Cyberbullying from the Perspective of Primary School Teachers

This thesis is developing on the theme of cyberbullying from the perspective of primary school teachers. I am describing basic facts about cyberbullying, its stakeholders, different types of cyberbullying, the means being used to cyberbullying and legislation related to this topic. Also cyberbullying prevention is analysed in this work. As this thesis has focused on the perspective of elementary school teachers, different roles of teachers are described. At the end of the theoretical part, selected projects related to the cyberbullying prevention in the Czech Republic are presented, as well as examples of bullying through information and communication technologies. Main method used for the practical part of the thesis was a qualitative research, based on questionnaires. Data were collected through semi-standardized interview. Participants were elementary school teachers in the district of Ceske Budejovice. Fifty-three elementary schools have been approached to participate in the study, however only three of them agreed to take part. The interview consisted of twelve questions and several sub-questions. The purpose of these interviews was to determine the attitude of teachers towards cyberbullying and whether elementary school teachers know how to deal with this form of bullying. The answers of the respondents confirmed that elementary school teachers recognize that cyberbullying is a substantial problem that it is difficult to tackle. They are taking cyberbullying serious and in most cases prevent their pupils. Besides that they try to protect themselves, by disclosing no private information in social networks. Teachers, who are specialized in prevention methodology or in educational consulting, are able to deal with cyberbullying due to the information they gained in lectures, seminars, and trainings. However, not all of them would tackle the issue themselves, without any professional help. Other teachers, without any specialized training would never tackle cyberbullying themselves. They would rather ask an expert, either from their school or external one. However they are showing interest in this form of bullying and actively searching for the solution in various publications and on the Internet. Tackling cyberbullying is a main purpose of Program for cyberbullying prevention. Each school should have had such a program and its preparation and implementation should involve all teachers. In reality all the schools have formally such a program, however it does not involved all the teachers: in most cases the program only one teacher is being responsible of its preparation and implementation. Other teachers are aware of it, however are not involved enough. It would be beneficial to find funds for all primary school teacher trainings in bullying through information and communication technologies. Cyberbullying is a general thread to each of them, and therefore they should be aware of this form of bullying. Primary schools should follow the recommendations of the Ministry of Education, to enable all the teachers to participate in building prevention programs. The reason is the same as the first recommendation. With the creation of such a program, teachers would learn about cyberbullying and the method to tackle it