Speaker
Description
Banter represents a common interactional style characteristic of close relationships. Between friends banter can promote cohesion (Dynel, 2008) but behaviours often appear aggressive manifesting as reciprocal exchanges of insults and teases. A fine and subjective line exists between banter behaviours and bullying (Betts & Spenser, 2017) impacting their management in schools. This study explored UK teachers’ perceptions of banter versus bullying and the characteristics of banter. The final dataset comprised 884 (163 male, 715 female, 4 non-binary, 2 other) teachers (M age = 39.54, SD = 10.17). Participants provided definitions of banter and bullying and rated characteristics that may distinguish banter from bullying. Teachers’ conceptualisation of banter and bullying varied. Banter was regarded as jokes exchanged between friends with a shared understanding and no harm occurred. Bullying was characterised as repeated one-sided behaviours intended to harm with a possible power imbalance. A 2 (gender) x 4 (school type) x 7 (characteristic) mixed ANOVA, indicated variation in responses according to characteristic, F(5.105, 4272.892) = 314.227, p < .001, η2 = 2.73, and gender, F(1, 827) = 5.371, p = .021, η2 = 006. Intent was rated significantly higher than all the other characteristics and females showed significantly greater agreement when rating the characteristics than males. The results provide further evidence that banter can be distinguished from bullying and characteristics such as intent are important in this distinction. The findings have implications for how teachers manage, and support children to engage in appropriate, banter that promotes positive relationships.
Keywords
Management of bullying, Teachers, Definitions, Banter
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
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| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Mixed method study |
