Staff bullying in Australian schools
| Date | 01 February 2011 |
| Pages | 7-30 |
| Published date | 01 February 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231111102036 |
| Author | Dan Riley,Deirdre J. Duncan,John Edwards |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Staff bullying in Australian
schools
Dan Riley
University of New England, Uralla, Australia
Deirdre J. Duncan
Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, Australia, and
John Edwards
Ryde, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate the prevalence of staff bullying in Australian
schools, to identify bullies and targets and to examine some implications for school leaders in dealing
with staff bullying.
Design/methodology/approach – The quantitative research design survey instrument contained
11 demographic items, 44 questions of bullying experience, two lists of possible bullies and targets,
plus three open-ended questions.
Findings – Data revealed that 99.6 per cent of respondents had experienced some form of bullying
during their employment. Half the respondents experienced 32 or more of the 44 listed survey items,
while their health was adversely affected by persistent and frequent bullying.
Practical implications – The research revealed the existence of workplace bullying in Australian
schools and some obvious implications for leadership. It profiled the experiences of respondents and
identified strategies to eliminate or reduce bullying in Australian schools.
Originality/value – The exploratory study was the first national online survey into staff bullying in
Australian schools.
Keywords Bullying, Workplace, Employees, Schools,Leadership, Australia
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The Australian Government Productivity Commission (2010, p. 287) states “[...]no
surveys have been conducted of Australian workplaces on the incidence of bullying”.
As adverse and widespread as bullying is estimated to be, the Beyond Bullying
Association (2003) earlier reported no Australian research surveying the general
population or representative employee groups. Consequently, there appeared to be no
reliable statistics related to the Australian workforce and no answer to the question: Is
bullying of staff evident in Australian schools? This situation led to the initial research
conducted by Duncan and Riley (2005). Research in the USA, by Blase
´and Blase
´(2002,
2003a, b) reported findings from “the first and only study of school principal
mistreatment of teachers in the world” (Blase
´and Blase
´, 2003b, p. 268). In 2008 Blase
´
et al. presented a second national study of teachers’ perceptions of US principals’
mistreatment of teachers (Blase
´et al., 2008). The research described in this article
represents the first national online survey of staff bullying conducted in Australian
schools.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
Staff bullying in
Australian
schools
7
Received May 2010
Revised August 2010
Accepted September 2010
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 49 No. 1, 2011
pp. 7-30
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578231111102036
Perhaps one reason for the lack of research in Australia is the fact that bullying is
difficult to define. Workplace bullying might take the form of excessive monitoring of
work, unreasonable deadlines, unmanageable workload, and meaningless tasks, while
person-related bullying may take the form of verbal abuse, persistent crit icism, overt
threats, or more subversive acts like exclusion or isolation, gossip or rumours, and/or
practical jokes at the expense of a colleague (Agervold and Mikkelsen, 2004; Zapf and
Einarsen, 2003, 2005). A core element of bullying is “systematic social negative acts” on
an individual for the purpose or at least the effect of creating a negative work
environment (Einarsen et al., 2003, p. 15).
Bullying has been identified as a prevalent problem in the workplace in many
countries (Zapf and Einarsen, 2005). Studies undertaken in the UK have escalated since
1993 (e.g., UNISON, 1997), Scandinavia and Europe (e.g., Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996;
Vartia, 1996) and Australia (e.g. Duncan and Riley, 2005; McCarthy et al., 1996;
Richards and Freeman, 2002). Buss (1961) identified three dimensions of workplace
aggression that include bullying: physical-verbal, active-passive, and direct-in direct.
Subsequent researchers and commentators have used numerous descriptors under the
heading of workplace bullying including, workplace harassment, mobbing and
psychological terror, social undermining, orga nizational aggression, workplace
aggression, organizational motivated aggression, workplace violence, emotional
abuse, organizational retaliatory behaviour, petty tyranny, abusive supervision, sexual
harassment, workplace incivility, counterproductive workplace behaviour, as well as
dysfunctional, deviant, or unreliable workplace behaviour (Neuman, 2004, pp. 71-2).
The phenomenon of bullying
Initially, in an attempt to clarify the meaning of the term “bullying” Riley et al. (2009)
used Salin’s (2003) definition of bullying which is:
[...] repeated and persistent negative acts towards one or more individual(s) which involve a
persistent power imbalance and create a hostile work environment.
The words, “repeated and persistent” and “persistent power imbalance” further clarify
Baron’s (1977) definition of aggression which: “is any form of behaviour directed
towards the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid
such treatment”. Riley et al. (2009) cognisant that such actions are “intentional”,
accepted that intention may be inferred, not definitively established.
The term “mobbing” is used to describe bullying where perpetrators act together
toward a colleague over an extended period causing psychological, physical, and social
harm to the target (Mayhew et al., 2004, p. 120). The term, “workplace bullying”
designates a single perpetrator and a target. In our research, bullied employees are
identified as targets not “victims.” The word “victim” has negative connotations
including a sense of powerlessness. The term “staff bullying” was used to relate to
situations where an adult, i.e. the staff member, was either the perpetrator or target of
bullying. This did not preclude the fact that staff might be bullied by, or bully,
students. The term “bullying” was used as this term was more readily understood than
that of “mobbing”.
This explorative research was based on how participants perceived and
experienced organizational behaviour during their employment and how school
leaders might alleviate bullying situations, if not eliminate them. Individuals and
JEA
49,1
8
To continue reading
Request your trial