Longitudinal Links of Authoritative Teaching and Bullying Victimization in Upper Elementary School

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether authoritative teaching at the classroom-level was associated with bullying victimisation, and how this association evolved over the course of upper elementary school (i.e. in grades 4 through 6) by estimating whether the association declined with time. Data came from the first three waves of an ongoing longitudinal project examining social and moral correlates of school bullying. Survey data were analysed from 1,830 students. Multilevel analyses showed that teachers who displayed high levels of warmth, caring, and supportiveness together with high levels of structure, control, and demandingness tended to have students who reported less bullying victimisation. This association between authoritative teaching at the classroom-level and bullying victimisation, while still significant, decreased over the course of the two-year study.