Can classroom seating arrangements help establish a safe environment for victims? A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Students around the globe still experience bullying daily. Teachers play a key role in supporting victimized students and they could do so using their classroom seating arrangement. Common teacher strategies are to separate victims and bullies and to seat victims close to supportive others, but research has not examined whether these strategies support victims' wellbeing. Therefore, the current study tested an intervention in which victims in experimental classrooms were seated far away from their bullies and next to their best friends, whereas a random seating arrangement was implemented in control classrooms. The underlying reasoning was that victims would experience a sense of safety next to their best friend and to limit bullies' opportunities to harass the victim. The outcomes were classroom comfort, internalizing problems, academic engagement, and victimization frequency. We used a sample of 1746 Dutch upper elementary school students (M_age = 10.21) of whom 250 students reported to be chronically and frequently victimized (M_age = 9.96 years). Ethical and practical reasons rendered the conditions similar regarding victims' distances to their bullies. Consequently, the intervention in the end tested the effect of victims sitting next to their best friend. Several mixed-effects models showed that no support was found for the effectiveness of this intervention. Additional exploratory analyses testing the effect of victims' continuous distances to their bullies on their wellbeing also found no effects. These findings suggest that changing victims', bullies', and best friends' seats do not improve victims' classroom wellbeing. Alternative explanations, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.