Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
Way of publication
- Open Access (8)
Keywords
- bullying (7)
- school (4)
- Lehrkräfte (3)
- Mobbing (3)
- Schule (3)
- self-efficacy (3)
- teacher (3)
- Adolescents (2)
- Bullying (2)
- Children (2)
Institute
Bullying research has been conducted worldwide for decades, with ever-increasing frequency and intensity. Nevertheless, some areas of bullying research have not been very well studied so far. One of these areas is the role of teachers in preventing and reducing bullying, including, for example, their intervention strategies and effectiveness in tackling bullying, and supportive or hindering teacher competencies. Recently, studies in this area seem to be increasing. A special issue in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology and a Current Research Topic in Frontiers of Psychology show growing research interest in the role of teachers in student bullying. It seems that we are at the beginning of increasing research interest, which provides us with the opportunity to identify research priorities and to advance appropriate networking. This could facilitate cooperation and connection between researchers and studies, which would be beneficial for the growth of knowledge and enable more rapid findings relevant to practice.
We, the founders of the newly established and currently growing European Young Researchers Network on Teachers' Role in School Bullying, would like to talk about connecting researchers and research.
Purpose
The workshop is aimed at researchers who study teachers in the bullying context as well as practitioners who identified research needs.
Central questions of the workshop will be:
Which research questions need to be addressed to understand the role of teachers in bullying better?
What helps us or what hinders us to exchange and cooperate?
How can we create networks that are beneficial and accessible for everyone who wants to participate?
Which research projects would be suitable for comparative research or replication in another
country?
The workshop aims to develop creative ideas that can be implemented in the newly established network or other cooperation opportunities to advance research on the role of the teacher.
Teachers play a crucial role in bullying interventions. Recent research has suggested that empathy is particularly important for this. But two important limitations arise. Firstly, all of these findings are based on artificial bullying scenarios presented in vignettes. Secondly, the likelihood that teachers will intervene is assessed solely from the teacher’s perspective.
Based on data from 2,071 German students and their 93 teachers, the connection between teachers’ self-reported empathy and the likelihood that they will intervene in bullying was assessed using a bullying vignette as well as a retrospectively reported bullying situation that had been experienced by the teachers or the students in question. The associations were analysed in multilevel regression models from the teachers’ and the students’ perspective.
Results showed that teachers who are more empathic are more likely to report that they would intervene in a hypothetical relational bullying situation. However, this finding could not be replicated when using real, remembered bullying situations. In addition, when based on students’ perspectives, no significant associations between teachers’ empathy and their actual or intended intervention behaviour were found.
In this presentation we will discuss implications for the validity of existing research and for future research.
Recent research indicates that teacher self-efficacy as a belief to have enough capabilities to accomplish a given task successfully (Bandura, 1994) is an important competence for successful bullying prevention and intervention (e.g., Boulton, 2014; Bradshaw, Sawyer & O’Brennan, 2007; Yoon & Bauman, 2014). But studies vary concerning the definition and specificity of self-efficacy and concerning the samples used. Therefore, the findings differ greatly.
Empirical studies on teacher self-efficacy in the context of student bullying were searched in relevant databases. 36 relevant publications were identified in a multi-staged process. Quality criteria were adapted from the Cochrane Collaboration.
Most publications report consistently that teachers feel not very confident in dealing with bullying in general and feel least confident when dealing with cyberbullying. Results on differences according to gender, work experience and school type are very heterogeneous. Consistent findings are reported concerning the likelihood of intervention: Teachers who are more confident are more likely to intervene in bullying. But no consistent findings arise for the choice of specific intervention strategies.
The heterogeneity of the findings can be explained by different types of self-efficacy, by differences in the measures, and by different educational contexts. In the presentation, this information will be combined to understand differences better and to integrate the existing results. Results indicate that the more specific self-efficacy is assessed, the more connections between self-efficacy and bullying interventions can be found.
Gegenstand der Studie ist die Güte des Lehrerurteils bei der Wahrnehmung von täter- und opferbezogenem MobbingVerhalten. Geprüft werden das Ausmaß der Über- sowie Unterschätzung des Anteils der beteiligten Schülerinnen und Schüler, die individuelle Übereinstimmung des Fremdurteils mit den Selbstangaben und der Einfluss verschiedener Moderatoren auf die Genauigkeit des Urteils. Analysiert werden Befragungsdaten von n = 85 Klassenlehrkräften und n = 1401 Schülerinnen und Schülern. Die anteilige Verbreitung von Täter und Opfererfahrungen pro Klasse wird durch die Lehrkräfte leicht überschätzt, die Übereinstimmung zwischen Lehrer und Schülerurteil auf individueller Ebene fällt gering aus. Einfluss auf die Genauigkeit des Lehrerurteils zum Täterstatus haben die schulischen Leistungen der Schülerinnen und Schüler. Die Ergebnisse werden hinsichtlich ihrer Implikationen für den Umgang mit dem Phänomen Mobbing an Schulen und für die Lehreraus- und -fortbildung diskutiert.
Bullying is a prevalent aggressive behavior with severe negative social and health consequences. It emerges from complex social interactions (Saarento, Garandeau, & Salmivalli, 2015). To understand the causes of bullying, different levels of the school environment and their interactions need to be considered. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory is an appropriate model for this (see figure 1).
From analyses of children’s behaviors in the family context, spillover effects are known (e.g., Lux & Hudecek, 2015). Similar patterns may occur in schools: Conflicts at the staff level may serve as negative role models, may reduce teachers’ alliance and cooperation, and limit long-term interventions. These long-term interventions are especially important in reducing bullying (Bilz, Schubarth, Dudziak, Fischer, Niproschke, & Ulbricht, in press). Following the assumption of reciprocity, the occurrence of bullying may, at the same time, work as a stressor and increase staff conflicts. Connections between bullying occurrence and class climate are already known in the literature (Saarento et al., 2015), but have not yet been analyzed with staff conflicts simultaneously.
Cross-sectional data of 556 teachers and 2,071 students will be analyzed as individual data and as aggregated data using multilevel structure equation modeling.
Analyses are not finished yet, but will be presented and discussed at the conference presentation.
Bullying is a specific form of violence that can potentially lead to numerous and long-term negative health implications. Despite consistent coverage in the media, particularly on cyberbullying, as of yet there are only few representative findings on the frequency of (cyber)bullying in Germany. This article analyses how widespread bullying and cyberbullying were at schools in Germany in 2018, what differences exist between girls and boys, age groups and various types of schools, and changes in bullying trends between 2002 and 2018. Our findings are based on an analysis of the data provided by the 2017/18 cycle (N=4,347 students, 53.0% female) and previous cycles of the German Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. In the 2018 cycle, boys reported having bullied other children more frequently than girls, but were bullied just as often. 15-year-olds reported having bullied other children more frequently than 11- to- 13-year-olds but reported being bullied less frequently. Students at grammar schools (Gymnasium) least frequently reported any involvement in bullying. Only few children and adolescents reported cases of cyberbullying. Compared to all previous survey years, 2018 saw the lowest number of children that reported having bullied others. However, reports of having been bullied have remained almost stable. The findings highlight the need for evidence-based prevention and intervention anti-bullying programmes and measures across all types of general education schools and age groups.
Teachers’ self-efficacy in preventing and intervening in school bullying: A systematic review
(2020)
Self-efficacy, commonly seen as an important competence for teachers when intervening in bullying, is a heterogeneous construct. Differences in the specific kinds of self-efficacy under review, its assessment, theoretical foundations, and the samples used when researching it generate diverse results that can be hard to integrate. This systematic review surveys existing literature on the extent of teachers’ self-efficacy in managing bullying and its connection to the likelihood that teachers will intervene in bullying, to their intervention strategies, and the prevention measures they employ, as well as students’ bullying behavior and their experiences of victimization. Thirty-six relevant publications based on 33 studies were included. The quality of their results was assessed, and their findings were systematized and are discussed here. Many studies are of low quality because of incomplete descriptions of underlying theoretical as well as methodological foundations. Almost all results are based on descriptive study designs. Consistent findings show that teachers generally feel confident in managing bullying and that teachers who are more confident intervene more often. Findings were mixed on the connections between teachers’ self-efficacy and intervention strategies, and the prevention measures they used, as well as students’ bullying behavior and experiences of victimization. It was also discovered that the connections between teachers’ self-efficacy and their prevention measures, their students’ bullying behavior, and collective efficacy in general have rarely been addressed in the literature.
Although school climate and self-efficacy have received some attention in the literature, as correlates of students’ willingness to intervene in bullying, to date, very little is known about the potential mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between classroom climate and students’ willingness to intervene in bullying. To this end, the present study analyzes whether the relationship between classroom cohesion (as one facet of classroom climate) and students’ willingness to intervene in bullying situations is mediated by self-efficacy in social conflicts. This study is based on a representative stratified random sample of two thousand and seventy-one students (51.3% male), between the ages of twelve and seventeen, from twenty-four schools in Germany. Results showed that between 43% and 48% of students reported that they would not intervene in bullying. A mediation test using the structural equation modeling framework revealed that classroom cohesion and self-efficacy in social conflicts were directly associated with students’ willingness to intervene in bullying situations. Furthermore, classroom cohesion was indirectly associated with higher levels of students’ willingness to intervene in bullying situations, due to self-efficacy in social conflicts. We thus conclude that: (1) It is crucial to increase students’ willingness to intervene in bullying; (2) efforts to increase students’ willingness to intervene in bullying should promote students’ confidence in dealing with social conflicts and interpersonal relationships; and (3) self-efficacy plays an important role in understanding the relationship between classroom cohesion and students’ willingness to intervene in bullying. Recommendations are provided to help increase adolescents’ willingness to intervene in bullying and for future research.