The Effectiveness of Interventions to Improve Preservice Teachers' Bullying Identification

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether different types of interventions could enhance preservice teachers’ ability to identify bullying incidents. Participants included 427 preservice teachers in Taiwan who were assigned to four groups. The first group received a 1.5-hour training on bullying identification; The second group was given a written definition of bullying and its features. The third group received a written definition with a checklist of three bullying characteristics. The fourth group, the control group, was not given information on bullying. Pretest–posttest designs were employed in this study. The results of the mixed-model two-way ANOVA analysis indicated that the preservice teachers in the first group had significantly higher correct identification scores than those in the second group (d = .88), the third group (d = .82), and the control group (d = .91). Moreover, those in the first group had significantly lower incorrect identification scores than those in the second group (d = -.95), the third group (d = -.59), and the control group (d = -.90). There was no significant difference among the correct and incorrect identification scores of the second group, the third group, and the control group. This study suggests that administrators and policymakers should provide bullying identification training for preservice teachers, rather than merely offer the definition and characteristics of school bullying.

Keywords

• Bullying identification
• Definition of school bullying
• Inventions
• Preservice teachers
• School bullying