Seen and Heard: Listening to Children and Creating Caring Schools

Exploring the relationship between bullying and care through surveying students in a sample of South African Catholic schools, this study speaks to the important role of teachers in securing student wellbeing, as well as the significance of institutional culture in influencing the interactions of bullying and care.This study investigated the extent and nature of bullying in a sample of Catholic schools, and specifically explored the relationship between bullying and the ethos of care in schools. An assumption tested in the study was that there would be less bullying in schools where students felt that teachers showed more care and concern towards them. While gender differences are the most striking, differences along lines of language (and possibly, therefore, race) are evident too, albeit to a lesser extent.