The purpose of this study is to analyse teachers experiences of bullying. Characteristics of assailants and victims, origins and types of bullying as well as the role and responses of teachers will be discussed.
The subjects of this study were 163 ki...
The purpose of this study is to analyse teachers experiences of bullying. Characteristics of assailants and victims, origins and types of bullying as well as the role and responses of teachers will be discussed.
The subjects of this study were 163 kindergarten teachers in Seoul. To analyse their perception of bullying they were asked to complete a questionnaire. Statistical results were obtained by frequency analysis.
The results are as follows
First, of the respondents 59.5% were aware that bullying occurred within their class. 80.6% of those teachers had observed bullying personally. Bullying was also discovered through interviews with parents or children. A majority of teachers (73.4%) try to aid and comfort the victims and solve problems through counseling with victim's parents.
Secondly, in respect to assailants' characteristics, 61.9% of teachers identified traits such as selfishness, disobedience, being greedy or offensive. Motives of bullying were attributed either to victim's misbehavior (30.5%), peer pressure (28.9%) or to the assailants' desire to show off (27.8%). When bullied 61.5 percent of the victims sought help from either their parents or teachers.
Thirdly, most teachers believed that bullying stems from a lack of education on humanity, sociality, and morality (31.2%). Other teachers attributed bullying either to personal characteristics of the assailants (15.3%), those of the victims (28.4%) or the parents' way of raising the child (22.7%). Most bullying cases occurred during free activity classes (87.2%). Types of bullying included ignoring a specific child, disturbing play or ostracism from group activities.
Finally, while not many teachers consider bullying a serious problem, the majority are concerned about it (91.4%). Most teachers felt a responsibility to manage bullying within the kindergarten (81.4%), while only 1.8% did not accept responsibility for it.