Teachers as Informant for Students’ Bullying Involvement: The Impact of Teacher Training on Agreement between Teacher vs. Self- and Peer Reports

Accurate identification of students’ involvement in bullying is crucial for effective bullying prevention program implementation. Self- and peer reports are commonly used towards this end despite ethical and methodological challenges. Teacher reports offer a promising alternative, but teachers’ limited awareness of and/or views towards bullying may affect their reporting accuracy. The present study investigated teachers’ reporting accuracy for students’ bullying involvement and whether this accuracy improved through training. We compared teacher reports of bullying involvement with their self- and peer report equivalents at two time points in a large Dutch primary school sample (N = 3,255; 167 classrooms). A subsample (n = 1,855) participated in teacher training components of the PRIMA bullying prevention program (i.e., e-learning, face-to-face training, and diagnostic monitoring). Observed agreement between teachers vs. self- and peer reports were moderate to high, especially for bully and victim roles. Agreement also improved over time for teacher vs. peer reports. In fact, all teacher training components improved peer-teacher agreement on victim identification. Face-to-face training and diagnostic monitoring showed promising trends for bystander role identification, while e-learning yielded mixed results. Taken together, these findings indicate that teachers can be reliable informants for bullying and victimization, especially when supported by targeted training and monitoring, which may also help them to identify bullying behavior earlier and intervene more promptly.