Awareness Of And Attitudes Of Primary And Secondary School Teachers On The School Bully

Bullying is a special type of aggressive behavior that is of high prevalence among children. Bullying brings about harm to both physical and mental well-being of bullies and especially victims. Many countries have conducted large-scale interventions to reduce the problem of school bullying. Teachers, as undertakers of intervention program, play an important role in tackling school bullying and their knowledge and attitude about school bullying have significant impact on the effect of intervention. Few studies have explored teacher's attitude toward bullying issues. The present study aimed to assess teacher's knowledge about bullying; their confidence in dealing with it at school; and the value they put on specific aspects of training.In the present study, anonymous questionnaire which developed by Toda et al. was modified and administered to 279 teachers from 4 junior middle school and 5 primary school of Jinan. The main findings are as follows:1. Teachers viewed compelling behavior as the most serious bullying behavior, and the next was threatening behavior. And then were 'hit, kick, push, shove around', 'spread rumors', 'exclude', 'called mean and hurtful names'. They viewed physical bullying more serious than indirect and verbal bullying.Female teachers put more severity on bullying behavior than male teachers. They thought the harm which brought about by "called mean and hurtful names', 'spread rumors' and compelling behavior more severely than male teachers.2. Most of the teachers(81.9%) recognized the importance of school bullying as an issue.3. There were significant difference in teacher's knowledge and attitude about school bullying.Comparing to teachers from junior high schools, teachers from primary schools believed there were more children involved in bullying behaviors and more victims talked to a teacher about the bullying. Female teachers held that there were more victims talked to a teacher about the bullying. Male teachers thought there were moreboys among victims.4. Teachers viewed bullies as hot-tempered, doing poorly at school work, physically strong, always anxious, popular and thought they come from a family background which is characterized by a lot of physical punishment, inconsistent discipline, distant relationships and physical or emotional abuse; they thought of victims as having learning difficulties, having few friends, having low self-esteem, lacking social skills, unassertive or passive, having physical disability, physically weak and being over-protected by parents.5. Teachers recommended more positive strategies to victims. The strategy they most highly suggested was to tell the bullies to stop and the second was to tell a teacher. The strategies they most disapproved were crying, standing and ignoring the bullying.There was significant gender difference in teacher's attitude toward coping strategies. Female teachers suggested more positive strategies than male teachers.6. Teachers felt confident about making bullies stop bullying, working with parents of bullies, working with parents of victims and helping onlookers take more active role to support victims. They felt less confident about talking with bullies without blaming them and talking with bullied children without attributing cause of the bullying to them.There was significant difference in teacher's confidence about coping with bullying. Female teachers felt more confident than male teachers. Teachers from junior high schools held more confidence than those from primary schools.7. The most valuable training course that teachers thought was 'how to talk with bullying students' and the second was 'how to work with parents of bullies'. How to find out the extent of bullying was the least valuable.