Teacher’s experiences of teacher-targeted bullying in Australian East Coast schools.
Lead Researcher: Dr Paulina Billett, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University Phone: 5444 7241 or 9479 2395 Email: p.billett@latrobe.edu.au
This study, funded by La Trobe Transforming Human Society Research Focus area Grant Ready scheme, aims to better understand the prevalence and outcomes of student and parental teacher targeted bullying and harassment in Australian East Coast schools. It aims to answer the following questions - how prevalent is student bullying and harassment of teachers? What kind of behaviours are most commonly encountered? What role does SES, school sector and school location (urban vs rural) play in the incidence and experience of teacher targeted bullying and harassment? What in-school policies are currently available to tackle teacher targeted bullying and harassment? And to what level are policies aiming to tackle teacher targeted bullying and harassment effective? To participate you must be a registered primary or secondary teacher (or have been registered within the last two years) in the Victoria, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania or Queensland and be aged between 21 and 70. Participation in this research is completely voluntary and you may end your participation at any time.
“What is involved in my participation?” We plan to conduct up to 1000 interviews via qualtrics. The survey is totally anonymous and will collect information about your experiences of being bullied or harassed by students and/or their parents. The interview will involve approximately 10 minutes of your time. Please be aware that due to its anonymous nature, it will be impossible to delete any information provided by you in this survey upon submission.
How do I express interest in participating? To participate, you need to click the I accept box located in your survey’s main page.
Are there any risks if I participate? Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, there is a possibility that you may experience some emotional distress in recounting experiences which you may have found uncomfortable. To ensure your wellbeing, we have provided a list of counselling services which you may wish to access in this statement and the survey.
Confidentiality This survey is totally anonymous. Information will be reported as aggregates.
How will my data be used? The results of this study will be reported and published after the research process. Publication may be in a journal or as a paper presented at a conference or professional meeting, workshop, book chapter or report. As a follow-up to this study the researchers plan to embark on a larger second stage of this project to investigate teacher's experiences of bullying or harassment more widely in 2020. As such, we may utilise published data in future for the purposes of comparing responses. In accordance with ethical guidelines, all information will be securely stored for five years and then destroyed.
While there will be no particular benefits to individual participants, we believe that the project will shed light on the growing problem of student and parental bullying and harassment of teachers in Australian schools. In particular, it will help us to better understand how sector, SES and location impact on the incidence of TTBH in Australian schools. This, it is hoped will allow for better responses and policy to be created and ultimately lead to an increase in teacher job satisfaction and better mental health outcomes. Any questions you have can be reported to Dr Paulina Billett of the La Trobe University College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce (ASSC) on (03) 5444 7241, or email p.billett@latrobe.edu.au or Dr Rochelle Fogelgarn, Department of Education, La Trobe University Bendigo, Phone: 9479 2641, email: R.fogelgarn@latrobe.edu.au.
If you have any complaints or concerns about your participation in the study that the researcher has not been able to answer to your satisfaction, you may contact the Senior Human Ethics Officer, Ethics and Integrity, Research Office, La Trobe University, Victoria, 3086 (P: 03 9479 1443, E: humanethics@latrobe.edu.au). Please quote reference number: HEC19129.
