Understanding teachers' responses to enactments of sexual and gender stigma at school

Abstract

Although teachers may be in a position to address enactments of sexual and gender stigma among their students, little is known about their motivations to intervene in such situations. We surveyed secondary school teachers in the Netherlands, assessing how beliefs, norms, and self-efficacy were related to their intentions to intervene in two hypothetical situations that involved bullying of lesbian/gay or gender non-conforming students. We found significantly stronger intentions to intervene among teachers who were more confident in their abilities to intervene successfully and who had stronger beliefs that intervening in the situation would produce a positive outcome.

Teachers' self‐efficacy in bullying interventions and their probability of intervention

“…The finding that teachers with higher self‐efficacy beliefs report intervention in bullying situations more often is in line with most findings in the current literature (e.g., Bradshaw et al, ; Collier et al, , Duong & Bradshaw, ; Williford & Depaolis, ; Yoon, ). But in the present article, this result was not found for teachers' intention to intervene as assessed in hypothetical situations or typical behaviors (readiness to intervene), but rather for their intervention in situations they actually experienced (probability of intervention).…”

“…In the case of less-experienced teachers, Duong and Bradshaw (2013) found that self-efficacy was, in fact, the only relevant predictor of intervention. The connection between self-efficacy and teachers' readiness to intervene has been found in cyberbullying (Boulton, Hardcastle, Down, Fowles, & Simmonds, 2014;Williford & Depaolis, 2016) as well as traditional bullying (Collier et al, 2015;Dedousis-Wallace, Shute, Varlow, Murrihy, & Kidman, 2013).…”

“…The inconsistency in the current state of literature concerning the connection between teacher self-efficacy and their readiness to intervene may result from different levels of specificity in the assessment of self-efficacy. In some studies, teachers were asked how confident they would feel when confronted with a particular hypothetical bullying situation (e.g., Boulton et al, 2014;Collier et al, 2015;Dedousis-Wallace et al, 2013), while other studies assessed teachers' confidence in handling general behavioral problems of their students (e.g., Begotti et al, 2017;Byers et al, 2011;Yoon, 2004;Yoon et al, 2016).…”

“…In addition to differences in the assessment of self-efficacy, the current state of literature is also very inhomogeneous regarding the assessment of the readiness to intervene. Teacher self-efficacy has been linked to the general tendency of teachers to intervene (Bradshaw et al, 2007;Duong & Bradshaw, 2013;Williford & Depaolis, 2016) and to their readiness to intervene in particular hypothetical bullying situations (Begotti et al, 2017;Boulton et al, 2014;Byers et al, 2011;Collier et al, 2015;Dedousis-Wallace et al, 2013;Yoon et al, 2016). Yoon (2004) assessed to what extent teachers intended to intervene in hypothetical bullying situations, also asking teachers to describe how they would respond to the perpetrator in the given situation.…”

“…Several studies indicate that self-efficacy, which is a personal belief of having required capabilities (Bandura, 1994), is an important predictor of teachers' readiness to intervene. The more teachers feel that they themselves can help decrease bullying, the more often they will intervene (e.g., Bradshaw et al, 2007;Collier, Bos, & Sandfort, 2015;Duong & Bradshaw, 2013;Williford & Depaolis, 2016;Yoon & Bauman, 2014;Yoon, 2004). But these findings are usually based on hypothetical bullying situations presented to teachers, which do not necessarily represent the diversity of real-life bullying interventions.…”