Perceived Teachers’ Responses to Bullying and Bullying Behavior: The Longitudinal Mediational Role of Anti-bullying Attitudes

As significant figures in students’ lives, teachers’ appropriate and effective responses to school bullying are of paramount importance in its prevention. It is imperative to understand students’ viewpoints, as studies have demonstrated a negative correlation between students’ bullying behaviors and their impressions of instructors’ attempts to curb bullying. Furthermore, anti-bullying attitudes are also an important influencing factor for bullying behavior; therefore, this study draws upon theories such as social cognition and goal framing, from students’ perspectives, to explore the mechanisms among teacher responses to bullying, bullying, and anti-bullying attitudes. The present study analyzed data from 1,560 adolescents in cross-sectional models and 365 adolescents in longitudinal models. The study’s findings indicate that (a) nonintervention had a significantly positive predictive effect on bullying, supportive/relational interventions had a considerably negative predictive effect; and disciplinary methods did not significantly predict bullying; (b) anti-bullying attitudes acted as a mediating factor in the correlations between nonintervention and bullying as well as between supportive/relational interventions and bullying; (c) T2 anti-bullying attitudes played a full mediating role between T1 supportive/relational interventions and T2 bullying in our longitudinal models. By offering a theoretical foundation for later studies on school bullying, our study advances empirical research on the influence of instructors on bullying in schools. Based on the research findings, appropriate intervention strategies for teachers are suggested to help them effectively address school bullying and reduce its occurrence.