TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ANTI-BULLYING INTERVENTIONS AND THE TYPES OF BULLYING EACH INTERVENTION PREVENTS

Teachers have a central role in the management and prevention of bullying within schools and are in turn involved in the implementation of anti-bullying interventions (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Pelletier, 2008). Therefore an assessment of teachers’ attitudes towards bullying interventions is needed to determine how helpful they perceived interventions to be. This study investigated teachers’ attitudes towards anti-bullying interventions and the types of bullying they perceived the interventions would prevent. A 26 item questionnaire analysing teachers’ attitudes towards four ‘global interventions’; ‘teacher implemented’, ‘student implemented’, ‘non-teaching staff implemented’ and ‘specific’. The results indicated that teachers perceived ‘nonteaching staff implemented’ as the most helpful in preventing bullying and was also identified as the most effective in preventing physical bullying, verbal bullying, intimidation, social alienation and social exclusion. Overall the results indicated a consistent pattern which could be analysed further and would benefit schools, local authorities and the government in preventing bullying.