Teacher and Student Perceptions of Bullying in the Classroom: Identifying Effective Strategies for Teacher Intervention

Introduction: The classroom is a particularly important context for bullying prevention as the vast majority of bullying occurs there. While nearly all states now require some type of mandated professional development for educators to address concerns related to bullying, research shows that teachers still struggle to detect bullying and rarely implement effective strategies to respond to bullying when it is detected. The aim of the current study is to use data from focus groups to better understand the perceptual differences between students’ and staff regarding bullying behaviors and intervention efforts.

Method: Data comes from a larger study focused on increasing teacher detection of bullying and effective interventions with bullying in their classrooms. Focus groups were conducted with 16 teachers and 17 students from 3 middle schools. Focus groups addressed participants perceptions of the extent to which bullying occurs in the school; how teachers and students respond to bullying; what is perceived to be an effective strategy for teachers and students; what students wished teachers knew or did in response to bullying; and what (if anything) teachers felt they needed to prevent and respond to bullying.

Results: Consistent and specific themes emerged in both of these focus groups. For teachers, the main themes were: (1) Time constraints for intervening effectively; (2) Not feeling efficacious at correctly identifying bullying; (3) Classroom management is key for preventing and de-escalating bullying behaviors; (4) Systemic issues in addressing bullying (e.g., reporting to administration is ineffective or teachers are not encouraged to report). For students, some themes overlapped with teachers: (1) Teachers are not effective at stopping bullying and cannot tell what is (and is not) bullying; (2) Teachers don’t seem to care or understand what students are going through; (3) It is most helpful if a teacher makes an emotional connection with students for them to effectively intervene; (4) School policies are inconsistently implemented, ineffective, or perceived to make things worse.

Conclusion: Study findings suggest that bullying programming could benefit from a shifted focus from viewing bullying strictly as a behavioral issue to instead seeing it as also an emotional one. Further, teachers need to be able to show that the absence of time in class to most effectively intervene is not perceived as the teacher not caring. Currently, the field lacks experimental knowledge and readily available information for how to best respond to bullying within the classroom; the current study fills that gap highlighting the importance of the emotional bond between teachers and students.