Is this already Violence? On the Importance of the Violence of Teachers on how to Deal with Bullying and the Actions of Pupils

This study investigates the association between German teachers' beliefs and student bullying. More precisely, we are interested in the impact of teachers' understanding of violence on their perception of bullying, their intervention, and students' behaviour in bullying situations. For this purpose, N = 556 teacher reports and N = 2071 student reports of real bullying situations are analysed with respect to the multilevel data structure. Results indicate that the comprehensiveness of teachers' definitions of violence influences the kinds of situations that are perceived as bullying and whether teachers intervene or not. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the broader teachers' views are towards violence, the more the students in their classes tend to intervene in relational bullying situations.