Preservice Teachers’ Response to Bullying Vignettes: The Effect of Bullying Type and Gender

Abstract

This study compares the responses to bullying incidents of 101 forth year preservice teacher trainees in an education college in central South Korea. The subjects were asked to respond to 6 vignettes that varied in the types of bullying, relational, verbal or physical and in the gender of the students in the vignettes in that they either took place at a girls’ high school or boys’ high school. They were then asked what they would do with the perpetrators and the victims of the bullying. The subjects were much more likely to respond to physical and verbal bullying than relational bullying and when they did respond they took stronger action for both victims and perpetrators of verbal and physical bullying. When comparing the responses across the gender of the high school students the respondents were more likely to respond to cases of male physical bullying if the respondents themselves were male and to female relational bullying if the respondents themselves were female. This research suggests that preservice teachers require more in depth training in how to deal with differing bullying types.