Beau Oldenburg

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

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.

Are Elementary School Teachers Prepared to Tackle Bullying? A Pilot Study.

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.

Do teachers know their students? Examining teacher attunement in secondary schools

Using survey data from 457 Italian sixth grade secondary school students (M age = 11.9, SD = 0.7, 46% girls) and 58 of their teachers (M age = 45.7, SD = 9.4, 92.8% female) this study examined the extent to which secondary school teachers were attuned to their students. More specifically, we investigated the extent to which teachers were aware of which students were highly liked, disliked, prosocial, aggressive, or engaged in risky behavior. For each of these five dimensions, teacher attunement was measured by comparing teacher’s nominations to the proportion of received peer nominations per student. Then, a general teacher attunement score was constructed by calculating the mean of these five scores. Descriptive analyses showed a moderate teacher attunement, which was highest for prosocial behavior and lowest for risk behavior. It was investigated whether certain teachers had a higher attunement than others. Our analyses showed that teacher attunement was positively associated with the amount of time teachers spent with their students and with their experience as a teacher. Furthermore, attunement was negatively associated with classroom size.

Defending one’s friends, not one’s enemies: A social network analysis of children’s defending, friendship, and dislike relationships using xpnet.

Previous studies investigating to what extent students in elementary schools defend their victimized classmates typically treated defending as an individual characteristic. Defending should, however, be seen as a directed dyadic relationship between a victim and a defender, who are embedded multiple positive and negative relationships with each other and their classmates. Accordingly, in the present study defending was investigated using social network analysis. More specifically, it was investigated to what extent defending relationships co-occurred with friendship and dislike relationships involving not only the victim and the defender but also other classmates. Bivariate Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) were used to analyze the defending-friendship and defending-dislike relationships in seven grade-three classrooms. As hypothesized, the results indicated that victimized students were likely to be defended by students who they perceive as friends or who perceive them as friends. Moreover, defending was likely to occur when the victim and (potential) defender had the same friends. Victimized students were unlikely to be defended by classmates whom they disliked or who had indicated to dislike them. Finally, defending was likely to occur between students who disliked the same classmates.