School bullying and collective efficacy: a study of elementary schools

Recently, widely publicized incidents of school violence have prompted questions about the abilities of school leaders to educate students in safe and socially productive environments. In many cases, incidents of school violence are linked directly to bullying episodes. The primary objective of this study is to examine the relationship between teacher perceptions of two dimensions of school bullying, student bullying and teacher protection, and collective efficacy in light of school size and socioeconomic status. The general hypothesis of this study is that collective efficacy is negatively related to school bullying and positively related to teacher protection. The sample was comprised of data collected from individual teachers from 108 elementary schools in south central Texas aggregated at the school level. Descriptive statistics were computed and summarized for all variables. The study utilized The Bully Scare (Smith & Hoy, 2004) to measure perceptions of student bullying and teacher protection and the Collective Efficacy Scale (Goddard, 2002) to gauge the collective efficacy of teachers. A factor analysis was performed on both research instruments. Correlation coefficients were computed for each aspect of school bullying and collective efficacy. The general hypothesis that collective efficacy is negatively related to school bullying and positively related to teacher protection was supported. Subsequently, multiple regression analyses provided a more defined picture of the aspects of school bullying, collective efficacy, SES, and school size. Collective efficacy, school size, and socioeconomic status formed a linear combination that explained a significant portion of variance in student bullying and teacher protection.