Concern to Action: Parents’ Journeys in Confronting School Bullying

Abstract Bullying has been a significant issue in schools and continues to require urgent attention in the context of Turkish education. Parents have a crucial role in developing comprehensive strategies to prevent and respond to bullying. However, existing research provides a limited understanding of parents’ experiences when reporting bullying incidents to school authorities. This study aimed to explore parents’ experiences with school staff following their children’s bullying at elementary schools and the subsequent reports they made to school staff. Employing a phenomenological qualitative design, we collected data through semi-structured interviews. Using purposive sampling, 10 Turkish parents (9 mothers and one father, aged 34–49) participated in the study. We conducted online interviews and recorded the sessions. Data were analyzed using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach informed by van Manen (Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy, State University of New York, Albany, 1990), with Colaizzi’s (Valle, King (eds) Existential phenomenological alternatives for psychology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978) systematic steps serving as an organizational framework for identifying significant statements and developing thematic structures. MAXQDA software supported data organization and iterative analysis. Three themes emerged from the data. Parents reported that they faced various difficulties related to recognizing the bullying cases and reporting the victimization of their children to school staff. In this process, they sometimes felt anger, anxiety, and sadness about the responses of school administrators, teachers, and counsellors, as well as bullies. Several parents reported that they eventually decided to change their children’s schools after perceiving the school staff’s responses to bullying as insufficient. Parents suggested potential strategies to address bullying, drawing on their lived experiences discussed during the interviews. The study’s findings point to several possible policy directions to enhance school-based bullying prevention efforts.