Bullying victims' perceptions of classroom interaction

This study investigated bullying victims' perceptions of their teachers' support and monitoring when controlling for level of mental health problems, peer relationships, gender, and grade level. Given the nested structure of the data, multilevel analyses were employed to examine these associations. The quality of classroom interaction is highly relevant for bullying prevention and intervention. A survey was administered to 1,571 fifth- to 10th-grade students in 10 schools. The findings revealed that bully victimization was significantly associated with weak teacher instructional support, but no significant association was observed between bully victimization and teachers' emotional support or monitoring. These associations were negative when peer relationships were not controlled for because victims reported teacher support and monitoring issues less frequently than non-victims. The findings underscore the importance of classroom interaction and peer relationships for bullying prevention and intervention and the need to create positive relationships between teachers and students and among students in the classroom.