Bullying can take a number of different forms. The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s Building Respectful and Safe Schools identifies four types of bullying.
1. Physical bullying
Physical bullying includes hitting, kicking, tripping, pinching and pushing or damaging property.
2. Verbal bullying
Verbal bullying includes name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, homophobic or racist remarks, or verbal abuse.
3. Covert bullying
Covert bullying is often harder to recognise and can be carried out behind the bullied person's back. It is designed to harm someone's social reputation and/or cause humiliation. Covert bullying includes:
Lying and spreading rumours
Negative facial or physical gestures, menacing or contemptuous looks
Playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate
Mimicking unkindly
Encouraging others to socially exclude someone
Damaging someone's social reputation or social acceptance.
4. Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is overt or covert bullying behaviours using digital technologies. Examples include harassment via a mobile phone, setting up a defamatory personal website or deliberately excluding someone from social networking spaces. Cyberbullying can happen at any time. It can be in public or in private, and sometimes only known to the target and the person bullying.
