Interventions for bullying in Hong Kong primary classrooms: Teachers’ perspectives on approaches and difficulties

Abstract

This small-scale exploratory study investigated Hong Kong primary teachers’ perceptions of bullying in school, and the difficulties they meet when implementing interventions to prevent or reduce bullying. Five primary school teachers from government-aided schools, private schools, and Direct Subsidy Scheme schools in Hong Kong were interviewed. The findings suggest that they are aware of various approaches to controlling bullying, and some use a mixed approach. A few of them use proactive approaches on the basis that ‘prevention is always better than an attempted cure’. Others tend to use reactive approaches that only respond to incidents of bullying when they occur. Most teachers mentioned that whole-school interventions had been implemented in their place of work, yet these interventions were different among different schools. The difficulties teachers had in tackling bullying effectively included time constraints, lack of expertise in behavioural management, the need of providing family education, difficulty in arranging a schedule for wholeschool intervention, and problems in developing a specific intervention for individual cases. The findings reinforce a view that different parties need to put more effort in helping teachers develop effective bullying interventions.

這小型探索性研究目的是探討香港小學教師對校園欺凌的看法與其介入事件時所面對的困難。研究訪問了五位來自政府津貼學校、私立學校和直接資助學校的小學教師。結果指出，他們意識到處理欺凌事件的不同方法，部分教師會同時採取多種方法去處理。就大方向而言，有部分教師相信「預防勝於治療」，他們會採取積極的行動去管制校園欺凌；其他教師會「以不變應萬變」，以較為保守的態度應對。多數教師表示其任教的小學有實行全校性的干預措施，但由於學校的校情不盡相同，所以實行方法也有差別。此外，時間限制、缺乏行為管理專業知識、家長配合、學校支援，及欺凌事件的獨特性，都是教師在有效處理校園欺凌問題所面對的重重難關。總括而言，研究結果肯定了教師在介入欺凌事件方面，需要其他持 分者更多的協助。