Socially safe at school: The role of teachers in managing classroom social dynamics and supporting victimized students

Abstract

Teachers are in a unique position and can have a major impact on pupils' school experiences. This dissertation examines the role primary school teachers play in ensuring a safe social classroom climate. Several studies looked at how teachers use their classroom classification, how they identify bullying victims, whether classroom classification can improve the well-being of bullying victims and how tracking technology can help explore social relationships in a classroom context. This dissertation showed that: Teachers have different goals and employ a variety of strategies when making class assignments and selecting them based on the needs of the group and individual students; Teachers become more attuned to victimisation during the school year, but risk overlooking victims they consider popular; Sitting next to a best friend and far from bullies does not improve victims' well-being, but that does not mean that being close to bullies is risk-free; Tracking technology offers a new way to study social connectedness in the classroom and helps answer research questions that previously could not be investigated. The thesis provides both important implications for practice and new insights for science on which follow-up research can build.