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School bullying, school mindfulness and school academic performance: A structural equation modelling study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2019

Esra Tekel  and
Engin Karadag Open the ORCID record for Engin Karadag [Opens in a new window]
Esra Tekel
Affiliation:
Sandıkli School of Applied Sciences, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey
Engin Karadag*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
*
*Corresponding author. Email: enginkaradag@akdeniz.edu.tr
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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of school bullying on school mindfulness and school academic performance through a structural equation model. The study was framed around the correlational design method; school bullying was taken as the independent variable and school mindfulness and school academic performance were used as the dependent variables. The study participants consisted of 156 high school teachers working in three of the schools selected from various school districts by means of the maximum variation sampling method. The data were collected via the School Bullying Scale (Tintorer, 2004), the School Mindfulness Scale (Hoy, Gage, & Tarter, 2006), and the average scores on the Higher Education Transition exam for each school. Path analysis was conducted to enable associating measurement errors in both latent and observed variables. Our study findings show that school bullying negatively affects school mindfulness and academic performance and that school mindfulness positively affects academic performance. In addition, the findings reveal that verbal bullying, consisting of behaviours such as harassing phone calls, taking someone’s money or belongings by force, intimidating actions with violent threats, name calling, racist expressions and teasing, swearing, lying to others or insulting them, is more frequently observed than other bullying types.

Keywords

school bullyingschool mindfulnessschool academic performance

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Type
Articles
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Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 129 - 145
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press

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