Student Teachers Perceptions of Bullying

© Kamla-Raj 2014 Anthropologist, 18(3): 941-948 (2014)

Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Bullying in Schools

Ali Ilke Gümuseli1, Özge Hacifazlioglu2 and Esra Çakmak3

1Okan University, Faculty of Education, Istanbul, Turkey2Kültür University, Faculty of Education, Istanbul, Turkey

3Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Education, Istanbul, TurkeyE-mail: 1<[email protected]>, 2<[email protected]>, 3<[email protected]

KEYWORDS Bullying. Teachers. Schools. Perceptions. Education

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to investigate and provide insights into the problems concerning schoolbullying. The objective of the research was to investigate the following issues like What kinds of behaviors aredefined as bullying by student teachers?, How frequently do students engage in bullying behaviors?, Where do thesebehaviors most commonly take place in a typical school environment?, and How do student teachers deal withincidents of bullying? The present study applies a quantitative research design. To formulate availability sampling,student teachers were selected from the teaching certificate program in Yildiz Technical University. A total of 400student teachers participated in the study. The study explored that verbal bullying appeared the most oftenperceived by the student teachers followed by emotional bullying as compared to physical bullying, and finallysexual bullying, was the least observed type of bullying.

INTRODUCTION

The issue of bullying has been on the agen-da of schools worldwide since the last decade(Bauman et al. 2008). In line with current research,schools and some non-governmental organiza-tions have implemented anti-bullying policiesto maintain a safe and healthy environment forschool children. Schools have developed prac-tices for working closely with parents, for ap-propriate and effective responses to bullying,and for the rigorous surveillance of playgroundsand whole school activities to help develop con-structive interpersonal attitudes and behavior.Vos et al. (2012) noted that an ineffective or ‘un-healthy’ organizational climate can have a nega-tive effect on school activities. Bullying, not onlyhas a destructive impact on the school climateas a whole, rather, it can also have long termpsychological effects on individual students. Ina South African context, Pretorius and Villiers(2009) highlighted the need for democratic lead-ership in schools and emphasized the importanceof school leadership teams. With a democraticsetting and the active participation of teachers,school administrators, students and parents,“cases of bullying” can be discussed in a trans-parent manner, leading to the elimination or min-imization of destructive behavior. In addition,Bauman et al. (2008) argued that bullying is notclearly defined in most of the studies.

A review of the literature was conducted re-vealing studies undertaken on the issues of bul-lying in schools followed by an empirical inves-tigation based on student teachers’ views re-garding bullying in their schools. The article isexpected to provide teachers and school admin-istrators with the anticipated types of bullyingincidents that may occur at schools.

Although, researchers may have varyingdefinitions of bullying, Greene (2000) suggest-ed five key features:1. The bully intends to inflict harm or fear

upon the victim.2. Aggression toward the victim occurs

repeatedly.3. The victim does not provoke bullying be-

havior by using verbal or physicalaggression.

4. Bullying occurs in familiar social groups.5. The bully is more powerful (either real or

perceived power) than the victim.Bullying first became the focus of large-scale

social and psychological research in the late1970s and early 1980s, primarily in Norway, Swe-den, and Finland (Greene 2000). In Malta, Borg’s(1999) study of 6,282 pupils investigated thatone in every three pupils was engaged in seri-ous bullying (either as bullies or victims). Utiliz-ing a 2001 study by the Kaiser Foundation inconjunction with Nickelodeon TV network andChildren Now, Coloroso (2003) revealed that 86percent of the children, aged 12–15 interviewed

942 ALI ILKE GÜMUSELI, ÖZGE HACIFAZLIOGLU AND ESRA ÇAKMAK

said that they were teased or bullied at school––making bullying more prevalent than smoking,alcohol, drugs, or sex among the same age group.

Research in Turkey has also shown that bul-lying is a serious problem in schools. Kepenek-ci and Cinkir (2006) viewed that, at least onceduring the academic year, 35.3 percent of pupilsin their study reported having been bullied ver-bally, 35.5 percent were bullied physically, 28percent were bullied emotionally and 15.6 per-cent were bullied sexually. Just over half of theverbal bullying was calling names (52.0%). Mostof the physical bullying took the form of push-ing (60.5%) and emotional bullying was mainlyhumiliation (30.6%). Yurtal and Cenkseven’s(2007) study also indicated that 75% of the stu-dents experienced the following bullying behav-ior: “pushing, swearing, calling names, damag-ing personal belongings and gossiping”.

Olweus (1993: 9), a pioneer in this area ofresearch, defines bullying or victimization as in-stances ‘when [a student] is exposed, repeated-ly and over time, to negative actions on the partof one or more other students’. Olweus (1993)proposes that to apply the term bullying to anincident there should be an imbalance in strength,where the student who receives the negativeactions is unable to defend him/herself and ishelpless against the bully (Houndoumadi andPateraki 2001). Several aspects of bullying fol-low from these definitions:

1. It is an aggressive form of behavior or in-tentional harm-doing.

2. It is carried out repeatedly over time.3. There is a power imbalance between the

bully and the victim (Olweus 1993; Kepen-ekci and Cinkir 2006).

Bullying can also be viewed as a componentof a more generally antisocial and rule-breakingbehavior pattern (Olweus 1995). Bullies are, “of-ten characterized by impulsivity and strongneeds to dominate other people … they havelittle empathy…[and] they are likely to be phys-ically stronger than…the victims” (Olweus 1995:197). Victims are often cautious, sensitive andquiet students, who suffer from low self-esteem.Handwerk (2005) also claims that victims lackthe social skills that can help deflect bullying,such as knowing how to use humor. When bul-lied, they often react emotionally -crying, get-ting angry, withdrawing - which only encourag-es more abuse. Smokowski and Kopasz (2005)reveal that families play a significant role in pre-paring their kids to deal with bullying.

Handwerk (2005: 19) notes that bullies canbe quite popular among their friends as opposedto the common belief, “Many times, they arevery connected to school life through athletic,academic or other extracurricular activities. Bul-lies are generally strong, confident and aggres-sive much more so than their victims, who, bycomparison, tend to be weak, timid andnon-assertive”.

In fact, several common assumptions aboutthe causes of bullying receive little support fromempirical data. These include the hypothesesthat bullying is a consequence of (a) large classor school size, (b) competition for grades andfailure in school, and (c) differences in appear-ance. There may also be other factors related topersonality characteristics. In addition, teach-ers’ attitudes, behavior and routines play a ma-jor role in determining the extent to which theproblem will occur in a classroom or a schoolsetting (Olweus 1995).

Smith and Sharp (1994) described bullyingas physical and verbal. Physical bullying,which includes actions such as kicking anddamaging personal belongings, and verbalbullying, which includes actions such as us-ing humiliating names, gossiping about andisolating the person.

Coloroso (2003) is of the opinion that identi-fying relational bullying is the most difficult ofall the types of bullying. This type of bullyingincludes activities such as ignoring somebody’sexistence and regularly excluding a child, activ-ities which can be difficult to recognize. Aggres-sive looks, sighing, rolling their eyes, frowning,pulling faces and sniggering are also catego-rized as the body language of bullying activities(Coloroso 2003).

Sexual and racial harassment are sometimesviewed as types of bullying (Smith et al. 2004).In Amsterdam in 2000-2001, the Municipal HealthService Department of Child Health Care ap-proached all 104 primary schools to invite themto participate in a study. The results of this studyof 4,721 pupils aged 9-13 indicated that depres-sion and suicidal ideation were more common inchildren, who sometimes or frequently bulliedother children. This was true for both boys andgirls and for bullying directly as well as indirect-ly (Van et al. 2003). Though bullying and theperception of bullying of various stakeholdershad been investigated, as seen above, there re-mains a paucity of empirical data concerning stu-

STUDENT TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF BULLYING IN SCHOOLS 943

dent teacher perceptions on bullying. Therefore,the aim of the present study is to investigatestudent teachers’ perceptions of bullying to gainnew perspectives and insights on the bullyingdilemma with which current and future teachersand administrators will be faced.

In this context, the purpose of the study isto investigate and provide insights into the prob-lems concerning school bullying in Istanbul,Turkey. The research questions that directed thestudy were as follows:1. What kinds of behaviors are defined as bul-

lying by student teachers?2. How frequently do student teachers ob-

serve students engaged in bullying behav-iors in a typical school environment?

3. Where, according to student teachers’ per-ceptions, do bullying behaviors most com-monly take place?

4. How do student teachers deal with inci-dents of bullying?

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

This study applies a quantitative researchdesign contextualized by a post-positivistic in-vestigative approach. As discussed below, thepost-positivistic approach makes it possible forthis research to make meaningful and statisticallyjustifiable analyses, conclusions and generaliza-tions (Maree and Pietersen 2008; Creswell 2009).

Participants

Using purposeful sampling, researchers se-lected particular subjects from the population,student teachers enrolled in the teaching certif-icate program at Yildiz Technical University inIstanbul, Turkey. Out of the five universities inIstanbul with Faculties of Education, Yildiz Tech-nical University students (student teachers)were selected using availability sampling sinceresearchers serve as lecturers in that universi-ty’s program. A total of 410 student teachersparticipated in the study. Out of the 410 ques-tionnaires received, 10 were not used due tohaving incomplete information. The sample sizewas therefore 400 in total. 354 of the participantswere aged 20-29 and 46 were aged 30 and above.

Measuring Instrument

Tintorer’s survey (2004) titled ‘ElementaryTeachers’ Perceptions of and Responses toSchool Bullying’, and Rigby’s (2006) survey ti-tled ‘Handling Bullying’ was combined as oneform. This new form’s translation as well as thevalidity and reliability study had been previous-ly conducted by Kanik (2010).

The survey was divided into four sections.The first three sections of the survey are fromTintorer (2004). The first section asked studentteachers the extent to which they defined cer-tain behaviors as bullying. Responses rangedfrom 1.00-1.75: ‘I definitely disagree’; 1.76-2.50:‘I disagree’; 2.51- 3.25: ‘I agree’; 3.26-4.00: ‘I def-initely agree’. The second section asked stu-dent teachers for an estimate of how frequentlystudents engage in bullying behaviors in a typ-ical school environment. Responses ranged from1.00-1.75: ‘never’; 1.76-2.50: ‘rarely; 2.51- 3.25:‘sometimes; 3.26-4.00: ‘frequently’. The thirdsection asked student teachers where they be-lieved bullying most commonly took place. Re-sponses ranged from 1.00-1.75: ‘never’; 1.76-2.50:‘rarely; 2.51- 3.25: ‘sometimes; 3.26-4.00: ‘fre-quently’.

The last section of survey is from Rigby(2006). This section focused on how studentteachers would respond to various acts of bul-lying. 1- 1.80: ‘I definitely would not’; 1.81-2.60:‘I would not’; 2.61-3.40: ‘I’m unsure’; 3.41-4.20:‘I would’; 4.21-5.00: ‘I definitely would’. For eachof the scales, higher scores indicated strongerendorsement of the strategy.

Reliability and Validity

The SPSS 16.0 program was used in the anal-ysis of data. Kanik’s (2010) Reliability and Valid-ity analysis was used. Alpha values in the scalefor “Elementary Teachers’ Perceptions of andResponses to School Bullying” correspondingto the four factors were as follows:

Physical bullying sub scale: .917Verbal bullying sub scale: .890Emotional bullying sub scale: .865Sexual bullying sub scale: .888

Alpha values in the scales for “Handling Bul-lying” corresponding to the five factors were asfollows (Kanik 2010):

Working with the victim sub scale: .69Working with the bully sub scale: .69Ignoring the incident sub scale: .58


Enlisting other adults sub scale: .57Disciplining the bully sub scale: .60

Ethical Considerations and Administration

Written permission was obtained from Tin-torer (2004) and Rigby (2006) to use the ques-tionnaire and from Kanik to use the Turkish con-text questionnaire, the instrument translated intoTurkish by Kanik (2010). The authors also re-ceived official permission to use the reliabilityand validity analyses. Permission was also ob-tained from Yildiz Techical University, Depart-ment of Educational Sciences, and the studentteachers selected from the Teacher CertificateProgram run by the same department. The re-searcher distributed the questionnaires duringclass hours to the student teachers. Guidelinesfor the completion of the questionnaire were giv-en to the participants. Participants were given30 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Par-ticipants were assured that their identity wouldbe kept confidential.

RESULTS

The study investigated student teachers’observations and perceptions regarding bully-ing in the schools where they were being trained.An analysis of the results is presented below inTables 1 to 4.

Types of Behaviors Defined as Bullying

In this section of the survey there were 20questions, which were divided into 4 categoriesas seen in Table 1. Considering there are fourtypes of bullying such as verbal, emotional, phys-ical and sexual; the study required student teach-ers to determine from a list of a variety of stu-dent interactions whether each interaction wasan act of bullying or not.

As could be seen in Table 1, student teach-ers recognized incidents of “verbal bullying”most frequently. This is followed by emotionalbullying (2.74), physical bullying (2.72) and last-ly sexual bullying (2.55). Mean scores for eachitem show that verbal bullying and emotionalbehaviors were more recognized by studentteachers than physical and sexual behaviors asa bullying.

Frequency of Bullying

Table 2 demonstrates that how frequentlystudent teachers observed students engaged in

Table 1: Types of behaviors defined as bullying

N Mean Sd

Verbal bullying 400 3.10 0.708Emotional bullying 400 2.74 0.706Physical bullying 400 2.72 0.732Sexual bullying 400 2.55 0.680

Table 2: Frequency of bullying types

Mean sd

Verbal Bullying Teasing 3.50 .728Insulting or calling someone a name 3.37 .866Starting hurtful rumors about someone 2.74 .929Making fun of way someone looks (that is, clothes, weight) 3.16 .934Threatening 2.83 .953

Emotional Bullying Trying to get others to dislike someone 2.81 .890Not being listened to on purpose by another child 2.86 .827Socially excluding someone 2.83 .918Making others not to talk someone 2.61 .904Intentionally leaving someone out of an activity 2.58 .874

Physical Bullying Bumping into or pushing someone intentionally 3.11 .874Intentionally kicking someone 2.92 .975Stealing or taking someone something from someone 2.30 .836Punching or hitting someone 2.87 .976Someone intentionally breaks or damages another peers property 2.41 .888

Sexual Bullying Someone makes comments about another person’s body 3.19 .926Sexual labeling/teasing (that is, faggot, puto) 3.23 .905Someone asks another peer to inappropriately touch them 1.64 .774Someone makes an obscene gesture toward another 2.60 1.022


bullying behaviors in a typical school environ-ment. Student teachers were asked to reveal thefrequency of behaviors they observed and per-ceived as bullying among the pupils at theschools they were trained. Verbal bullying, teas-ing, insulting or calling someone a name wasobserved “frequently”. Starting hurting rumorsabout someone, making fun of way someoneappears (that is, clothes, weight), threatening,and hurting somebody were observed “some-times” by student teachers. As for emotionalbullying, trying to get others to dislike some-one, purposefully ignoring another child, sociallyexcluding someone, making others not to talksomeone and intentionally excluding someonefrom an activity fell into the “sometimes” cate-gory. Analysis of physical bullying shows thatbumping into or pushing someone intentional-ly, intentionally kicking someone, stealing or tak-ing something from someone and punching orhitting someone were “sometimes” seen inschools, whereas breaking or damaging anotherpeers property was seen “rarely”. The later re-sults could be related to the policies implement-ed in schools as damaging another peers’ prop-erty could be used as proof of bullying by theschool administration. This might be the reasonwhy it was seen less in schools. As for sexualbullying, making comments about another per-son’s body has the highest mean score withinthe sexual bullying sub-dimension. It was “some-times” seen in schools. However, asking anoth-er peer to inappropriately touch them was “nev-er” observed in schools. Inappropriately touch-ing another peer and making an obscene ges-ture toward another was “rarely” observedamong the students.

Places of Bullying

Table 3 reveals the finding concerning thefollowing research question: “According to stu-

dent teachers’ perceptions where do bullyingbehaviors most commonly take place?” Table 3shows that bullying in schools was “Frequent-ly” seen in the on the playground before school,hallways and classrooms. Bullying was alsoobserved frequently during recess. Bullying wasobserved “Sometimes” in cafeteria, restroomsand on school buses. Bullying was also “some-times” observed in line (to go into the class-room), walking to school and walking home fromschool. Students were also observed to be“sometimes” bullied in the cafeteria.

Strategies for Handling Bullying

Table 4 reveals the finding concerning thefollowing research question: “How do studentteachers deal with incidents of bullying?” In oth-er words “What are their possible responses tobullying?” Table 4 shows 20 survey questionsthat were divided into 5 categories. “Ignoringthe incident” had the highest score compared tothe other strategies. This was followed by “work-ing with the victim”, “working with the bully”,“enlisting other adults” and “disciplining thebully” respectively. The strategy of “disciplin-ing the bully” was not often chosen to copewith bullying behaviors by student teachers.This could be explained by the teachers’ generaltendency to cope with problems in a construc-tive way at schools. It could be thought that“disciplining the bully” may have undesirableconsequences on both the victim and the bully.The mean score for the strategy of “workingwith the victim” falls into the “Unsure” catego-ry. As for “working with the bully”, student tea-chers indicated that they would probably nottake any action.

DISCUSSION

Bullying is a high stakes issue in schools inall parts of the world. From a human rights per-spective, Greene (2000) asserts that not only can

Table 3: Places where bullying was observed

X ss

On the playground before school 3.65 1.575Restrooms 2.36 .820Hallways 3.54 .659Classrooms 3.34 .794Cafeteria 3.19 .769Recess 3.71 .569In line (to go into the classroom) 3.08 .807On school buses 2.61 .838Walking to school 2.70 .843Walking home from school 3.03 .851

Table 4: Student teachers' responses to bullying

X ss

Ignoring the incident 4.32 .661Working with the victim 2.95 .936Working with the bully 2.13 .702Enlisting other adults 1.99 .661Disciplining the bully 1.54 .600


all forms of bullying be understood as humanrights violations, but it is also clearly incumbentupon schools to provide social programs that rem-edy such infractions and the underlying normsand situations that facilitate the violations.

Research has shown that bullying in schoolsis widespread. Borg’s (1999) study informed thatone in every three pupils was engaged in seri-ous bullying. A study of 150,000 Norwegian andSwedish students showed that 15 percent of thestudents aged roughly from 7 to 16 were regu-larly involved in bullying, approximately 9 per-cent as victims and 7 percent who bullied otherstudents (Olweus 1995).

The study brings out that four types of bul-lying were observed in schools by student teach-ers. Verbal bullying appeared to be the most com-mon type of bullying defined as bullying by thestudent teachers followed by emotional bully-ing and physical bullying respectively, whereasincidences of sexual bullying were the least rec-ognized as bullying. Bullying in schools mighthave long term detrimental effects. Wet (2010)separated the influence of bullying into the threefollowing categories: Personal lives at the microlevel, influences on the institution in terms ofteaching and learning and influences on the in-teraction between the victims and society at themacro level. Therefore, negative influences ofbullying are spread on a wide spectrum startingfrom the individual to the society. Liepe-Levinsonand Levinson (2005) also supported this con-cern in a study of students, in which symptomsof poor physical health were observed moreamong bullied students than students not in-volved in bullying behavior. Similarly, victimizedchildren were more likely to have problems withsleeping, bed wetting, headaches and stomach-ache attacks. Dake et al.’s study (2003) revealedthat, compared to non-involved students, vic-tims are 4.6 times more likely, bullies 5.1 timesmore likely and bully/victims 8.7 times more like-ly to experience psychosomatic symptoms suchas neck and shoulder pain, low back pain, stom-achache, feeling tense and nervous, irritation ortantrums, difficulty sleeping or walking, head-ache and fatigue. The American Association ofSchool Psychologists reported that every dayover 160,000 children miss school for fear of be-ing bullied (Liepe-Levinson and Levinson 2005).

The US study also highlighted different so-cial aspects between the bully and the victim,for example, the different role that alcohol and

smoking plays for the bully and the victim. Thestudy also explored that the poorer academicachievement was associated with both bullyingand being bullied, while a poorer perceivedschool climate was also related to bullying. Poor-er relationships with classmates and increasedloneliness were associated with both, bullyingand being bullied, while the ability to makefriends was negatively related to being bulliedand positively related to bullying (Tonja et al.2001). Besides teachers noted that bullying rare-ly occurred in the classroom, but most likely tooccur at recess followed by in the restrooms(Tintorer 2004). The present study also revealedthat bullying was “frequently” seen in “schoolyards, halls and classrooms” and it was ob-served “frequently” during lesson breaks.

To reduce the frequency of school bullyingschool counsellors have a key role. They areresponsible for running of pupil peer counsel-ling. However, majority of pupils (60%) failed toidentify that this service will help them to dealwith bullying, and more than one in twenty pu-pils were not sure the services’ main function(Boulton 2014). Researches on school safetyshow that an effective teaching and learning canbe realized in a safe and secure school environ-ment (Prinsloo 2005; Xaba 2006; Dilion 2007;Masitsa 2011). Bradshaw, Waasdorp andJohnson (2014) brought forward that the school-level indicators of disorder such as brokenlights, cameras and electronic device usage havean essential impact on school bullying. BesidesLeadbeater et al. (2014) found that there is a sig-nificant relationship between school climate di-mensions and peer bullying. Briefly, to overcomethe school bullying, a kind of team-work betweenprincipals, teachers, counsellors, parent, schoolstaff and teacher trainers is necessary. Since nomatter where in the world, our children are ourfuture and they have the right to an education ina safe and pleasant environment.

CONCLUSION

The present study reveals that while verbalbullying is observed most frequently, sexualbullying is observed at the least by studentteachers. The study also investigated that teas-ing is the most observed and asking anotherpeer to inappropriately touch the other studentsis the least observed bullying behaviors. Be-sides, student teachers state that students bul-


ly their peers while they are in recess and stu-dent teachers usually ignore the incidents.

RECOMMENDATIONS

School administrators and teachers shouldtake necessary precautions to reduce bullyingincidents as much as possible such as assign-ing responsibility for certain days to observeand monitor student behavior during break time.However, it is also learnt during these seminarsthat these preventive actions do not permanentlyalter student behavior. Alternative preventionstrategies could be used to create a culture inwhich students internalize the idea of collabora-tion rather than confrontation. Such a cultureneeds to be cultivated because, as this studyreveals, bullying sometimes occurs in “canteens,restrooms and school buses” as well as “on theway to classrooms”, “on the way to school”and “on the way back home”. The most com-mon attitude student teachers employed was ig-noring the incident. However, teachers shouldbe leaders inside and outside the classrooms,both for their students and their colleagues. Asfuture education leaders and as role models forappropriate behavior, they need to be trained ineffective ways for dealing with bullying.

The study did not investigate student teach-er perceptions of bullying with regards to demo-graphic differences. Further, the research couldexamine student teachers’ observations and ex-periences of bullying through in-depth inter-views to determine the gender, age and socio-economic differences in cases of bullying, anaspect that has been highlighted in other re-searches.

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Student Teachers Perceptions of Bullying