Teachers' perspective on learner bullying at selected Secondary schools in Moletjie Moshate Community

Abstract

Bullying seems to be prevalent in most secondary schools, and teachers have a daily task of dealing with it. In South Africa, there are many issues which influence teachers’ management of bullying, such as community violence and parental attitudes. Teachers’ abilities to identify and respond to incidents of bullying, and their knowledge of bullying behaviour can have an impact on anti-bullying strategies.

Secondary school management as well as parents have a responsibility towards efforts to eliminate bullying in schools. Failure to reduce bullying in secondary schools would result in high failure rates and poor concentration on school work among learners. This study aimed to describe teachers’ perspectives on learner bullying at Schools A and B. This study used Albert Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory which offers a theoretical framework that helped the researcher find meaning in respect of the roles of the bully, victim and offenders.

The study followed a qualitative approach, using focus group sessions to collect data in order to explore teachers’ experiences of bullying. The qualitative data were analysed by means of thematic analysis to present the collected data. The responses were recorded in the form of writing. The data was thoroughly structured into themes. Information obtained from respondents was treated with great confidentiality. Purposive and availability sampling were used to identify potential respondents who were asked to volunteer to be part of the study. The research findings specified that teachers experience and observe a wide variety of bullying behaviour which takes place at different sites, both inside and outside the school grounds. Moreover, the teachers conveyed numerous factors which they experienced as pertaining to bullying and emphasised the perceived effects. In addition to this, the participants shared knowledge about their teaching practices and recommended a few approaches on how to deal with bullying more effectively in their schools.