Perceptions of bullying
Perceptions of bullying
Teachers play a central role in safeguarding students from harassment. However, their perception toward bullying is less known. Duong and Bradshaw (2013) examined the degree to which teachers’ perceived threat and perceived efficacy influenced their probability of bullying intervention. Additionally, the authors analyzed if the level (primary or secondary school) at which a teacher taught and the years of teaching experience moderated the relations between perceived threat and perceived efficacy with probability of intervening. Perceived efficacy was strongly associated with teachers’ probability of intervening in bullying unlike perceived threat which showed low results. This indicates that anti-bullying programs must aim at nurturing teachers’ confidence about their ability of dealing with bullying situations. In addition, any proposed anti-bullying strategies should be proven to be effective proofed that they are effective if teachers’ are to implement them (Duong and Bradshaw, 2013). Nevertheless, Interventions interventions with a that purpose to raise teachers’ awareness about perceived threat should also be taken into account as it will further improve the probability of intervening.
Secondly, perceived threat was not associated with the teachers’ probability of intervening irrespective of the school-level (Duong and Bradshaw, 2013). This assumption is based on the elementary schools teachers’ belief believe that younger students are less likely to engage in bullying while secondary school teachers believe that older students can personally handle bullying. The result on the secondary school-level was not expected because it is believed that bullying behaviors tend to increase at secondary schools, resulting in perceived threat associated with the probability of intervention (Duong and Bradshaw, 2013). This demonstrates the weak association between perceived threat and probability of intervening for the two groups. Perceived efficacy however, continued to be strongly related with the probability of intervening.
With regards to the teachers’ experience on bullying responses, perceived threat was not associated with the probability of bullying intervention among the less experienced teachers (Duong and Bradshaw, 2013). However, there was a strong association between the two among the more experienced teachers. Chances are that the less experienced teachers’ teachers value their ability to respond to bullying behaviorscomma hence,no comma perceived threat is not associated with their probability of intervening (Duong and Bradshaw, 2013). The impacts of perceived efficacy were high among teachers with few years teaching experience unlike teachers’ with more experience.
Sahin (2010) stated that teachers had different definitions of bullying. Notable terms included in various definitions were physical attack, searching for justice, emotion hurt and jackboot. The usage of same some expressions to describe bullying may be associated with their ideologies that they are not able to separate the meanings of violence and bullying. A frequent emphasis on the above terms definitions implies that teachers only take into account physical actions as bullying. This condition may be a result of both the teachers’ lack of knowledge about peer bullying and features of the atmosphere in which they lived in the recent years.
It could be stated that the reason for mentioning physical injuries and violence when describing bullying were driven by the cultural environment of the Sahin’s (2010) study group. This study was based in Turkey, a region where violence is rampant. Similarly, it could be that witnessing violent actions may affect teachers’ perceptions and that is why teachers perceive bullying as actions and use expressions such as physical insult, hit, and beat when defining bullying. Others indicate that verbal and physical bullying are frequently experienced in schools, with social exclusion being less significant (Aceves, Hinshaw, Mendoza-Denton, and Page-Gould, 2009) no parenthesis here; Duy, 2013).Bullying was reported to be perceived as the second worst form of violent behavior after drug abuse (Dake, Price, Telljohann, and Funk, 2003).
Incidence of bullying
In Canada, 85% of teachers reported taking action against controlled bullying (Dake et al., 2003). The teachers were ready to confront a bully. However, only 35% of students reported bullying incidents (Dake et al., 2003). The great variation demonstrates that much of the bullying experienced by the students was not reported. This sentiment is supported by McCormac (2014) who stated that bullying is not normally reported by students due to the perception that they would not be listened to, that they would be given no assistance, or that they feared retaliation.
