Resilience to Teacher-targeted School Violence: The Roles of School Climate and Social Emotional Competence among Novice Teachers

Chunyan Yang

Research has indicated that teacher-directed violence (teachers' experience with being targeted by the violent and aggressive behaviors from students) is associated with a wide range of negative teacher and student outcomes, which could potentially contribute to teacher turnover and teacher shortage. However, research to date has not rigorously examined teacher-directed violence's casual linkage with teachers' turnover and other teacher wellbeing indicators, particularly among novice teachers. There is also a scarcity of research identifying the resilience factors that could mitigate the negative impacts of teacher-directed violence on novice teachers' wellbeing. Guided by the attribution and resilience frameworks, this proposed project will use a multi-methods approach to study a group of geographically diverse teachers graduated from teacher education programs in California during their first two years of teaching. The project aims to (a) refine and validate multidimensional measures assessing teacher-directed violence and teacher social emotional competence; (b) examine the longitudinal linkage between teacher-directed violence and teacher wellbeing; and (c) understand the roles of novice teachers' social emotional competence and school climate perception in shaping their resilience trajectory in the face of teacher-directed violence. Findings will provide researchers, educators, and policy makers with implications for evidenced-based decision making and intervention addressing teacher-directed violence and teacher shortage.

About Chunyan Yang

Dr. Chunyan Yang is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education at University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests focus on understanding how school members (i.e., students, teachers, and parents) interact with their social contexts to find their resilience in the face of a variety of risk factors, including bullying, teacher-targeted violence, and mental health challenges. Dr. Yang received her Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in School Psychology from the University of Delaware in 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked as a school psychologist in a large school district in northern Colorado and an assistant professor of school psychology at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Yang was the recipients of the 2016 Outstanding Dissertation Award from American Psychological Association Division 16: School Psychology, the 2019 Early Career Research Award from the Society of the Study of School Psychology, and 2019 Early Career Award from the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention for Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Bullying Abuse Prevention.