Parent Teacher Bullying Literature Review

Bullying is a negative and often aggressive or manipulative act or series of acts by one or more people against another person or people usually over a period of time. Parent- Teacher Bullying which includes actions by parents such as making threats, spreading false rumors, attacking teachers physically or verbally and excluding teachers from a group on purpose according to a research by Sullivan (2000) was observed as a common occurrence affecting the teacher’s work quality in most communities. Olweu (2008) provides comprehensive accounts of behaviors that constitute parent-teacher bullying; saying hurtful and unpleasant things, making fun of teachers, using mean and hurtful nicknames, completely overlooking teachers, deliberately excluding

In Cook’s study, physical bullying was asserted as the most dominating type or form of bullying occurring in schools. Verbal Bullying: Verbal bullying includes taunting, malicious teasing, name calling and threatening Bennet (2005). Verbal bullying is primary perpetuated by word of mouth. Research in Europe (Auphas & Auphas, 2001) indicates that 70% of bullying cases of teachers come in the verbal form. Another research in South African (Palmary & De Wet, 2000) reveals that out of 1007 teacher- victims of bullying in a study , 49.4% of them was reported to be in the verbal form. Relational Bullying Relational bullying can be likened to psychological and emotional abuse (Yannes, 2011). According to Coloroso (2003), relational bullying involves manipulations of inmate and socially relationships, exclusion and rejections, ignoring, isolating, or shunning others in a

The teacher may totally withdraw from family and friends and believe he/she is personally to blame for what has happened (Rivara, 2005). It can have serious and long-term emotional or psychological consequences in addition to the immediate harmful effects (Sadek, 2010). Confirming the effects of bullying on teachers‘ psychological wellbeing, studies revealed the following:
Bullying and Stress: discussions on stress have become significant due to dynamic social factors and changing needs of life styles. Stress is man‘s adaptive reaction to an outward situation which would lead to physical, mental and behavioral changes (Pieterson, 2007). The study by Pieterson maintains that work place stress leads to moderate to severe forms of stress which could be debilitating to victims and might cause loss of focus at work place. Stress victims as a result of bullying can be expected to experience a variety of emotions: fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, helplessness, loneliness, and feelings of isolation and persecution. Severe cases of stress can give rise to acute dysfunctions and may be responsible for increase divorce rates and other harassments. Bullying is in-deed stressful in a number of ways thereby causing unpleasant crisis and lack of concentration on both