and adolescents. As not all young people who are bullied experience psychological consequences, research has also examined differences in coping with