Investigating the Attitudes of Primary School Teachers and Staff toward Bullying

Article history: Received date: 28 August, 2016 Review date: 7 October 2016 Accepted date:25 October 2016 Printed online:1 September Purpose: The initiation of anti-bullying movements in school’s dates back to nearly three decades ago in some countries. Despite the importance of such a movement and its grave implications for education systems, no particular program or action has been organized in our country. Materials and Method: The present study presents a cross-sectional descriptive survey to assess the attitudes of primary school teachers and staff towards bullying. The self-administered questionnaire explored attitude towards bullying in 207 teachers and 73 administrative staff of 25 schools in the city of Bojnourd using stage cluster sampling. Findings: The results of independent t-test demonstrated that the attitude toward bullying was not significantly different in male and female subjects with respect to the variables of years of service and administrative position, though women tended to hold a stronger attitude compared to men in this respect (t=2.04 and p˂0.04). The results showed that school staff and teachers, whether those with less than five years of service or those who had hold their job for more than twenty years were not sufficiently aware of the sensitivity of the case of bullying and the skills required to handle this issue. Discussion: Therefore, it seems that organizing workshops and training courses on the issue of bullying for target groups are necessary and inevitable.