Bullying: The impact of teacher management and trait emotional intelligence

The bullying phenomenon has serious consequences for those that are involved. In order to find more effective ways to eradicate it from the schools, more research is needed. In this context, teacher management and emotional intelligence (EI) are shown to be relevant keys to consider.

The aim of this study was to analyse the ways in which teacher management and trait EI affect involvement in bullying aggression and victimization.

A total of 2,806 Spanish schoolchildren (51.8% girls; Age M = 15.44; SD = 1.79) participated in this transversal study.

Self-report questionnaires were administrated; four of the dimensions of the Schoolwide Climate Scale: Bullying victimization; bullying aggression; positive teacher management; and negative teacher management. They also completed the Spanish version of the TMMS-24 EI questionnaire. After encoding the data, six structural equation models were created to study the direct and joint effects of teacher management and trait EI on bullying aggression and victimization. The models were run for both the whole sample and split samples based on the education cycles and sex.

Results showed that both positive and negative teacher management were closely linked to involvement in bullying aggression and victimization. EI was also found to be directly related to bullying involvement. Furthermore, results revealed that teacher management was directly related to trait EI. Education cycle differences were found, but no sex-specific differences were apparent in the sample.

Conclusions of the study highlight the important role that teacher management plays with regard to bullying involvement and trait EI, and include a discussion of the need to include teacher management in bullying prevention programmes at schools.