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Abstract
The aim of this pilot study was to investigate to what extent elementary school teachers were prepared to tackle bullying. Interview data from 22 Dutch elementary school teachers (M age = 43.3, 18 classrooms in eight schools) were combined with survey data from 373 students of these teachers (M age = 10.7, grades 3–6, ages 8- to 12-years-old, 52.2% boys). The teachers in this study gave incomplete definitions of bullying, had limited strategies to find out about bullying, and did not recognize the self-reported victims in their classroom, suggesting that even though teachers are supposed to have a central role in tackling bullying, they may not be fully prepared for this task. Implications for future research are discussed.
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Author biographies
Beau Oldenburg is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology at the University of Groningen. She is part of the research team evaluating the Dutch version of the KiVa anti-bullying program. She is especially interested in how teachers and students perceive the bullying in their classroom.
Rie Bosman teaches Sociology of Education at the Department of Sociology, University of Groningen. She is a Research Secretary to the ICS board, and she coordinates the ICS PhD program. Her research interests lie in family sociology, sociology of education, inequality in school careers and social stratification.
René Veenstra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Groningen, director of Inter-university Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), the Netherlands, and coordinator of the evaluation of KiVa in the Netherlands. His research focuses on social network analysis, peer relations, prosocial and antisocial behavior, and bullying and victimization.
