ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the case study of Dan, an eleven-year-old fifth-grader in a Boston public elementary school, who is Identified by his teachers and classmates as the biggest bully in the school. Both the external and internal data were subjected to two kinds of analyses, a qualitative examination of themes and a quantitative analysis of developmental levels in the components of the friendship framework. The interview data indicate that Dan does not identify himself as a bully, despite his quite sophisticated understanding of the role of fighting in fifth-graders' interpersonal relationships. Jimmy, Dan's partner in pair counseling, discussed Dan's fighting in the school context several times in the course of his fighting interview. In terms of developmental analysis, Dan showed an uneven pattern across the three psychosocial domains of interpersonal understanding, skills, and personal meaning, but these patterns remained relatively consistent across the pre and post assessments.
