The Role of Teachers' Social-Emotional Competence in Their Beliefs About Peer Victimization

One hundred fifty preservice teachers and 25 in-service teachers were surveyed to examine whether mental representations of relationships, confidence about managing bullying, empathy toward victims, and emotional expressiveness were associated with their peer victimization-related beliefs. Teachers' confidence about managing bullying was positively associated with their prosocial peer beliefs. In addition, the belief that the distress that children experience as a result of being victimized should be dismissed was negatively related to teachers' positive representations. Teachers' reports of positive emotional expressiveness were negatively related to normative, assertive, avoidance, and dismissive victimization-related beliefs and positively related to prosocial peer beliefs. In contrast, teachers' reports of negative emotional expressiveness were negatively related to prosocial peer beliefs and avoidance victimization-related beliefs. In-service teachers reported slightly higher positive expressiveness than preservice teachers did. Minority teachers reported higher scores for positive expressiveness, empathy, and lower negative classroom expressiveness than nonminority teachers did. Implications of these findings for practice are discussed.