Perceptions of middle school teachers on teacher bullying

Abstract

Many individuals experience bullying; however, over 42% of college students surveyed reported that their worst experience of bullying in primary through high school was perpetrated by a teacher (Pottinger & Stair, 2009). Informed by current literature and Symbolic Interactionism Theory, we hypothesized that teachers would acknowledge traditional student-student bullying in their school but would lack awareness of specific occurrences of teacher bullying. Strong support was found for this hypothesis. This non-random pilot study surveyed the attitudes of middle school teachers about other teachers who exhibit bully-like behavior towards students. Data was analyzed using the following descriptive statistics: frequencies, mean comparisons, correlations, and Cronbach’s alpha reliability analysis. The implications of this study are to provide awareness of teacher bullying and to promote future research of this under-studied type of bullying. Future research recommendations include a larger and random national sample using mixed methods for capturing the lived experience of the teachers in addition to survey data.