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An Examination of Unvictimized Teachers and “What Works” in Secondary Education

Fri, April 10, 1:45 to 3:15pm PDT (1:45 to 3:15pm PDT), Westin Bonaventure, Floor: Level 2, Echo Park

Abstract

Violence against Prek-12th grade educators has become a topic of increasing empirical interest (Longobardi et al., 2019). Recent evidence has suggested that verbal and threatening violence against teachers is as high as 80% (McMahon, Worrell, et al., 2024), resulting in negative outcomes such as decreases in teacher well-being and mental health (Perry et al., 2025) and increases in desires to transfer schools or quit the teaching profession (McMahon, Swenski, et al., 2024). While this increased attention is crucially important, the focus of empirical research has predominantly focused on the role of victimization as predicting (McMahon, Swenski, et al., 2024) or being predicted by (e.g., Reddy et al., 2024) socio-cognitive variables. In this study, informed by social-ecological theories of school violence (Benbenishty & Astor, 2005), we examined a specific sub-population of teachers: Those who have never experienced any victimization from any offender. With the goal of imagining a brighter future in which teachers are no longer victimized, this study was an attempt to examine “what works” among a sample of unvictimized teachers. Differences in individual, school, and community characteristics were examined, along with how these characteristics relate to teacher well-being (anxiety and psychological distress), staff relationships with students and parents, and perceptions of neighborhood danger.
The study sample was 470 PreK-12th grade teachers who self-reported that they had never experienced violence from any of four potential offenders (students, parents, colleagues, and administrators). Respondents were majority female (n=344, 73.7%), White/Caucasian (n=344, 74.3%), and heterosexual (n=367, 95.8%). A plurality of teachers worked in elementary schools (n=204, 45.2%), and the average teaching experience among the sample was 17.26 years (SD=9.33).
Participants completed psychometrically validated self-report survey measures for all study variables. Descriptive statistics indicated that only 41% of the sample felt at least somewhat anxious and 15% felt at least somewhat psychologically distressed. Desire to transfer (8.4%) or quit (15.9%) was also low. On average, respondents had positive relationships with students and parents and perceived minimal danger in their neighborhoods. Regression results revealed more nuanced findings. Specifically, female unvictimized teachers were more anxious, psychologically distressed, perceived more neighborhood danger, and were more likely to intend to quit teaching than male teachers. LGBTQ educators were also more likely to be psychologically distressed than heterosexual teachers. African-American teachers had significantly better relationships with parents than white/Caucasian teachers, and teachers in schools with a higher percentage of students on free/reduced price lunch were less likely to plan to quit teaching. Preliminary evidence speaks to the importance of a positive school climate with high teacher well-being and positive relationships with students and parents. Demographic differences still emerged, however, indicating that even in the absence of victimization, systemic disparities still exist for PreK-12th grade educators. Future studies should continue to examine important contextual variables such as safe and successful schools to better ascertain what school districts can do to keep students and teachers safe and happy.

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