ABSTRACT
Much remains to be learned about the long-term trajectories of bullying behaviour and the consequences of school bullying experiences in later life. This chapter shows how a life course developmental perspective provides a useful framework for exploring continuity and discontinuity in bullying from childhood to young adulthood, and across different social and institutional contexts. It is argued that bullying is the result of complex interactions between individual, social and contextual resources. These interactions become particularly important at times of developmental transition, when young people are required to negotiate challenges presented by new social and institutional contexts. The way in which individual, social and contextual resources help or hinder these negotiations play a significant role in determining whether people continue to form relationships characterised by bullying and victimisation, or are able to break away from negative patterns of interaction. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of a life-course perspective for prevention of bullying.
