The Impact of Teacher- Student Relationship on Traditional and Cyber Bullying among Female Students of Middle Schools

Bullying is a low-level violence that has been attended lately by educational psychologists and researchers, and has two forms: traditional and cyber bullying. This research was conducted to study the prevalence of bullying and its relation to teacher–student relationship among female adolescents of public middle schools in Tabriz. It also sought to compare these variables between various grades. Therefore, 397 female students of Tabriz middle schools in the school year 2011-2012 were chosen by the multi-stage cluster random sampling method and Bullying Scale (Patchin & Hinduja, 2011) and Inventory of Teacher–Student Relationship (Murray & Zvoch, 2011) were used as the research tools. Data analysis by SPSS showed that prevalence of bullying behavior during the last month of study was 64.2%. Pearson correlation coefficient test displayed that there was negative correlation between bullying, its traditional and cyber forms, and teacher–student relationship quality (p<0.01). According to the results of regression, alienation from and trust in teacher predicted 19% variance of bullying variable; and alienation factor was a better predictor variable (ß=-0.32). Moreover, results of one-way analysis of variance demonstrated that prevalence of bullying among students of second and third grades was more than first graders, and their relationships to teachers were also more negative. Considering the experimental results, increased attention to the quality of teacher–student relationship is recommended for decreasing maladaptive and bullying behaviors of students, especially girls.