Mobbing-Related Self-Efficacy Expectations of Teachers

1. Abstract

The Mobbing-Related Self-Efficacy Expectations of Teachers (German: Skala zur Erfassung der mobbingbezogenen Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung von Lehrkräften; MOB-SWK) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument designed to evaluate an educator’s subjective conviction in their capability to intervene successfully in peer bullying and mobbing situations among pupils. Developed within the context of the German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded project “Teachers’ Dealing with Violence and Mobbing: A Study on the Forms, Determinants and Effects of Intervention Action from the Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives”, the instrument operationalizes teachers’ domain-specific self-efficacy across key functional phases of bullying management, encompassing perception, de-escalation, conflict resolution, structured mediation, and targeted victim support. The instrument consists of five positively worded items scored on a standardized response metric. In psychometric evaluations comprising a substantial sample of practicing in-service teachers (N = 495) across general and special education secondary schools, alongside a comparative validation cohort of pre-service student teachers (N = 477), the scale demonstrated robust structural unidimensionality and high internal consistency.

Exploratory factor analyses across both samples confirmed a single-factor solution accounting for 48% of the total variance, with Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values indicating high sampling adequacy (.81 for practicing teachers and .79 for student teachers). Confirmatory factor analysis verified that a tau-congeneric measurement model offered an optimal statistical fit to the empirical data (CFI = .95, SRMR = .04 in the teacher cohort; CFI = .96, SRMR = .03 in the student teacher cohort). Composite reliability evaluated via Raykov’s rho reached .82 in both validation cohorts. Convergent construct validity was verified through substantial positive correlations with general teacher self-efficacy (r = .50 and .47, p < .001), while external criterion validity was established through meaningful associations with retrospective, real-world intervention behaviors, goal attainment, and long-term restorative approaches. The MOB-SWK represents a concise, theoretically grounded, and psychometrically sound scale for educational diagnostics, school climate evaluations, and teacher professional development research.

2. Keywords

mobbing-related self-efficacy, teacher self-efficacy, school bullying, peer victimization, intervention competence, teacher professional development, school violence prevention, MOB-SWK, social cognitive theory, educational psychometrics

3. Authors

The MOB-SWK scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by a consortium of educational psychologists and violence prevention researchers affiliated with the University of Potsdam and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg:

• Dr. Saskia M. Fischer — Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Department of Educational Psychology. Primary investigator in teacher intervention research and psychometric modeling. (Email: [email protected])
• Juliane Ulbricht — University of Potsdam, Department of Educational Sciences. Researcher specializing in teacher socialization, professional competence acquisition, and classroom management. (Email: [email protected])
• Prof. Dr. Ludwig Bilz — Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Chair of Educational Psychology and Health Psychology. Principal investigator of the DFG-funded project on violence and mobbing dynamics in schools. (Email: [email protected])
• Collaborating Institutional Partners: Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schubarth, University of Potsdam, Chair of Educational Sociology and School Development (Project Co-Lead, DFG Grants SCHU 1370/2-1 and BI 1046/6-1).

4. Purpose

School bullying and mobbing represent persistent threats to the psychological integrity, physical safety, and academic functioning of children and adolescents worldwide. Characterized by systematic harm, repeated aggressive behaviors over an extended duration, and a pronounced imbalance of physical, social, or psychological power, mobbing creates pervasive interpersonal toxicity. While prevention curricula and school-wide policies provide indispensable structural foundations, the classroom teacher functions as the frontline agent of social regulation, crisis de-escalation, and moral engagement. Nevertheless, empirical observations consistently demonstrate substantial variance in how educators respond to bullying episodes: whereas some teachers act decisively, swiftly interrupt aggressive dynamics, and implement restorative interventions, others overlook subtle signals, exhibit passive bystander behaviors, or report profound helplessness when confronting entrenched peer conflicts.

The MOB-SWK was developed to address this critical diagnostic and empirical gap by providing a targeted, domain-specific measurement tool. Rooted in the competence-oriented paradigm of teacher professional research, the instrument posits that actual intervention behavior is not solely governed by abstract pedagogical knowledge or declarative anti-bullying ethics; rather, it is powerfully steered by an educator’s subjective sense of personal agency—specifically, their belief in their ability to orchestrate successful interventions under conditions of interpersonal friction and social complexity. General measures of teacher self-efficacy, while valuable for assessing broad instructional practices and classroom management, frequently fail to capture the nuanced competencies required to detect covert harassment, neutralize escalating hostilities, negotiate power differentials, and support vulnerable victims.

The purpose of the MOB-SWK encompasses several critical applications across academic research, institutional evaluation, and pre-service teacher education:

• Empirical Research on Teacher Professionalism: Disentangling how domain-specific cognitive appraisals interact with school organizational climate, teacher burnout, classroom composition, and student reporting behaviors.
• Evaluation of Teacher Training Programs: Serving as a sensitive pre- and post-intervention outcome metric to determine whether specialized university curricula, simulation-based workshops, or anti-bullying coaching modules effectively elevate educators’ perceived agency.
• School Diagnostic Assessment: Providing school administrators and educational psychologists with a rapid diagnostic screening tool to identify faculty professional development needs, assess readiness to implement systemic prevention frameworks (such as the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program or KiVa), and cultivate a proactive school ethos.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the MOB-SWK is mobbing-related teacher self-efficacy (mobbingbezogene Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung von Lehrkräften). Derived from Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, self-efficacy refers to an individual’s explicit cognitive appraisal of their capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce designated attainments in challenging, stressful, or novel situations. In the educational sphere, teacher self-efficacy constitutes a foundational component of professional action competence (Baumert & Kunter, 2006), shaping emotional resilience, pedagogical choices, persistence in the face of student misconduct, and overall classroom climates.

Within the specific domain of peer aggression, mobbing-related self-efficacy represents an educator’s subjective conviction that they possess the perceptual, emotional, tactical, and communicative resources necessary to respond effectively across the entire temporal and structural trajectory of a bullying incident. Grounded in the teacher intervention model formulated by Bilz, Schubarth, and colleagues, the construct integrates five essential behavioral-cognitive facets:

• Perceptual-Diagnostic Acuity: The belief in one’s capability to maintain heightened situational awareness and accurately identify covert relational aggression, exclusionary behaviors, and asymmetric power abuses during the initial, nascent phases of peer harassment, before conflicts crystallize into chronic victimization.
• Immediate Situational De-escalation: The conviction that one can intervene independently, assertively, and safely into acute interpersonal confrontations to defuse hostility, protect victimized students from immediate harm, and re-establish normative classroom boundaries without exacerbating aggression.
• Conflict Termination and Cessation: The perceived agency to achieve definitive closure on chronic bullying dynamics, dismantling destructive relational hierarchies and stopping persistent harassment between perpetrators and targeted pupils.
• Mediation and Collaborative Clarification: The confidence in one’s communicative mastery to engage perpetrators, victims, and relevant peer bystanders in structured conflict resolution protocols, facilitating shared understanding, moral accountability, and institutional reconciliation.
• Victim Support and Restorative Care: The perceived competence to provide continuous emotional validation, social shielding, and psychological scaffolding to victimized youth, ensuring their safety and rehabilitation within the school environment.

Crucially, the MOB-SWK operationalizes these facets not as disconnected orthogonal dimensions, but as intercorrelated manifestations of a cohesive, single-factor latent construct. This unidimensional architecture reflects the holistic nature of bullying management in professional educational practice.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the MOB-SWK rests at the intersection of two prominent theoretical frameworks: Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1997, 2001) and the Competence-Based Model of Teacher Professional Action in Violence and Bullying Intervention (Bilz et al., 2015, 2017).

Social Cognitive Foundations of Domain-Specific Self-Efficacy

Bandura’s foundational social cognitive paradigm posits that human agency operates within an interdependent triadic reciprocal causation model involving internal cognitive and biological events, overt behavior, and environmental influences. Within this framework, self-efficacy beliefs function as the primary cognitive regulators of human motivation, affect, and performance. Individuals construct their self-efficacy beliefs from four primary informational sources: enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological or affective states. A central tenet of Bandura’s psychometric guidelines is that self-efficacy assessments must be tailored specifically to the targeted behavioral domain and contextual demands under investigation; omnibus or highly generalized scales frequently exhibit attenuated predictive validity because they blur the specific barriers and cognitive challenges unique to the performance setting.

In bullying management, generic instructional self-efficacy fails to account for the threatening, socially complex, and ethically charged nature of peer harassment. Direct intervention requires a teacher to enter volatile interpersonal disputes, manage secondary resistance from peer bystanders, confront retaliatory risks, and navigate potential defensive denial from aggressive students. Consequently, measuring self-efficacy specific to mobbing scenarios is essential to capture the precise cognitive appraisal mechanisms governing teacher intervention.

The Model of Teacher Action in School Violence and Mobbing

Bilz, Schubarth, and Ulbricht (2015) operationalized teacher intervention through a competence-oriented lens, adapting the professional competence framework of Baumert and Kunter (2006). In this model, effective intervention is conceptualized as an emergent output driven by the dynamic synthesis of declarative pedagogical knowledge (e.g., understanding Olweus’ criteria of bullying), subjective motivational orientations, normative beliefs regarding aggression, and self-regulatory convictions. Mobbing-related self-efficacy represents the pivotal motivational-volitional engine of this system. According to the model, when a teacher notices peer aggression, a sequence of internal appraisal processes is initiated:

1. Cognitive Appraisal of Threat and Responsibility: Evaluating whether the observed behavior constitutes harmless teasing or systematic mobbing characterized by power asymmetry.
2. Secondary Appraisal of Coping Efficacy: Assessing whether personal resources, communication techniques, and school policies are sufficient to resolve the incident successfully.
3. Volitional Mobilization and Behavioral Enactment: Translating motivational readiness into concrete intervention behaviors (e.g., immediate stopping, sanctioning, mediating, protecting victims).

Teachers exhibiting elevated mobbing-related self-efficacy are significantly less prone to cognitive avoidance, defensive attribution (e.g., blaming the victim for being provocative), or institutional paralysis. Instead, they exhibit proactive problem-focused coping, persist through communicative resistance, and formulate multi-tiered, long-term intervention objectives.

7. Validity

The psychometric evaluation of the MOB-SWK across empirical studies provides substantial evidence for its content, convergent, structural, and external criterion validity.

Content and Face Validity

Content validity was established through a structured multi-stage scale development protocol conducted at the University of Potsdam. The development team examined existing self-efficacy inventories (such as the General Teacher Self-Efficacy scale by Schwarzer & Schmitz, 1999) and executed iterative expert workshops involving educational psychologists, pre-service teacher educators, and recognized scholars in school violence prevention. The resulting five items were specifically engineered to map onto the theoretical phases of intervention: diagnostic identification, autonomous de-escalation, conflict cessation, restorative mediation, and comprehensive victim assistance. Expert review confirmed high thematic coverage, syntactic clarity, and operational alignment with the construct definition.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was systematically evaluated by examining bivariate relationships between the MOB-SWK and the established German General Teacher Self-Efficacy scale (Skala zur Allgemeinen Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung von Lehrkräften; Schwarzer & Schmitz, 1999), a 9-item validated measure of general pedagogical self-beliefs. Because mobbing-related self-efficacy is conceptualized as a domain-specific instantiation of broader pedagogical agency, moderate to strong positive correlations were hypothesized. The empirical findings corroborated this theoretical expectation:

• In Sample 1 (practicing in-service teachers, n = 495), the correlation was r = .50 (p < .001).
• In Sample 2 (pre-service student teachers, n = 477), the correlation was r = .47 (p < .001).

These coefficients demonstrate substantial convergence, confirming that the scale shares foundational variance with general self-efficacy constructs, while simultaneously demonstrating that 75% to 78% of the variance remains unshared. This divergence confirms that the MOB-SWK captures critical, domain-specific variance that cannot be accounted for by broad educational self-confidence.

External Criterion and Predictive Validity

External criterion validity was rigorously demonstrated by Bilz and Kunze (2017) using retrospective behavioral data collected from in-service teachers reporting on authentic, real-world mobbing incidents encountered in their classrooms. The analyses revealed multiple significant behavioral correlates:

• Intervention Goal Attainment: Educators with higher mobbing-related self-efficacy reported significantly greater success in attaining their intended intervention objectives during authentic bullying crises compared to their less confident peers. This positive association held true for both immediate short-term stabilization goals and sustainable long-term restorative outcomes.
• Breadth and Quality of Strategic Interventions: Teachers exhibiting elevated self-efficacy pursued a significantly broader repertoire of intervention strategies. Rather than relying solely on punitive disciplinary measures, high-efficacy teachers targeted systemic classroom climate improvement, long-term moral sensitization, and victim empowerment.
• Intervention Propensity Nuances: Although overall baseline willingness to intervene was exceptionally high across the sample (79% of educators reported intervening when observing aggression, resulting in a ceiling effect for general intervention likelihood), self-efficacy uniquely predicted the qualitative sophistication, persistence, and strategic depth of the actions executed.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the MOB-SWK was rigorously evaluated across two independent, large-scale German cohorts comprising 972 total respondents (495 practicing educators and 477 pre-service student teachers).

Composite Reliability (Raykov’s Rho)

Because structural equation modeling indicated that the MOB-SWK operates as a tau-congeneric measurement model—characterized by unequal factor loadings across individual items—traditional Cronbach’s alpha violates the assumption of essential tau-equivalence and tends to underestimate true internal consistency. Consequently, composite reliability was calculated via Raykov’s rho (ρ; Raykov, 1997):

• Sample 1 (In-Service Teachers, n = 495): Raykov’s ρ = .82
• Sample 2 (Pre-Service Student Teachers, n = 477): Raykov’s ρ = .82

These values demonstrate excellent internal consistency for a concise 5-item scale, exceeding the conventional academic threshold of .70 for research instruments and approaching the stringent criteria required for individual diagnostic profiling.

Item Discrimination and Inter-Item Homogeneity

Item-scale correlations (part-whole corrected item-total discrimination coefficients) and bivariate inter-item correlation matrices corroborated strong psychometric precision:

• Inter-Item Correlations: Ranged between .35 and .65 in the practicing teacher cohort, and between .31 and .70 in the student teacher cohort, indicating balanced conceptual homogeneity without excessive item redundancy.
• Corrected Item-Total Discrimination (r_it): Across both samples, corrected item-total correlations were consistently moderate to high, ranging from .42 to .70 (e.g., Item 3 demonstrated r_it = .69 in teachers and .70 in student teachers; Item 2 demonstrated r_it = .65 and .68).

9. Factor Analysis

The internal latent structure of the MOB-SWK was established through a sequential combination of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), parallel analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across both validation samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis and Parallel Analysis

Prior to factor extraction, sampling adequacy was verified. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure reached .81 in Sample 1 (teachers) and .79 in Sample 2 (student teachers), confirming the high suitability of the correlation matrices for factor analysis. Horn’s Parallel Analysis (Horn, 1965) was subsequently performed using 1,000 synthetic random data matrices. The empirical eigenvalues clearly supported a single-factor extraction:

• Sample 1 (Teachers): First empirical eigenvalue λ_E1 = 2.90 (random λ_Z1 = 1.13); second empirical eigenvalue λ_E2 = 0.74 (random λ_Z2 = 1.07).
• Sample 2 (Student Teachers): First empirical eigenvalue λ_E1 = 2.89 (random λ_Z1 = 1.14); second empirical eigenvalue λ_E2 = 0.76 (random λ_Z2 = 1.05).

Principal axis factoring confirmed that the single latent factor accounted for 48% of the total variance in both independent samples. Standardized factor loadings across all items were substantial, ranging from .51 to .79 in the in-service cohort and from .46 to .82 in the pre-service cohort (Item 2 = .74/.77; Item 3 = .79/.82; Item 4 = .76/.71; Item 5 = .63/.66; Item 1 = .51/.46).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To evaluate structural invariance and test competitive measurement models, maximum likelihood CFAs were executed. A tau-congeneric model demonstrated favorable global goodness-of-fit indices across both populations:

• Sample 1 (In-Service Teachers): Comparative Fit Index (CFI = .95), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR = .04), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA = .13, 90% CI [.10, .17]).
• Sample 2 (Student Teachers): Comparative Fit Index (CFI = .96), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR = .03), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA = .11, 90% CI [.08, .14]).

While the RMSEA was elevated—a known statistical artifact frequently observed in models with low degrees of freedom (df = 5) and modest indicator counts (Kenny, Kaniskan, & McCoach, 2015)—the CFI (≥ .95) and SRMR (≤ .04) indices met the stringent thresholds established by Hu and Bentler (1999). An alternative essentially tau-equivalent model, constraining all factor loadings to equality, demonstrated markedly deteriorated fit (CFI = .85–.87, SRMR = .20, RMSEA = .16–.17), supporting the retention of the tau-congeneric specification.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Mobbing-Related Self-Efficacy Expectations of Teachers (German: Skala zur Erfassung der mobbingbezogenen Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung von Lehrkräften; MOB-SWK).
• Target Population: In-service secondary school teachers, special education educators, vocational school instructors, and pre-service student teachers in university education programs.
• Administration Method: Standardized paper-and-pencil questionnaire or secure digital web survey.
• Administration Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes.
• Total Item Count: 5 items.
• Scale Dimensionality: Unidimensional (single composite score representing global mobbing-related self-efficacy).
• Response Format: 6-stufige Likert-Skala: 1 = stimmt überhaupt nicht, 2 = stimmt nicht, 3 = stimmt eher nicht, 4 = stimmt eher, 5 = stimmt, 6 = stimmt genau (6-point Likert scale: 1 = completely disagree to 6 = completely agree).
• Scoring Protocol: All items are positively framed (no reverse scoring required). A continuous composite score is calculated as the arithmetic mean across all five completed items:
  Total Score = (Σ Item 1 to Item 5) / 5. Higher mean scores indicate a greater perceived capability to intervene effectively in bullying situations.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: First validated and reported in peer-reviewed form in 2017 (as part of the DFG Research Project monograph edited by Bilz et al., 2017).
• Funding & Institutional Origin: Developed under German Research Foundation (DFG) research grants SCHU 1370/2-1 and BI 1046/6-1 at the University of Potsdam and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg.
• Copyright & Licensing: The instrument is available for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes free of charge. In accordance with standard open-science academic conventions, researchers utilizing the scale must provide formal academic attribution and citation to the original authors (Bilz et al., 2017; Fischer et al., 2017).
• Commercial Applications: Commercial diagnostic usage, inclusion in fee-for-service consulting packages, or proprietary assessment software requires explicit prior written authorization from the primary authors.

12. References

• Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71–81). Academic Press.
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.
• Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
• Baumert, J., & Kunter, M. (2006). Stichwort: Professionelle Kompetenz von Lehrkräften. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 9(4), 469–520. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-006-0165-2
• Bilz, L., & Kunze, U. (2017). Der Zusammenhang zwischen Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung und Lehrerinterventionen bei Mobbing. In L. Bilz, W. Schubarth, I. Dudziak, S. Fischer, S. Niproschke, & J. Ulbricht (Eds.), Gewalt und Mobbing an Schulen: Wie sich Gewalt und Mobbing entwickelt haben, wie Lehrer intervenieren und welche Kompetenzen sie brauchen (pp. 219–229). Klinkhardt Forschung.
• Bilz, L., Schubarth, W., Dudziak, I., Fischer, S., Niproschke, S., & Ulbricht, J. (Eds.). (2017). Gewalt und Mobbing an Schulen: Wie sich Gewalt und Mobbing entwickelt haben, wie Lehrer intervenieren und welche Kompetenzen sie brauchen. Klinkhardt Forschung.
• Bilz, L., Schubarth, W., & Ulbricht, J. (2015). Lehrerhandeln bei Gewalt und Mobbing – Ein empirisch begründetes Kompetenzmodell. Beiträge zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, 33(3), 441–458.
• Bradshaw, C. P., Sawyer, A. L., & O’Brennan, L. M. (2007). Bullying and peer victimization at school: Perceptual differences between students and school staff. School Psychology Review, 36(3), 361–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2007.12087929
• Duong, J., & Bradshaw, C. (2013). Using the extended parallel process model to examine teachers’ likelihood of intervening in bullying. Journal of School Violence, 12(4), 422–440. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2013.820546
• Horn, J. L. (1965). A rationale and test for the number of factors in factor analysis. Psychometrika, 30(2), 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02289447
• Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• Kenny, D. A., Kaniskan, B., & McCoach, D. B. (2015). The performance of RMSEA in models with small degrees of freedom. Sociological Methods & Research, 44(3), 486–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124114543236
• Olweus, D. (2006). Gewalt in der Schule: Was Lehrer und Eltern wissen sollten – und tun können (4th ed.). Huber.
• Raykov, T. (1997). Estimation of composite reliability for congeneric measures. Applied Psychological Measurement, 21(2), 173–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/01466216970212006
• Schwarzer, R., & Schmitz, G. S. (1999). Skala zur Lehrer-Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung (WIRKLEHR). Freie Universität Berlin.
• Ulbricht, J. (2017). Lehrerhandeln bei Gewalt und Mobbing – angehende, berufseinsteigende und erfahrene Lehrkräfte im Vergleich. In L. Bilz, W. Schubarth, I. Dudziak, S. Fischer, S. Niproschke, & J. Ulbricht (Eds.), Gewalt und Mobbing an Schulen: Wie sich Gewalt und Mobbing entwickelt haben, wie Lehrer intervenieren und welche Kompetenzen sie brauchen (pp. 129–144). Klinkhardt Forschung.
• Yoon, J. S. (2004). Predicting teacher interventions in bullying situations. Education and Treatment, 27(1), 37–45.

13. Items of the Scale