Pre-service teachers’ perspectives of cyberbullying

For over a decade practitioners and researchers have been concerned about cyberbullying within educational contexts. Few tools exist to explore this complex phenomenon in-depth from a teacher or pre-service teacher perspective. Importantly, pre-service teacher perceptions of cyberbullying may have a significant impact on how pre-service teachers respond to issues of cyberbullying. Pre-service teachers (n= 61) participated in a five-phase online project to develop knowledge and understanding of resources and responses to cyberbullying. First, this article provides a short scan of the literature to contextualize current understandings of the issue and explore different responses to cyberbullying. The literature was analysed using a constant comparison method to search for and identify current and emerging themes. Out of this work, the researchers developed a Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework, which can be used as a tool to investigate cyberbullying. The framework provides key elements for identifying, managing, and preventing cyberbullying. These elements represent a template to guide researchers and educators in exploring cyberbullying from a conceptual, practical, and research basis. Second, the framework is used as a lens to analyse pre-service teachers’ online discussions. Each of the pre-service teachers’ online posts were coded against the Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework to examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of cyberbullying. Two factors were evident from the study: 1) The online project provided an opportunity for students to develop greater awareness and confidence in identifying, managing, and preventing cyberbullying; and 2) the framework provided a structure to unpack the complex phenomenon of cyberbullying and the meta-language to begin constructive conversations about addressing the issue. Finally, the article concludes with implications for teacher education programs