An Examination of Teachers’ Perceptions of Bullying in an Urban Elementary School

Abstract

Several researchers have investigated the impact teachers have on bullying intheir schools (Craig, Henderson, & Murphy, 2000; Crothers & Kolbert, 2004; Mishna,Scarcello, Pepler, & Wiener, 2005; Wright, 2004; Yoon & Kerber, 2003).However, only a minimal number of studies have been conducted using qualitativemethods to examine teachers’ perceptions of bullying within their schools (Bauman &Hurley, 2005; Besag, 2006). The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine thechanges in student-to-student bullying behaviors that occurred in the past seven years.The second purpose of this study was to examine elementary teachers’ perceptions oftheir effectiveness in responding to student-to-student bullying as changing over time.Finally, the impact of the district’s professional development regarding bully preventionwas examined. Utilized in this study was a 15-question interview protocol with teneducators who had taught in the same district for the past seven years.Findings included all participating teachers agreed that student-to-student bullyingwithin the school had changed within the seven-year period being discussed. Seven outof ten teachers who participated in the study identified verbal and written bullying as themost common type of bullying currently taking place in their school. The participatingteachers identified social media and the increased availability of technology as theprimary reason that bullying has transformed within elementary schools. The overallfindings from the study showed that teachers believe student-to-student bullying hadoccurred in their elementary school. The primary method of bullying mentioned bythe teachers consisted of verbal bullying at all grade levels and cyberbullying fromstudents in the fifth and sixth grade levels. Further findings showed bullying as changing in the past seven years in urban elementary schools because of social mediaand the influx of technology used within elementary school classrooms and students’homes. The final finding from the study showed district professional development asinadequate in preparing teachers to handle all types of bullying occurrences.