Preservice Teachers' Bullying Attitudes and Intervention Likelihood: Differences by Form of Bullying

Previous research assessing differences in teachers' perceptions of bullying (e.g., seriousness, empathy, intervention likelihood) have focused primarily on physical, relational, verbal, and cyberbullying forms. Equally important is understanding views of social bullying (e.g., spreading rumors) given the frequency at which youth experience these social attacks. To add to our knowledge about perceptions of this form of bullying, the current study adding social bullying vignettes to the routinely utilized Bullying Attitudes Questionnaire (Craig et al., 2000; Yoon & Kerber, 2003). Preservice teachers (n = 222, 86.5% female, 80.2% White) from a large public university in the southeastern USA participated in the study. Analyses compared differences in perceptions based on the forms of bullying and examined whether patterns differed depending on several key demographic (e.g., gender, prior victimization experience) and training background variables (e.g., practicum experience, year of study). The results showed that preservice teachers viewed physical and cyberbullying as the most serious forms of bullying. Social bullying was perceived to be the least serious form. Significant interaction effects between form of bullying and gender were also found. Compared to male preservice teachers, females were more empathetic toward victims of relational, cyber, and social forms of bullying, more confident to deal with verbal and social forms of bullying, and more likely to intervene in all forms except physical. Additional results with training background variables are presented, and implications for teacher interventions and teacher training are discussed.