Teachers’ Responses to Bullying Incidents: Effects of Teacher Characteristics and Contexts

Abstract

School is a critical context of bullying. This study investigated teacher responses to bullying incidents and the effects of individual and contextual variables on these responses. Participating teachers (N = 236) viewed streaming video vignettes depicting physical, verbal, and relational bullying and reported how they would respond to bullies and victims. Teachers were more likely to discipline bullies and to teach victims prosocial skills in physical bullying as opposed to relational or verbal. Teachers’ gender, perceived hostile school climate, and their childhood experiences with bullying were associated with their responses to bullying. Teachers were generally less likely to discipline bullies of a different ethnicity than of their own and more willing to discipline victims if their gender matched the gender of victims.

KEYWORDS:

• bullying
• victimization
• teacher responses