“They are teaching us to deliver lessons and that is not all that teaching is …”: Exploring teacher trainees’ language for peer victimisation in schools

This paper reports on qualitative findings from the larger Safe Schools Longitudinal Study and explores what trainee teachers understand by the term ‘bullying’, its prevalence, and the barriers to responding to it. Twenty-four teacher trainees at an Initial Teacher Education programme in Scotland took part in two waves of qualitative interviews three years apart. Findings show trainee teachers use the term ‘bullying’ to cover a range of behaviours - with uncertainty around whether verbal insults are bullying. Key factors that impact teacher responses are discussed - with the attitude of the head teacher being pivotal to school climate.     

Telling is compelling: the impact of student reports of bullying on teacher intervention

Research increasingly recognises the importance of student bystander and adult educator shared responsibility for successful bully prevention. The role of teacher observations versus student reports of bullying, as well as staff preparedness, as predictors of teacher involvement was investigated in 115 middle school teachers. Being told by students about bullying incidents was the strongest predictor of teacher involvement. However, the relation between being told about bullying, or observing it, and coaching students on how to manage bullying was most evident when teachers felt highly prepared to handle bullying situations. Results from this study point to the pivotal role that both teacher preparedness and student reporting play in teacher responsiveness to bullying. Implications for training school professionals and bully prevention programmes are discussed.     

Peer victimisation and its relation to class relational climate and class moral disengagement among school children

The aim of the present study was to examine whether class climate and class moral disengagement each contribute to explain different levels of victimisation among classes. Eight-hundred-and-ninety-nine children from 43 Swedish elementary school classes participated in the current study. Class moral disengagement, class relational climate and peer victimisation were assessed by a self-report questionnaire. In order to account for the clustered nature of the data with students nested within school classes, a multilevel regression model was analysed. Consistent with our hypotheses, and after controlling for age, gender and ethnic background at the individual level and class size and the proportion of boys at the class level, both class relational climate and class moral disengagement uniquely contributed to explaining the between-class variance in victimisation. Thus, the findings suggested that victimisation is less likely to occur in classes characterised by a positive, warm, fair and supportive relational pattern between children and between teachers and children, and by lower levels of class moral disengagement.     

The intersection between perceived severity and frequency of being bullied: a Rasch measurement approach

School bullying has been investigated by looking at either the frequency of bullying or the perceived severity of being bullied. However, the relationship between these two constructs needs further clarification. The aim of this study was to clarify the connections between the frequency and the perceived severity of being bullied for bullying intervention and prevention, and examine gender differences in these two constructs. The participants consisted of 1423 secondary school students in southern Taiwan. The 21-item School Bullying Scales with Frequency and Severity were administered. Using Rasch analysis, the two subscales of frequency and severity were aligned on the interval logit scale to yield four quadrants. Results showed that the two latent traits derived from the two subscales had a weak correlation (r = ?.11). Some bullying behaviours, including ‘one’s friendship being ruined’, ‘belongings taken without permission’, ‘being hit and kicked’, ‘being spoken ill of in public’, and ‘being ostracised’, were perceived as the most severe and most frequent behaviours. Boys reported to be more frequently bullied than girls were, whereas girls perceived bullying to be more severe than boys did. It was suggested that bullying behaviours perceived as higher severity and frequency deserve greater attention.