Citation

Donat M, Knigge M, Dalbert C. Aggressive Behav. 2018; 44(1): 29-39.

Affiliation

Department of Educational Psychology, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle/Saale, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, International Society for Research on Aggression, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/ab.21721

PMID

28758217

Abstract

In two cross-sectional questionnaire studies with N = 2,931 German students, aged between 12 and 17 years (M = 14.1, SD = 0.5), we investigated the relation between students' bullying behavior and their personal belief in a just world (BJW). We considered students' personal experience of teacher justice as a possible mediator in this relation and investigated whether the students' experiences of their teachers' classroom management explained bullying behavior in addition to personal BJW and teacher justice, while statistically controlling for sex and school type. In both studies, multilevel modeling results showed that the more students endorsed personal BJW and the more they evaluated their teachers' behavior toward them personally as being just, the less likely they were to report that they bullied others. The students' personal experience of teacher justice mediated the association of personal BJW with bullying. Furthermore, the students' personal experience of classroom management significantly predicted bullying in addition to personal BJW and teacher justice. The observed relations were mainly significant at the individual level. The pattern of results persisted when we controlled for school type and when we considered student sex as a moderator. We discussed the adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research and practice.

© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

belief in a just world; bullying behavior; classroom management; multilevel modeling; teacher justice