Bullying behaviour in secondary schools: what roles do teachers play?

Teachers have an important role to play in the management and prevention of bullying. Although many anti-bullying programmes advocate a ‘whole school approach’, they tend to focus on student-student behaviours and rarely examine the nature of other relationships which exist in the school. This study examines bullying between students and teachers at two time points. Thirty per cent of students said they were bullied by teachers at both times. Numbers reporting they bullied teachers were 28 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively. The paper explores the important role that teachers play in dealing with bullying in a school setting by modelling appropriate behaviours and dealing with it effectively. If teachers are victimised by or engage in bullying students this has implications for the ethos within the school and may also impact on the success of anti-bullying programmes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.