An Ohio State University-led study finds that school administrators are more likely to experience verbal and threatening aggression from parents than teachers or school mental health professionals. The study was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic during the height of restrictions and continued after those were lifted.
WOSU’s Debbie Holmes spoke to Eric Anderman, an Ohio State professor of educational psychology and vice provost for regional campuses at OSU.
Debbie Holmes: Now how was the study conducted and who was included in that study?
Eric Anderman: The study was conducted as part of the work of a task force on educator violence that was put together by the American Psychological Association. And I'm one of the members of that group. And what we did was collect data. We were about to launch a very large national study about when COVID-19 happened. Literally, it was going to launch in March 2020. So, we pivoted a bit and we decided to change the design of the study to incorporate the pandemic. We invited teachers and school administrators and school mental health personnel.
Debbie Holmes: So, how many people in all then do you think were part of this study?
Eric Anderman: Well, there was data collected at three different time points, but there were about 12,000 to 15,000 at each wave.
Debbie Holmes: You focused on verbal aggression and threats school personnel experience. Explain what is happening regularly at schools then about that.
Eric Anderman: What we found is that there's a lot of aggression happening and it's mostly verbal. We and other people have looked at whether or not there's physical aggression. There is some of that, but primarily it happens in the form of verbal aggression. And the primary things that educators are experiencing are being intimidated by parents, being recipients of obscene remarks or gestures, verbal threats and bullying.
Debbie Holmes: Tell me how the numbers changed then for threats made during and after the pandemic.
Eric Anderman: Well, what was fascinating was this existed before the pandemic, and it went down during the pandemic, and it came back even stronger after the pandemic. And one of the most surprising findings is that this persisted during the pandemic when so many schools were remote. It was still going on. There was quite a dip, but it was still happening even at that time.
Debbie Holmes: How often did these incidents become violent?
Eric Anderman: Well, we didn't look specifically, in the study, at physically aggressive behavior. So, I can't answer that. It's a great question.
Debbie Holmes: Why were school administrators more of the target then by parents?
Eric Anderman: Well, that was a surprise to us, but it came out consistently and all the different time points that we looked at. Administrators are the ones who handle the brunt of the difficult interactions when there are very, very bad behavior problems. It often gets referred to an administrator. Administrators have to be at school board meetings. There's been a lot of coverage by the media showing some of the anger that parents have had at schools during and since the pandemic, and again, administrators are those individuals and they're the face of the school. They're the ones who are often dealing with the most difficult situations.
Debbie Holmes: So, did you see then that the numbers were higher after the pandemic or during the pandemic?
Eric Anderman: They were higher after the pandemic. That was when they became the highest. We think it's because of several things. And in the study, we talk about some of these. One of them is the increased politicization of education that's been happening. Parents being very angry with regard to learning losses that their kids experienced and looking for somebody to blame. The administrator is often the one who has to deal with that. Parents being dissatisfied with how some schools reacted during the pandemic and after the pandemic when kids came back in terms of policies related to whether they had to wear masks and things like that. It was a perfect storm of all of these things coming together.
Debbie Holmes: How can this research help reduce tension?
Eric Anderman: We hope that it can help a great deal. Two of the most important buffers that came out of this were parent and educator relationships and student and community strengths. So, what that told us is that when there were good relationships, positive relationships between parents and students that were established before and maintained over a long term, the aggressive acts were less likely to happen. And when there is community support for the school, meaning that the district supports the school and supports education, the neighborhood is very supportive of education, and when students are engaging in basically positive behaviors, when students are attending, when they're engaged, when they are following rules, it's less likely to happen.
