Research into young children’s understanding of bullying in the early years of schooling is limited. The current study examined young children’s understanding, explanations and reasoning behind whether behaviours represented in cartoon scenarios depicted bullying or non-bullying incidents. Seventy-seven children aged 4–8 years from one kindergarten and three schools in metropolitan South Australia participated in single, age-appropriate interviews with an early childhood educator/researcher. All children described each cartoon (N = 77) explaining their reasons why they considered each one as bullying or not (N = 76). Consistent with previous research which employed cartoon methodology with young children, findings indicated that children confused bullying with aggressive-only behaviour, resulting in over-labelling incidents as bullying. Examination of their thinking about bullying revealed that children in this study drew on moral reasoning perspectives and their understanding of relevant behavioural and social expectations and conventions.

中文翻译：

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幼儿对欺凌的思考：个人，社会常规和道德推理的观点

关于幼儿在上学初期对欺凌的理解的研究是有限的。当前的研究调查了幼儿对卡通场景中所表现出的行为描绘的是欺凌事件还是非欺凌事件的理解，解释和原因。南澳大利亚大都市一所幼儿园和三所学校中的77名4至8岁的儿童参加了一次与年龄相匹配的访谈，采访了一名幼儿教育者/研究人员。所有孩子都描述了每幅卡通漫画（N = 77），并解释了为什么他们认为每幅卡通漫画不是欺凌（N = 76）的原因。与先前对幼儿采用卡通方法论的研究一致，研究结果表明，儿童将欺凌与仅具有侵略性的行为相混淆，从而将事件标记为欺凌。