by Katie Niven
Monday 10th November 2025 marks the start of Anti-Bullying week in the UK and Katie’s article highlights the key theme of this year’s Anti-Bullying campaign: Power for Good, based on their important research exploring how parents and teachers collaborate to address bullying at school. NTU has a highly active team of researchers focused on understanding and addressing bullying and aggressive behaviour, and we are proud to support the work of The Anti-Bullying Alliance. So we are pleased to share some brand-new research from Katie Niven and NTU colleagues that aims to shed light on where and how collaboration between teachers and parents can be enhanced.
It’s the start of this year’s Anti-Bullying Week, and the weeklong activities are co-ordinated by the Anti-Bullying Alliance. As in previous years, members of NTU Psychology’s Bullying and Aggressive Behaviour research group will be encouraging as many people as possible to join in #OddSocksDay (by wearing a pair of odd socks on Monday 10th November) to celebrate what makes us all unique at the start of Anti-Bullying week.
This year the theme for Anti-Bullying Week is Power for Good. Power for Good was chosen following the Anti-Bullying Alliance’s consultation with young people and teachers who suggested a theme to empower individuals to do something positive to counter the harm and hurt that bullying causes. The theme Power for Good also complements our recent research, which has just been published in the International Journal of Bullying Prevention.
The research was based on focus groups with secondary school educators, exploring perceptions of responsibilities for collaborating with parents when responding to cyberbullying and sexting. On the one hand, collaboration between home and school is promoted as an effective response to cyberbullying due to ensuring consistent support in both settings. However, despite collaboration being heavily featured in policy and guidance, the evidence shows many parents and school staff are reluctant to report incidents to one another. Our research investigated the perspective of school staff and offers insight into possible avenues for improving and increasing home/school collaboration.
Our main findings:
- Schools accept significant responsibility for preventing and managing cyberbullying and sexting
- Teachers are viewed as educators, non-teaching staff as providing support
- Parents are perceived as lacking knowledge, willingness to take responsibility and social media/internet rules
School staff spoke about their perception of schools as having a significant portion of responsibility for managing cyberbullying and sexting. The acceptance of responsibility is encouraging and important as it demonstrates that schools acknowledge their duties and position in relation to preventing and responding to these issues. The focus groups discussed the remit and responsibilities for managing cyberbullying. The teachers’ role was seen as primarily education focused whereas non-teaching staff were viewed as those primarily responsible for cyberbullying. The clear demarcation of roles suggests that non-teaching staff have a substantial role in managing cyberbullying amongst students. This points to the importance of cyber-related training for these school staff members in particular.
Finally, while collaborating is important, a strong theme of parents as being unskilled ran through the discussions. Parents were seen to be lacking knowledge of social media in general as well as of problematic social media behaviours. Educators involved in the study discussed parents as being unwilling to take responsibility for the issue by not implementing social media rules. The findings demonstrate that school staff may benefit from training that enhances collaboration skills with families such that more effective and productive relationships develop between school staff and parents. The idea being that both parties are more open to sharing information and developing strategies for home and school settings.
Based on this, it appears that some schools may not currently be equipped to establish collaborative relationships with parents when responding to cyberbullying. However, there are encouraging suggestions for how schools and families can work together, using Power for Good to ensure that those involved in cyberbullying receive adequate and consistent support.
Journal article reference: Niven, K., Seymour-Smith, S., Buglass, S. et al. How Secondary School Staff Construct their Remit, Responsibilities and Collaborative Efforts with Parents when Responding to Incidents of Cyberbullying and Sexting. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-025-00333-1
Images:
- Anti-bullying day information image from the Anti-Bullying Alliance
- “Together” photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
- “Stop bullying” book cover photo by Copper and Wild on Unsplash
- Header image from Adobe Photo Stock
Psychology at Nottingham Trent University 