WHAT'S SCHOOL GOT TO DO WITH IT? CRITICALLY ADDRESSING THE SCHOOL IN SCHOOL BULLYING.

This theoretical article addresses the compound word school bullying by asking the question, 'what's school got to do with it?' Despite a vast amount of research into the phenomenon of school bullying, there has been relatively little focus on the importance of the school half of the open compound. Taking a critical educational perspective to school bullying (Horton, 2018), the article considers the importance of school to school bullying by discussing the social ecology of school and particularly the importance of the school environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In doing so, the article uses examples from a recently completed ethnographic research project conducted in Swedish schools to elucidate the importance of key features of schools (Duncan, 2013; Eriksson et al., 2002), the different layers of schools (Gordon & Lahelma, 1996), as well as the environmental and structural elements of schools (Zumbrunn et al., 2013). The article provides an empirically-based theoretical frame-work for critically addressing the school in school bullying and argues that school bullying cannot be adequately addressed by only focusing on the behavioural side of the open compound. School is not simply the setting for school bullying. School means more than that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]