A different approach to bullying: An upright/vertical bullying study where students bully their teachers

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the fact of upright/vertical bullying. In this study, on duty teachers who were bullied by their students were determined and interviewed. The study has been formed in qualitative design. Among the qualitative research designs phenomenology which is suitable to the nature of the study has been used. In the study open ended interview has been used as the means of data collection. Categorical analysis one of the content analysis types has been used to analyze the data. According to the results of the study, it has been found that teachers are exposed to group focused bullying, high school students mostly bully in tenth grade and this decreases as they grow, there are problems in students’ family life and values, media, internet and social environment trigger bullying, teachers are bullied by order of verbal emotional and mixed bullying. Among the reasons of exposure to bullying are the teachers’ inadequacies in classroom management, the personality of teacher, being a female teacher, the decline of classroom atmosphere and especially bad instruction, the worsening of physical and mental health. It has been suggested that teachers should be supported in terms of classroom management in general and particularly coping with such problems. In addition to these, in media there should be programs about bullying