Teachers' perceptions of bullying in the early years of primary education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of bullying in the first three years of primary education. It sought to determine how serious a problem do teachers consider bullying and also if they are aware of both the victims' and the bullies' characteristics. Moreover, this quantitative study will determine the most common place where bullying occurs and which type of bullying is most common amongst children of this age. Four hundred randomly chosen teachers, from the state and the church school sectors were asked to participate in this study by completing a self-administered questionnaire. The responses of 309 participants show that although the majority of teachers are becoming increasingly more aware of the bullying problem, there are still some teachers who are not considering the problem of bullying as a serious one and therefore they are refusing to intervene. This unwillingness to intervene will only encourage bullying to persist and continues to aggravate the victim's situation. On the other hand, nearly all the participant teachers reported that they would act immediately in order to stop bullying. Present results also show that school policies against bullying should be more stringently enforced in order for the bullying problem to be tackled properly and thus ensure a more secure and positive environment in our schools.