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Teacher Characteristics and Peer Victimization in Elementary Schools: A Classroom-Level Perspective

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is an association between teacher characteristics and peer victimization in elementary schools. We used data of 3,385 elementary school students (M age = 9.8) and 139 of their teachers (M age = 43.9) and employed Poisson regression analyses to explain the classroom victimization rate. Results showed a higher victimization rate in the classrooms of teachers who attributed bullying to external factors—factors outside of their control. In addition, the results suggest that both teachers’ perceived ability to handle bullying among students and teachers’ own bullying history were positively associated with the classroom victimization rate. We also took into account classroom composition characteristics and found lower victimization rates in multi-grade classrooms and in classrooms with older students. The results support the notion of an association between teacher characteristics and peer victimization. Findings are discussed with regards to current literature and suggestions for future research are made.

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Notes

  1. From here on we use bullying to refer to the general act of harassing someone, and victimization for being harassed by others.

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Acknowledgments

This research is part of the Dutch KiVa project. KiVa has been financed by a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education (Onderwijs Bewijs) to the last author. We are grateful to all students and teachers who participated in this study and all the colleagues working to realize the KiVa project. Furthermore, we would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting and providing useful references to the literature, which helped to strengthen the theoretical framework of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology, Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, Grote Rozenstraat 31, 9712 TG, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Beau Oldenburg, Marijtje van Duijn, Gijs Huitsing, Rozemarijn van der Ploeg & René Veenstra

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Grote Rozenstraat 31, 9712 TG, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Miranda Sentse

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Christina Salmivalli

Authors
  1. Beau Oldenburg
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  2. Marijtje van Duijn
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  3. Miranda Sentse
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  4. Gijs Huitsing
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  5. Rozemarijn van der Ploeg
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  6. Christina Salmivalli
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  7. René Veenstra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Beau Oldenburg.

Appendixes

Appendixes

Appendix 1

Transcription of instructional video (bullying)

“The next questions are about bullying. Bullying is when one or more children bother another child over and over again. So bullying means that you are again and again being mean to someone. For the child that is bullied, it is hard to defend him- or herself.

Bullying can be done in several ways. For example, by hitting someone, or by kicking or pinching, taking away someone’s stuff or breaking it, calling names, or saying mean things, gossiping, excluding someone from games or other things you do together. Bullying can also be done via a computer or mobile phone, via MSN, sms or via social media such as Hyves.

Bullying is not the same as a fight between children who have the same strength. Bullying is also not teasing for fun. Bullying is when you over and over again are being mean to someone else.”

Appendix 2

Internal and external causal attribution items

When students are bullied at school this is often due to:

  1. 1.

    *The teacher is not able to recognize problems at an early stage

  2. 2.

    **The victim just makes a wrong comment

  3. 3.

    *The teacher does not ask enough help of colleagues to solve the problem together

  4. 4.

    **The victim provokes the bullying

  5. 5.

    *The teacher does not notice that there are socio-emotional problems

  6. 6.

    *The teacher does not like the victim and is showing this indirectly

  7. 7.

    *The teacher prefers to focus on the cognitive development of students

  8. 8.

    *The teacher does not have enough time to prevent and reduce bullying

  9. 9.

    *The teacher often has more important matters that need his or her attention

  10. 10.

    *The teacher does not want to spend time to try and tackle bullying

  11. 11.

    **Parents did not teach victims to defend themselves

  12. 12.

    *The teacher does not have enough skills to handle socio-emotional problems

  13. 13.

    **The victim does not react adequately to the behavior of his/her peers

  14. 14.

    *There is no structural way of handling bullying within the school

  15. 15.

    **Parents never taught the bully how to take others’ feelings into account

  16. 16.

    *The school does not keep in touch with parents enough

  17. 17.

    **The bully has a difficult family background

  18. 18.

    **The victim is too silent and socially withdrawn

  19. 19.

    **The combination of students in the group did not work out well

  20. 20.

    **The victim cannot handle the comment of a classmate and then the situation escalates

  21. 21.

    *The teacher does not take a firm stance against bullying

  22. 22.

    **The victim happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time

  23. 23.

    *The team of teachers attaches too little attention to the pedagogical climate within the school

* Internal causal attribution scale items

** External causal attribution scale items

Appendix 3

Teachers’ self-perceived ability to handle bullying

Please indicate to what extent the following things are easy or difficult to influence for you:

  1. 1.

    The behavior of children in general

  2. 2.

    The behavior of the bully

  3. 3.

    The behavior of the victim

  4. 4.

    Bullying within the classroom

  5. 5.

    Bullying within the school

  6. 6.

    How students interact with each other in the classroom

  7. 7.

    How students interact with each other at school

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Oldenburg, B., van Duijn, M., Sentse, M. et al. Teacher Characteristics and Peer Victimization in Elementary Schools: A Classroom-Level Perspective. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 33–44 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9847-4

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