Class teachers’ bullying-related self-efficacy and their students’ bullying victimization, bullying perpetration, and combined victimization and perpetration

ABSTRACT

Teachers’ responses to incidents of bullying among students can be important for bullying dynamics. Theoretical models of teachers’ intervention competence and the theory of planned behavior suggest that teachers’ bullying intervention self-efficacy may be associated with teachers’ responses to bullying and students’ bullying behavior and bullying victimization experiences. Several studies report an association between teachers’ self-efficacy and their intervention behavior in incidents of bullying. However, the possible association with student bullying perpetration has rarely been examined so far. The current study explores the association between class teachers’ self-efficacy and students’ bullying victimization, perpetration, and combined bully-victim behavior in a sample of 2,071 students and their 93 class teachers in Germany. The results suggest an association between class teachers’ self-efficacy and students’ perpetration behavior. The higher teachers’ bullying intervention self-efficacy, the fewer students seem to bully other students. In contrast, teachers’ self-efficacy was not associated with students’ victimization experiences and students’ bully-victim behavior. Possible underlying mechanisms, as well as limitations of the present results, are discussed. Further research is needed to substantiate the findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• teacher
• self-efficacy
• victimization
• perpetration
• bully-victim

Author Note

Saskia M. Fischer, Department of Pedagogical Psychology, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany, E-mail: [email protected], ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2753-6297; Heather A. Woods, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, E-mail: [email protected]; Ludwig Bilz, Department of Pedagogical Psychology, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany, E-mail: [email protected], ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3017-0492

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (Grant No. BI 1046/6‐1).

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (Grant No. BI 1046/6‐1).

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

Some of the results were presented at the conference “Teacher Efficacy and Inclusive Education” in Wuppertal, Germany, in April 2018 and at the 51^st congress of the German Psychological Society in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in September 2018.

Ethical Standards and Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [approved by the Saxony Education Agency] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) [grant number BI 1046/6-1].