Teachers’ awareness and emotional response to cyberbullying: Exploring emotional regulation strategies in the classroom

Abstract

Cyberbullying is a major and pressing issue in schools, reducing students' well-being and placing emotional burden on teachers. Despite increased attention to students' experiences, there is limited research on teachers' knowledge, emotional responses, and emotion regulation when witnessing student cyberbullying. Thus, this study explores teachers' knowledge, emotional responses, and emotion regulation strategies to respond to cyberbullying, and the impact of an innovative game-based platform on their emotion regulation abilities. Employing an integrated emotions and emotion regulation appraisal model, the mixed-methods study employed a sequential explanatory design. 543 teachers and 533 students were surveyed to examine a substantial difference between teachers' self-reports and students' self-reports of cyberbullying, with students reporting more instances. 63 teachers provided qualitative interviews with information on how they responded emotionally, which were predominantly negative in valence—concern, surprise, and frustration—and led to the prevalent use of response modulation strategies. Quasi-experimental, longitudinal research conducted among 64 teachers analyzed whether a serious game-based intervention can be effective. Emotion regulation was still a concern, however, pre-post-tests indicated that the platform supported increased use of cognitive reappraisal and coping responses for responding to cyberbullying. These findings are supportive of the need for training interventions to specifically target strengthening teachers' socio-emotional abilities, potentially contributing to early intervention and healthy school climate development. Schools can use technology-supported interventions to prompt teachers of their socio-emotional abilities and hence manage cyberbullying effectively. Future studies should use larger samples and longer longitudinal designs to adequately address and assess teachers’ emotion regulation approaches across time.