US teachers' and school counsellors' strategies for handling school bullying incidents

A sample of 735 US teachers and school counsellors completed an online survey asking how likely they would be to use various strategies to respond to a hypothetical bullying incident. Analyses examined their use of five strategies: Ignoring the incident, Working with the bully, Working with the victim, Enlisting other adults, and Disciplining the bully. Differences in mean scores based on these strategies were found by gender of participant, the presence or absence of school anti-bullying policies and programmes, and previous anti-bullying training. Teachers and school counsellors differed on four of the five scale scores. Qualitative comment data add to the findings. Implications of the findings are discussed.