Abstract
Teacher interventions play a crucial role in fostering a more inclusive school climate amidst homophobic bullying incidents. However, the strategies employed by teachers and the influencing factors are understudied. This study explored individual and contextual factors associated with teachers’ intentions to intervene in situations of homophobic bullying. It emphasized the role of self-efficacy and how its impact may be influenced by school efforts to combat homophobic bullying. A sample of 465 teachers (76.34% women, Age: M = 49.58, SD = 10.25) from nine primary and secondary schools in central Italy completed a scale assessing different types of behaviors they would employ in response to homophobic bullying episodes, including non-intervention, disciplinary sanctions, peer mediation, victim support, and classroom discussion. The study also examined teachers’ perceived school effort to address homophobic bullying and self-efficacy in handling educational tasks and homophobic bullying situations. Age, gender, grade, training on bullying, perceived prevalence of homophobic bullying incidents, and witnessing such incidents were considered as covariates.
Linear regression showed that self-efficacy (general and homophobic bullying-related) was positively associated with intentions to use all intervention types and negatively non-intervention. Non-intervention was more common among teachers who reported more homophobic bullying incidents among students, while witnessing incidents was associated with less victim support and classroom discussion. The interaction of general self-efficacy and school effort was significant for disciplinary sanctions and victim support, indicating that in schools with low effort to address bullying, low teacher efficacy was associated with fewer intentions to intervene.
The findings emphasize the importance of a twofold approach: fostering a strong school effort to address homophobic bullying and offering comprehensive teacher training to enhance self-efficacy in addressing these incidents.