“I keep warning the new teachers, you’ll have elephant skin”: Teachers coping with physical violence perpetrated toward them by their pupils

Abstract

This study aimed to describe and analyze the experiences of Israeli teachers subject to physical violence from their pupils. Thematic analysis of interviews with 32 elementary school teachers from Northern Israel (11 Jewish and 21 Arab) revealed two themes. The first, “shattered beliefs,” described teachers’ experiences of broken professional beliefs about the nature of teacher-pupil interactions. The second described teachers’ coping with the altered sense of their professional role as a negotiation of extremes involving their social environment, professional commitment, and interpretation of the violent event. Implications of the study highlight the need for the school community to adopt a trauma-informed approach to allow teachers’ trauma and needs to be recognized in the aftermath of violent incidents and include the exploration of support from the school environment.

Keywords:

• School violence
• teacher coping
• teachers
• teachers’ experiences
• teacher victims

Violence in schools is an ongoing, multifaceted problem affecting school systems and their surrounding communities. It is commonly addressed in a pupil-centered manner, focusing on the consequences for students’ well-being and mental health (e.g. Zych et al., 2017), despite school staff also being direct victims of physical violence (Berg & Cornell, 2016; Khoury-Kassabri et al., 2009). Despite the high incidence of student violence toward teachers (Longobardi et al., 2019), this phenomenon has only recently begun to gain greater researcher interest (McMahon et al., 2017a). Teachers remain largely neglected in the theoretical and practical discourse of student violence (Bare et al., 2022; Zych et al., 2017).

Violence toward teachers

Violence toward teachers takes numerous forms, including property offenses, harassment, threats, verbal abuse, and physical attacks (de Ceballos & Carvalho, 2021). Such violence has been reported globally (e.g. Berg & Cornell, 2016; McMahon et al., 2017a, 2017b; Moon & McCluskey, 2020), with a recent meta-analysis of 24 studies from around the world showing that 53% of teachers had experienced some type of victimization by students within the prior two years, although the prevalence ranged between studies (Longobardi et al., 2019). In the United States, a task force appointed by the American Psychological Association found that 80% of teachers reported experiencing one or more violent victimizations. Even when most schooling was remote during the COVID-19 pandemic, student violence toward school staff persisted at high levels, with one-third of respondents experiencing a violent act (McMahon et al., 2022).

Within the limited scholarship, several factors have been identified as increasing the risk of violence against teachers (Martinez et al., 2016). Urban areas and areas with higher crime rates demonstrate higher levels of teacher victimization (Martinez et al., 2016), while physical violence of pupils toward teachers has also been positively correlated with violence among the students themselves (Gråstén & Kokkonen, 2022). Teachers who are men are more likely to fall victim to student violence, as are special education teachers (Moon & McCluskey, 2020). Conversely, teachers with longer tenure are less likely to experience such violence and report fewer repeated incidents (Berlanda et al., 2019; Martinez et al., 2016).

The psychological harm caused by these experiences is illustrated by studies that have shown negative effects on well-being, increased distress, anxiety, depression, and somatic and traumatic symptoms. Negative affect is more common among teachers who have experienced student-generated violence, and these teachers are also generally less satisfied with life (McMahon et al., 2017b). In terms of professional consequences, intimidation as a result of student harassment and fear for personal safety have led to increased work absenteeism and turnover among teachers (Molefi, 2022; Peist et al., 2020). Those who experienced threats and assaults by students were also more likely to relocate to different schools. Over time, teacher-directed violence has been found to increase teacher burnout (Maran & Begotti, 2020; Melanda et al., 2021) and professional disengagement (Maran & Begotti, 2020; Yang et al., 2021).

Schools with an authoritative structure, characterized by fair disciplinary practices, supportive student-staff relationships, and support from colleagues and the administration, increased teacher well-being despite victimization (Berg & Cornell, 2016; De Cordova et al., 2019). Teachers with greater administrative support were less likely to report multiple victimizations (Martinez et al., 2016). In contrast, a study by McMahon et al. (2017b) found that teachers subjected to student violence perceived a lack of administrative support as the most upsetting co-occurring victimization experience. This increased feelings of marginalization, burnout, and desire to leave the profession. Findings have also indicated the buffering effects of social support and subsequent reduction of self-blame among teachers (Berlanda et al., 2019).

Teacher characteristics may also play a role in the aftermath of violent experiences. A belief that the world is just and fair may be protective against negative effects (McMahon et al., 2017b), while emotional intelligence (Mérida-López & Extremera, 2022) and higher self-efficacy may mediate the effects on professional disengagement (Yang et al., 2021). Teachers who attributed their violent experiences to the student aggressor or their professional position were more likely to share the experience with a colleague, spouse, or the administration (Kauppi & Pörhölä, 2012). Conversely, teachers who attributed the event to their own behavior or personal characteristics were less likely to share or report the experience.

Violence against teachers in Israel

Research on student-teacher violence in Israel remains scarce—misleadingly so, given the increasing news reports of student-teacher violence—and is mainly focused on prevalence in Jewish versus Arab populations (Benbenishty et al., 2019; Khoury-Kassabri et al., 2009). Cross-cultural studies of student-teacher victimizations in Israel have shown that, although verbal abuse is the most prevalent, Jewish teachers reported more instances of pupils directing curses and insults toward them, while Arab teachers reported higher levels of physical victimization, threats and property damage (Benbenishty et al., 2019). Despite the higher levels of violence directed toward them, Arab teachers have expressed less need for support and professional training to cope with student-generated violence (Benbenishty et al., 2019). Research in Israel has also shown that students with a positive perception of their school’s policies are less likely to display violence toward teachers (Khoury-Kassabri et al., 2009).

Given the grave implications for teachers’ well-being, the present study aims to fill a theoretical gap in the limited research on teacher-directed school violence by including the absent, although much needed, voices of the victimized teachers. Incorporating their experiences in the school violence discourse can inform policy and enable bottom-up interventions. Therefore, a qualitative approach was chosen to explore the emic, insider viewpoints of teachers who have experienced student violence and to conduct a multi-layered evaluation of the meanings they attribute to their encounters (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) How do teachers experience being subjected to violence directed toward them by their pupils in their daily work? (2) How does the violent experiences affect the teachers’ in their professional and personal lives and their sense of self? (3) How do teachers who are victimized by student violence construct coping strategies?

Methods

Participants and sampling

The sample included 32 elementary school teachers from different areas in Northern Israel. The participating teachers were from socio-cultural backgrounds consistent with their school communities. Participants were Jewish (n = 11) and Arab (n = 21) and comprised 23 women and nine men. The teachers’ seniority ranged from 5 to 25 years. Inclusion criteria were 5 years of seniority and at least one meaningful experience of physical violence perpetrated by their pupil(s) during their tenure as a teacher.

Data collection

The study was based on a purposeful sample, with participants recruited through key informants. Ten graduate students in education conducted semi-structured interviews to fulfill the requirements of a seminar course. The interviews lasted, on average, one hour and were based on an interview guide that included three categories: violence toward teachers and its consequences (e.g. If I was with you during the incidence of violence from your student, what would I see and hear?); administrative support (e.g. Is the administration aware of the difficulties you face? How are you perceived at your school as a victim of violence?); and teacher experiences following the violent event (e.g. Describe your feelings following the violent event. What are the differences between when you first started working and now?). All interviews were recorded and transcribed.

Data analysis

The author conducted a qualitative thematic analysis utilizing the six-phase framework of Braun and Clarke (2021), aiming to identify key patterns in the interviews while using Dedoose software to organize the data. First, the author reviewed the transcripts until they were fluent in the participants’ accounts. Next, the author generated initial codes relevant to the data and searched for themes. The author further reviewed the themes and ensured they could be related back to the initial codes. Following this, the author defined and named the themes. The analysis process was inductive, meaning it was grounded in the data (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Finally, the author selected illustrative quotes, which were translated from Arabic and Hebrew into English. To confirm the translation, quotes were chosen at random and back-translated into Hebrew and Arabic.

Trustworthiness

Several methods were employed to ensure the study’s trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Morse, 2015). The data was validated via member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Morse, 2015), with the participants adding supplementary details and clarifications (Morse, 2015). Later, the participants’ responses to the study themes were integrated into the analysis, as laid out in the findings. The majority of the participants approved of the findings as a faithful representation of their experiences. The author also exercised precautions to ensure the analysis was unprejudiced by preconceptions or established coding frames (Braun & Clarke, 2021) and maintained an audit trail via comprehensive record-keeping, including appending raw data to all analyses. Finally, the author confirmed the methodology and analysis with experts in child maltreatment and qualitative research (Henry, 2015).

To further establish credibility, the author methodically affixed representative quotes to their interpretations. For example, the sub-theme ‘From insult to compassion’ is presented in the following manner: (1) personal details of a participant; (2) a quote from the participant; (3) examination of the quote in its original context and its applications to the theme constructed by the author. This allows readers to judge the quality of the analysis and accept or refute the conclusions (Patton, 2015).

Ethics

The participating teachers received a detailed explanation of the study aims in their native language (i.e. Hebrew or Arabic). This explanation was presented both orally and in written form. To formally receive the participating teachers’ informed consent and to encourage trust in the research process, participants were provided with a form to sign explaining the research aims, their rights, and ensuring confidentiality (Patton, 2015). All participants were assured that the information they shared would not affect their personal or professional status in any way, and strict confidentiality would be observed. Participants were provided with a referral list in case of emotional distress and were given the option to terminate the interview at any time. Pseudonyms were given to the participants, and all identifying details were removed from the data set. The data were password secured and accessible only to the researcher.

Results

The analysis yielded two main themes. The first, “shattered beliefs,” describes the teachers’ experiences of broken or lost professional beliefs about the nature of teacher-pupil interactions. The second theme describes the teachers’ negotiations between extremes as they sought to cope with student-generated violence: social extremes, ranging from invalidation to support; internal extremes, ranging from stepping back professionally to a sense of empowered responsibility; and interpersonal extremes, regarding their reaction to the other social actors involved, ranging from a sense of insult to compassion.

Shattered beliefs

The teachers in this study described acts that ranged from being shouted at to being hit so hard that they became unconscious. For all the participating teachers, being subject to such violence was shocking and, initially, they were uncertain how to respond. The majority described being stunned, as illustrated by Amar, an Arab Muslim seventh-grade history teacher: “Suddenly he got up from his place, lifted a chair and threw it my way. Thank God the chair didn’t hit me directly, but I was in shock—that was the first time it happened to me.” Afaf, an Arab Druze teacher with 18 years of seniority, also described

In the beginning, it was a shock—what’s happening?… I don’t know how to describe a sense that you must respond but you wait instead. You must do something, but you aren’t sure what the right thing is to do […] and the silence of the children [after the event]—they understood what happened, and everyone is in shock and silent. They waited and waited to see, what will the teacher and the aid do?

The shock of the events was experienced by the entire classroom. Afaf clung to her professional identity as one who was meant to react, whose pupils looked to her to take the lead, yet she and her class remained frozen while processing the student’s violence.

Many teachers expressed doubt and self-criticism over their handling of such incidents, both in terms of their conduct toward the offending students and the impression this behavior left on the other pupils, parents, and colleagues within the school. Their broken professional illusions were the trigger for a general experience of uncertainty, loss of confidence and breach of trust in relationships.

Negotiating extremes

The second theme addressed teachers’ coping mechanisms by examining the ways they contended with their shock and broken beliefs and how this affected their professional and private lives. This theme revealed three broad axes of coping involving teachers’ relations with their professional/social environments, themselves, and their students.

From invalidation to support: Teachers negotiating their professional/social worlds

The way the social environment addressed student violence had a tremendous impact on how it was processed by the teachers involved. Most of the participants described their trauma from these incidents as being compounded by the silencing, blame, and dismissiveness they encountered from their school administrations, their colleagues and the parent body. Not only did many teachers not receive the necessary support, but they also described being asked by the school not to report the incidents, as in the case of Yasmine, an Arab Druze teacher with 12 years of teaching experience:

I went to the medical clinic since I had pains all over my body [from the physical attack of her student]. Suddenly, my cell phone rang, and my principal asked me not to report the event to the police. I had no choice. The Muslim society that I teach in is a difficult one, you can’t go above the principal’s head, or go head-to-head… That’s why all I could do was get a 10-day sick leave, to rest a bit from the trauma at home.

Following Yasmine’s physical injury, she was actively silenced about her experience by the school administration. Other teachers noted that, rather than receiving support, they were scapegoated by the administration. This is described by Karine, a Jewish teacher with 24 years of experience as an elementary school math teacher:

They were afraid of the mother because she had a horrible, filthy mouth. It was easier to lay the blame on me […] I felt I was alone in the system. The staff abandoned me, the administration, everyone chickened out, as they say, covered their own backs.

Thus, the teachers were not cared for but instead hurt, blamed, helpless, and marginalized. Lital, a Jewish drama teacher with 5 years of experience in an elementary school, described her return to the classroom under such circumstances:

I was sort of terrified, and later I had to walk into that classroom again. I think, in retrospect, it was a mistake. After I processed what happened, I said, take it easy, take a deep breath, and get into class. […] I went into the classroom, and I was no longer able to function… That feeling that you seem weak, that sense of helplessness […] I never had the opportunity [to say] what I think […]. I didn’t have the opportunity to stand up to that student and show him I wasn’t afraid of him.

Not only was she expected to return to the classroom almost immediately, where she worried her students would perceive her helplessness, but she was also excluded from the follow-up with the child and parents. As a result, she had no sense of resolution. Similarly, Tamar, a Jewish third- and fourth-grade homeroom teacher with 27 years of experience, shared

I was hurt. […] the principal wasn’t available… so I stayed and dealt with [the student] alone… I would get stressed, I would even feel my heart pulsing in my chest, I wouldn’t feel well, and I’d try to cope alone without asking for help because I always wanted to be the one who solves the problems […] and that didn’t work out. […] I would take it very hard mentally. […] I’d come home sad, edgy, sometimes feel short of breath due to stress and even anxiety, helpless […] It was hard for me to recover from it […] People would sense my reactions, my mood, my indifference […] and it affected me, it did.

When the administration did not provide support, Tamar took this as an opportunity to perform with greater competence by handling the incident on her own. This coping involved frustration and stress that affected her mental health, to the point of somatic experiences. Her physical exhaustion and deteriorated mood affected her outside of school as well.

While most of the teachers felt alone in contending with their trauma, several described relying on the support of friends and family outside of school to cope. As Karine related

In the first years, I would shut myself up at home… As much as I try to deny it, it does follow me around… keeps me up at night […] It’s a trauma that accompanies me for many years. When I see violence, and I walk away… I felt humiliated…. I gave up, I reached a point where I wanted to give up teaching. If it weren’t for my supportive family, my environment, and my friends, I would have left teaching.

Family support was a lifeline for the teacher victims of student violence in that it minimized their loneliness. For the even smaller minority of participants who received support from within the school, their coping was a much less draining experience. Neta, a secular Jewish third- and fourth-grade homeroom teacher with 19 years of experience, provided a strong example of this contrast:

The previous principal […] would say, “Cope, cope, that’s your job." […] And when a new principal came, she brought in workshops and people from the outside, and she came to help […] There was no support [before she came] and that’s a terrible frustration […] they throw you into the lion’s den and you have to cope, you have no backing, no help, nothing, and then if there’s a violent incident and you need to call the parents, you cope […] for every such phone call I used to tremble. That’s how it used to be.

In the past, under different management, those who spoke about their difficulties were considered weak, so Neta and her colleagues preferred to present the false image of a perfect situation. Like most of the teachers in the present study, their experiences of being victimized were treated as invisible by their social environment, coping was stigmatized as a part of their role, and they struggled unaided with the emotional fallout. However, an administration that enabled teachers to share their difficulties through workshops and external counselors was able to improve the teachers’ experiences, even in the aftermath of violence.

From stepping back to empowered responsibility: Teachers negotiating their internal sense of their professional role

Faced with the challenges of violence from their students, the lack of support within the school system altered the way the teachers related to their profession, abilities and competencies. Their uncertainty and self-doubt, alongside the sense of abandonment, made their daily work more strained and difficult. In enduring this, some became inured to the shock of violence.

Some teachers persisted in seeking to address the violence in their classrooms but were slowly worn down by the process. Tamar was struck by how deeply she was affected by the lack of encouragement she received from the administration and other staff:

[I]nstead of encouraging […] I felt alone with the situations with her [the student] because there was no approval […]. Even my colleague kept telling me, “You’re such a loser. Why do you have to put up with it? Let them kick her out, keep reporting, report constantly, so that they kick her out.” And I stood my ground and decided not to do it. Obviously, I shared with the administration, with the counsellor […] the staff, my friends, my family […] I didn’t get any support – these were my difficulties when I sat in the conversations with the counsellor and parents and psychologists. I often left at the end of the talk with everything still inside me, and nobody was with me, and I alone would be facing the child because the parents didn’t want to do anything, and the school didn’t want to do anything. […] It’s hard, disappointing, it’s extremely frustrating and it wears you down – this is what causes my burnout as a teacher.

Tamar felt that she made every effort in an extremely difficult situation without any recognition, while everyone else around her failed to do their part. Her colleagues mocked her for doing her utmost to help the child, while the parents and counselor failed to contribute to a solution. Tamar believed that even some approval of her efforts would have helped her cope and that the failure to receive it contributed to her professional fatigue. Similarly, Lital described feeling isolated and encumbered by her efforts:

I go to the homeroom teachers. I often feel I’m a burden to them, they don’t have the patience to hear it or take care of it. It’s not that it prevents me from going to them. I feel that, “Oh, don’t start with it now” […] often they tell me, “Make a note of it.” […] [They feel that] if it’s not my [problem] and did not happen on my watch, then it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, it makes me realize that I must handle it, mainly, and that’s my preoccupation, to see how I handle it and whether I’m reacting right.

Other teachers were reluctant to take on this challenge without support. Karine, for example, stressed the professional risks of responding to violent incidents:

The system marks those who complain, teachers who complain. Therefore, you must know how to bite the bullet […] to know how to keep your mouth shut, close your eyes and keep going. And say, tomorrow is a new day. The system forces you to become like that. But I learned on that day that wherever there is violence, I keep my distance. Let him destroy half of the school, chairs, I never touch the child. I don’t even try to keep children apart. I keep my distance, so that they won’t say later that I did something to him, so that events won’t be completely misinterpreted.

Many teachers related the decline in their professional motivation and loss of their sense of belonging in the school to the lack of support from administrators. This was seen in a quote from Rim, an Arab Druze teacher:

It’s difficult for me to feel that, as a marginalized teacher, they weren’t there for me, they didn’t worry about the ways that it would affect me. They only asked a few times how I am, and they didn’t start a conversation about it even though they knew this event might lower my motivation to teach and be a part of the school. I needed someone to speak with me so that I would calm down and to know that someone has my back […] They didn’t make me feel that if you place a complaint, they’re with you in any decision. Just the opposite! They tried not to speak to me in order to push it away, not to open up about my feelings and thoughts, for their own interests. But what about mine?

There were also teachers who attributed positive consequences to the process of becoming hardened and inured to insults and neglect. Neta stated

Nowadays, I know I’m really doing the best I can—what can I do beyond this? So, it’s really a matter of experience. I keep telling the new teachers, in the end, you’ll have elephant skin […] I learned that if I need to ask the principal for something, I just need to state the facts, not ask questions—that’s the difference.

Neta described how, early on, she was consumed by fear and doubt. Later, after gaining more experience, she felt better able to cope. Likewise, Yasmine expressed the belief that she learned to draw on her internal resources and not behave as a victim:

Today I am in a completely different place because if I don’t stand up for myself […] I [won’t] retain my place and status, because as a victim of violence and as a punching bag that we all are […] we learn, as the years go on… something very important that I have learned is that if I don’t stand up for myself no one will stand up and protect me, and if I am not strong enough no one else will come and strengthen me, so with time life allows you to back yourself up […] My goals have become clearer, the annoyance we have in the beginning of our career stabilizes over time and the belief in myself is less unsettled than it used to be. So, my standpoint is much stronger both towards myself and towards the system that I am in. As people, we have a spine, we have what we demand from ourselves and only then can change occur.

Without support from the system, the majority of the participants found their professional identities deeply affected. Most either denied responsibility, refusing to risk being singled out and blamed, or struggled to address the incident on their own, representing a committed yet lonely professional identity. While the teachers did not receive professional training on how to handle violence, a minority highlighted the fact that the teaching experience could toughen one up, making it possible to persist and continue to work effectively.

From insult to compassion: Teachers’ interpersonal responses to student violence

Many teachers experienced student violence as an offense to their professional commitment, particularly when the hostile act was not treated seriously by their professional and social circles. These teachers felt that students, parents, and administration failed to recognize, respect, or reciprocate their investment in their pupils. This began with the initial act of violence, which some teachers saw as an affront to their prior relationship with the student. For example, Yael, a secular Jewish homeroom teacher with 13 years of experience, described feeling surprised and deeply hurt by a violent incident:

I didn’t expect that she would raise a hand to me. We had a good relationship. I didn’t think that she would dare do that. She’s a girl with behavioral problems, but in my class, she made a positive change. She also didn’t hit the other students, that’s why I was surprised. I was even insulted in the beginning. Straight away I thought of everything I had invested in her and this is how she acts! Why did I deserve this? I was really hurt.

Many teachers described a sense of being “backstabbed” by the parents of the students who attacked them. Despite their history of collaboration, parents frequently responded to such serious incidents by treating the teacher as a threat. Tamar found it difficult to come to terms with one parent’s response:

I described what his child did, and he simply yelled at me on the phone that I didn’t listen to the child, and that the others were also to blame, and that his child was not guilty, and that I did [something] wrong. This was a father who knew how much I did for his child. And I was hurt. I was offended by the fact that he seemed to have forgotten all those many times … I forgave, but…I was offended.

Many teachers struggled with how such incidents affected other students’ perceptions of them. Galal, an Arab Muslim physical education teacher with ten years of teaching experience, recounted the first difficult moments after he was struck by a student:

When I regained consciousness, the thing that hurt me the most was the odd looks of the other students glaring at me. Expressions of shock, compassion, sadness and pain. In that moment, I felt really bad, and I asked one of the other teachers to take me home because I couldn’t see that student again. I was afraid that I would attack him and hurt him and that would lead to severe complications.

Afaf also shared her experience of insult following the violent experience, considering her prior relationship with the offending student:

It was insulting that he gets up and hits you and keeps on cursing. […] Even though you know he’s a child with difficulties and it’s very hard for him and that’s the reason he explodes, but anyway, it’s insulting that he hurt the relationship between you and that doesn’t give a good feeling. Also, the other children, how will the other children take it that I didn’t respond in that moment? Anger… I was so angry at the time.

The lack of administrative support was also perceived by some as an insult. They sought daily to do important work as educators under the auspices of the school, but their efforts were not reciprocated. This neglect drove many to despair. Karine shared the following:

My principal failed to appreciate me, so I went to the superintendent and asked her to move me, to leave the school. […] I felt she didn’t like and didn’t appreciate me enough, and I deserve to be respected. I left the school. It was a difficult way to leave there because, on the one hand, I brought in good grades, I served her interests, and on the other hand, she treated me like garbage, and that didn’t suit me. Naturally, the school administration wanted to sweep it under the rug, to whitewash it – I was offended, so terribly offended… The administration betrays you and does nothing…

Yet, while teachers felt offended professionally, many also described their internal sense of compassion and responsibility as the key to making peace with violent incidents. As Rina, a secular Jewish sixth-grade homeroom teacher with 13 years of teaching experience, related

In the first few years, sure, I’d take it hard. Today, I know this is about him and not about me, he must have been going through something. Like, in that moment, I need to take a deep breath […] and then I try not to make decisions on the spur of the moment… [It’s about] experience and understanding […] With the years you also realize why the kids are acting that way. […] you learn, and you know how to draw lessons for future cases.

Rina explained that while she took such incidents very hard early on, she came to ascribe them to the students’ private struggles and was able to respond from a place of empathy and care:

First, I’m not a vengeful person, I don’t know if that’s good or bad…Today I have personal resilience. I know myself and my ability to cope with many situations without getting insulted and taking it personally. Today I know who I am and what my strengths are in meetings with parents. […] I come from a perspective that I understand their troubles and those of their children, and I’m there to help them.

Tamar also believed that the cause of violent incidents lay with the child and that there was no intent to offend her personally:

I can’t say that I’m insulted … by the fact that she injured me physically, because I know she doesn’t do it on purpose. I know, because I know how she acts in normal situations, that even in those situations, she’s different. She’s simply a kid that got into my heart. They say that you’re offended by someone you love, but even though I loved [her], I wasn’t offended by the things she did to me.

Tamar expressed empathy for the pain of the child. She accepted the child’s physical violence because she did not consider it to be personally directed against her. She loved the child and, therefore, could not be offended by her.

For many teachers, coping involved a process of reframing the insult and shame they underwent as victims of student violence. Their sense of humiliation was accompanied by an awareness that, while they may have been the object of the attack, it was a complex event with implications that extended beyond what they experienced. These teachers placed their own reactions aside and centered their compassion on students. By focusing on staying faithful to their responsibilities in the classroom, they emphasized their professional strength and value, rather than the hurt done to them.

Discussion

While violence toward teachers has begun to receive scholarly attention, few have focused on the voices of the teachers themselves (Molefi, 2022). The current study examined this complex phenomenon through teachers’ narratives, providing an in-depth account of the meanings they attributed to their experiences of violence perpetrated by their pupils.

The findings demonstrated two interrelated components that shed light on the ways in which the teachers experienced this violence. First, such incidents represented a grave shock, shattering teachers’ previously held belief in themselves as caring professionals whose commitment to their work was valued and respected by their colleagues, students, and students’ parents. Teachers experienced this professional identity crisis while simultaneously being expected by the offenders, student bystanders, and administration to respond appropriately. They were often left feeling unsure about how they handled the situation and questioned their competence and abilities.

The second theme described how teachers coped with the impact of this shock across social, internal, and interpersonal realms. Socially, their coping was most affected by their perception of those in their professional environment (i.e. the administration, their colleagues, and the students’ parents) as supportive of their experiences. The majority of teachers did not gain support from these groups, instead describing loneliness and a particular lack of both system-wide and collegial support. This was consistent with previous reports both in Israel (Benbenishty et al., 2019) and elsewhere (McMahon et al., 2017b; Moon et al., 2021). While the vital role of support has been recognized (e.g. De Cordova et al., 2019), the teachers’ narratives articulated the complexity and dissonance regarding the role of support in coping. Internally, the teachers demonstrated a range of coping styles, from diffusing responsibility to committing themselves more resolutely to their professional role. Interpersonally, there was a dichotomy among the teachers in how they related to the offending students, from feeling insulted and betrayed to feeling compassion toward the student and their struggles.

The school setting was a key factor in the teachers’ difficulties when facing violent incidents and their aftermath. Treated as inconsequential within the school community, their trauma was effectually dismissed, and they were left to cope alone. Their experiences of shock, shame and helplessness were exacerbated by unsupportive and silencing work environments. The silencing surrounding the violent event contributed decisively to a shattered professional identity and their experience of trauma (Luthar & Mendes, 2020). Nevertheless, there is an absence of focus on teachers in previous studies. Benbenishty and Astor (2005) heuristic model of school violence, influenced by Bronfenbrenners’ (1979) ecological theory, does not address teachers’ experiences in its description of violence as a consequence of nested contexts. In fact, teachers’ personal and professional identities have not been discussed beyond their membership and contribution to the school system (e.g. World Health Organization, 2019).

While it appeared that some participants demonstrated an aptitude for coping by reframing the violence and showing compassion to the offenders, these teachers too remained at personal and emotional risk. Without support and professional guidance, they were left to cope or confront the offending students alone, ad hoc, in the best way they knew how. Abandoned by the system and their colleagues, societal and personal expectations regarding the teacher-caregiver role may have compelled them to repress their pain and become habituated and desensitized to violence after recurring incidents over the years. Although the resulting “elephant skin” may have enabled teachers to continue working, the underlying trauma and marginalization were never processed. Additionally, if their reframing minimized the importance of their own well-being, the same coping mechanism that fostered the student-teacher relationship left them vulnerable to ongoing trauma and other forms of victimization.

When violence becomes a normative aspect of everyday life and teachers are desensitized to it, they risk losing their critical professional ability to foster relationships with their students. In an educational context, the quality of student-teacher relationships influences students’ well-being and engagement and leads to greater academic achievement (Roorda et al., 2011). Thus, fostering meaningful relationships between teachers and students is doubly critical. Not only do positive teacher-student relationships aid in teacher well-being and reduce emotional fatigue (Milatz et al., 2015), but such relationships are also an essential tool for a child’s learning and development (Rucinski et al., 2018).

Research implications

The current study expands on previous findings regarding the impact of the school environment on teacher coping, revealing support as the key stabilizing element in the teachers’ subjective experiences. It provides an in-depth illustration of how a lack of support might manifest. To create systems for prevention and intervention, future studies should ascertain how school community members across cultures give meaning to and experience support. Furthermore, teachers’ perspectives should be triangulated with those of other social actors, including principals, colleagues, and family members, to offer a holistic framework of understanding. For example, gaining principals’ perspectives would assist in overcoming the impediments to open discourse and support of teacher victims of violence. No less significant are the viewpoints of the pupils involved and the families of both pupils and teachers.

Practical implications

These findings could contribute to the development of an empowered approach to violence prevention on an interpersonal, educational, and societal level. Support for individual teachers, school culture and policy, and teacher training would all benefit from the insights gained from teachers’ voices, enabling the creation of bottom-up, culturally-informed interventions.

Firstly, a holistic, trauma-informed model might assist teachers (Luthar & Mendes, 2020) in coping with the complex extremes of pain, social pressure, and compassion seen in the present study. This model, which encourages transparency and a culture of support and mutual respect (Marquart & Báez, 2021), would involve supporting teachers in confronting pupils who instigate violent acts as well as holding pupils accountable for their actions in a constructive manner. In this regard, implementing restorative justice approaches in schools would be beneficial for rehabilitating the traumatic injury caused by the violence to the relationship between teacher and student (Bare et al., 2022).

Second, in terms of education, the current school-based violence prevention and intervention curricula urgently need to expand beyond their understandable focus on students (e.g. World Health Organization, 2019). Given that victimized teachers are not presently accounted for in school violence discourse, the change must include open discourse of the phenomenon and all its complexities. Schools should promote a culture of openness regarding pupil-perpetrated violence. Encouraging discussion not only legitimizes the experiences of all those involved but also minimizes the associated shame, thus fostering agency. Reflective workshops could be used to increase teachers’ self-awareness. Similarly, mentorship programs that partner teachers with teachers, teachers with students, and students with students could assist in overcoming hierarchical barriers and facilitating more open communication about issues of school violence.

While a great deal can be achieved within the school system, the personal and professional implications of coping with traumatic events (e.g. Sigad et al., 2022; Sigad et al., 2016) should be an integral part of higher education curricula for all educators. The needs, hardships and even trauma of teachers should not only be accounted for (Luthar & Mendes, 2020) but the relevant trauma-informed processes and coping skills should also be taught to preservice teachers as well as those currently working in the field of education.

Beyond the interpersonal and educational implications of the study, it is the responsibility of all stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike, to listen to educators’ voices and enact changes to prevent their victimization and protect them from the implications of violent events. Teachers can no longer be conceptually minimized or placed on the sidelines in the struggle against school violence. They deserve the same compassion they bestow on their pupils. Attacks on them are not only personally and professionally damaging, but also disrupt the development of the children in their care. If schools are to be genuinely child-centered, they must simultaneously adopt a teacher-centered approach, allowing teachers’ trauma and needs to be recognized in the aftermath of violent incidents. Otherwise, as this study suggests, neglecting their perspectives could make the damage to teachers’ professional commitment and student relationships difficult to repair.

Limitations

As in all qualitative research, the findings cannot be generalized to represent the overall views of survivors of pupil-instigated school violence. This study provides a thorough and nuanced exploration of the teacher participants’ particular perceptions, revealing novel, and potentially fertile avenues for further research. An additional limitation is that the sample was not longitudinal and following the continued coping of teachers over time was not possible. It is necessary to better understand the perspectives of numerous social actors involved in teachers’ experiences of physical violence from students, such as the teachers’ families, colleagues, school administrations, and the student community, including perpetrators, and bystanders. Finally, the study does not engage with contextual factors such as gender or culture, which are key to the social construction of violence and the teachers’ experiences and should be explored in future studies.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical research standards. As described in the methods section of the manuscript, the interviews were conducted as part of a graduate seminar course on cultural constructs of violence at Oranim college of Education, Israel. All participants provided informed consent, as the student researchers were trained to seek consent as part of the data collection process. All participants were reassured that in no way would the information affect their personal or professional status, and strict confidentiality would be observed. Participants were provided with a referral list in case of emotional distress and were given the option to terminate the interview at any time. Pseudonyms were given to the participants, along with the removal of their identifying details from the data set.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Academus Program, Research & Evaluation Authority, Academic Center of Education and Society, Oranim. Most interviews in this study were conducted by the author’s former graduate students in education, as part of their fulfillment of requirements for a seminar on the topic. I am grateful for their time, dedication, and commitment to this difficult topic, and, most importantly, for their help in giving voice to teachers, such as themselves, who cope with violence in their everyday work.

Notes on contributors

Laura I. Sigad

Laura I. Sigad is the department chair of the master’s program ‘Inclusive Education’, M.Ed., Faculty of Graduate Studies, and senior lecturer at Oranim College of Education in Israel.