A Time Line of the Evolution of School Bullying in Differing Social Contexts

This is a review of the history and current state of research on bullying. The documents on bullying from the middle of the 1800s to current time were reviewed. Bullying is not a contemporary problem, but has always been a part of life. The first significant journal article which addressed bullying among young people was written by Burk (1897), but since then there was a long gap before the issue was taken up again. The question of bullying was considered in Scandinavia in the 1970s (e.g. Pikas, 1972; Olweus, 1978). Since the late 1970s, studies on bullying have developed with diverse approaches and have been considered in different social contexts (Whitney & Smith, 1993, Rigby, 1996; O’Moore & Hillery, 1987; Morita, 1985, Olweus, 1993).