The Invisibility of Covert Bullying Among Students: Challenges for School Intervention

Abstract

Covert bullying behaviours are at least as distressing for young people as overt forms of bullying, but often remain unnoticed or unacknowledged by adults. This invisibility is increased in schools by inattention to covert bullying in policy and practice, and limited staff understanding and skill to address covert behaviours. These factors can lead to a school culture that appears to tolerate and thus inadvertently encourages covert bullying. This study explores these dynamics in Australian primary and secondary schools, including the attitudes of over 400 staff towards covert bullying, their understanding of covert bullying behaviours, and their perceived capacity to address these behaviours both individually and at a whole-school level. While most respondents felt a responsibility to intervene in bullying situations, nearly 70% strongly agreed with statements that staff need more training to address covert bullying. Only 10% of respondents described their current whole-school strategies as very effective in reducing covert bullying, and fewer than 40% reported their school had a bullying policy that explicitly referred to covert bullying. These results suggest an urgent need for sustainable professional development to enhance school staff understanding, skills and self-efficacy to address covert bullying through school policy and practice, and the need to identify and consolidate effective strategies to better address these behaviours.

Perceptions and responses towards cyberbullying: A systematic review of teachers in the education system

“…The studies identified in Table 1 were conducted in the UK (n = 3) (Betts & Spenser, 2015;Boulton et al, 2014;Monks, Mahdavi, & Rix 2016), USA (n = 3) (Pelfrey & Weber, 2015;Stauffer et al, 2012;Styron et al, 2016) and Canada (n = 3) (Cassidy, Brown, & Jackson, 2012;Li, 2008;Ryan, Kariuki, & Yilmaz, 2011). The other studies identified represented Australia (n = 2) ( Barnes et al, 2012;Compton, Campbell, & Mergler, 2014), Turkey (n = 2) (Sezer, Yilmaz, & Yilmaz, 2015;Yilmaz, 2010) and Belgium (n = 2) (DeSmet et al, 2015;Vandebosch, Poels, & Deboutte, 2014), with one study each representing Lithuania (Baraldsnes, 2015), Israel (Eden, Heiman, & Olenik-Shemesh, 2013), New Zealand (Green et al, 2016), Taiwan (Republic of China) (Huang & Chou, 2013), and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Purdy & Mc Guckin, 2015). Thirteen of the twenty studies utilised a survey methodology, with four taking a qualitative approach through focus groups (Betts & Spenser, 2015;Compton, Campbell, & Mergler, 2014;Monks, Mahdavi, & Rix, 2016) or interviews (Pelfrey & Weber, 2015).…”

“…While this may suggest teachers have a good awareness concerning different types of cyberbullying within the school, it is important to note this is not generalisable for all teachers' perspectives. Teaching experience has been closely related to cyberbullying identification (Barnes et al, 2012), and so future investigations should examine the influence of peer-mentoring between experienced teachers and prospective candidates.…”

Pre-service Teachers: Knowledge, Attitudes and their Perceived Skills in Addressing Student Bullying

“…Effectively responding to student bullying behaviours can be a significant source of stress for many teachers (Barnes et al, 2012). This paper provides an insight into what preservice teachers, know, think and are prepared for when graduating from their studies and moving into the classroom, to help empower both pre-service teachers and the schools they will work in to most effectively prevent, identify and respond to student bullying behaviours.…”

Longitudinal impact of the Cyber Friendly Schools program on adolescents’ cyberbullying behavior

“…Information can be difficult to remove from the Internet and is often visible to a large online audience. Moreover, most Australian teachers have received no training and feel unskilled to address cyberbullying with their students (Barnes et al, ). This is problematic given that self‐efficacy to address bullying is associated with a greater likelihood of intervening effectively (Bradshaw, Sawyer, & O'Brennan, ).…”