Bullying has recently drawn ongoing concerns in school environments globally due to its widespread incidence and harm to students’ emotional well-being and academic engagement (Al Ali et al., 2025). As role models, authoritative figures and agents who shape institutional norms, teachers are uniquely positioned to impact the bullying dynamics (e.g. Colpin et al., 2021). However, there is still little precise and widely accepted conceptualisation of teacher responses to bullying, especially in secondary schools (e.g., Colpin et al., 2021). This systematic literature review (SLR) thus synthesises and discusses empirical studies to conceptualise how teachers respond to bullying and what influences their strategies across secondary education contexts.  In the light of Bronfenbrenner’s (1981) socio-ecological framework, this study puts forward to implications for policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders in dealing with bullying.

This study draws on Bronfenbrenner's (1981) socio-ecological framework to understand teacher responses to bullying across microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems and chronosystems. Within this ecosystem, teachers are situated within a multi-stakeholder network that calls for coordinated efforts by parents, school leadership team and policy frameworks to address student bullying. In this sense, factors across different tiers of this socio-ecological system may impact teacher responses and result in a range of responses when they witness bullying incidents (Görzig et al., 2025). At the same time, students observe and make sense of teacher responses as models for behavioural and learnt norms that reflect whether bullying is accepted or condemned in schools and can result in their behavioural intentions about bullying (Burger et al., 2022). As such, understanding teacher responses to student bullying is underpinned within the mechanisms of how teachers impact student behaviours and the broader socio-ecological context that shapes their perceptions, decisions and intervention strategies.

The growing attention to teachers’ potential role in addressing student bullying has resulted in various reviews on teacher responses to bullying over the past decade. Van Verseveld et al. (2019) explored how school-based antibullying programmes influence teachers’ attitudes, self-efficacy and responses. Dawes et al. (2024) examined teacher attitudes-responses correlation, and van Aalst et al. (2024) established a framework to elucidate and predict teachers’ intervention through their traits and behaviours. While all three reviews adopt the theory of planned behaviour to focus mainly on individual level factors (i.e., intentions) in relation to their responses, this approach has been considered as “too narrowly conceived” for not including broader factors (Rigby, 2024, p. 106). Also, O’Brien et al. (2024) proposed a model for comprehending personal and environmental factors related to teacher responses. Similarly, Gizzarelli et al., (2023) undertook a scoping review on staff responses to student-reported bullying and associated individual-institutional factors but acknowledged that their results could be distorted by including studies with poor methodology and measurement biases. Other existing reviews have had narrow focus areas of teacher responses to cyberbullying (Macaulay et al., 2021) or in primary education (van Aalst et al., 2024). This gap might undermine understanding anti-bullying support systems across educational levels, especially given the significant prevalence of bullying in secondary education (Martínez Sánchez et al., 2019). Over recent years, no review has systematically conceptualised teacher responses to student bullying in the broader ecosystem of secondary education based on empirical evidence while following quality assessment processes for included studies. Given this anchor, this SLR addresses the following research questions:

1. What teacher responses to bullying have been examined in the existing literature on secondary education?

2. What factors influencing teachers' responses to bullying have been identified in previous research?

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021) were adopted to ensure the accuracy and comprehensiveness of this SLR. In terms of inclusion/exclusion criteria, studies must be published in peer-reviewed English-language journals from 2016 to 2025. They must present empirical evidence on teacher responses to peer bullying among students and associated factors from the perspectives of teachers and students in secondary education. Teacher-targeted bullying or cyberbullying is outside the research focus. The search was conducted on Proquest (ERIC and Education databases), Scopus and Web of Science due to their esteemed reputations in the educational field. Clusters of keywords and equivalent synonyms were used in the search string, including (1) actors/stakeholders (students and teachers); (2) main theme (bullying, bullied); and (3) perspectives and responses/strategies. Secondary education terminology was not included in search syntax due to its wide variation across contexts, such as secondary schools, middle schools and high schools (UNESCO, 1995). To avoid excluding relevant studies, we deliberately chose a broader approach. Initial search yielded 1246 studies. After removing 287 duplicates, 959 studies were identified for (1) titles and abstracts, and (2) full-text screening. To ensure reliability, the first and second authors independently screened 10% of the total in each stage, and discrepancies were addressed through discussions with the third author. Following title and abstract screening, 229 studies were selected for full-text review. 79 studies met all eligibility criteria and were evaluated predicated on a 14-criteria framework adapted from Nguyen et al.'s (2024) reporting quality framework and Gorard's (2024) methodological quality framework. The authors independently evaluated 10% of studies and convened to reach consensus before completing appraisal process. Five low-quality studies were excluded, and 74 studies that meet at least 70% of the quality criteria were retained and imported into NVivo for analysis. Thematic synthesis (Thomassen & Munthe, 2021) was employed: (1) free line-by-line coding of primary study findings; (2) constructing ‘descriptive themes’ by grouping these ‘free codes’ into similar categories; and (3) developing ‘analytical’ themes. To ensure coding consistency and trustworthiness, the first and second authors collaboratively coded eight studies (equivalent to over 10% of sample) in the calibration phase. The authors discussed coding decisions, identified coding discrepancies and refined coding framework. The remaining publications were then coded using the established codebook. The research team then reviewed emerging codes and subcodes, cross-verified each other’s work and discussed uncertainties until full consensus was achieved.

This SLR provides theoretical and practical insights into teachers’ strategies (emotional, instrumental and informational support strategies across individual, class and school levels together with unresponsive approaches) and factors influencing their responses to student bullying. One important finding is that authoritarian-punitive and unresponsive approaches emerge as prevalent measures by teachers, which escalates the circle of ‘revenge’ and power imbalances. Also, teachers usually discipline bullies while providing minimal emotional support to perpetrators and blaming victims. When receiving blame, victimised students may adopt bullying behaviours to seek attention and care they need (Winnicott, 2016). Such responses reflect teachers’ misunderstanding of bullying dynamics and unawareness of students’ mental health or emotional experiences in bullying contexts. Second, this study extends O’Brien et al.'s (2024) model and van Aalst et al., (2024) focus on primary education to conceptualising teacher responses to student bullying within secondary education through the socio-ecological framework. While individual elements like teacher self-efficacy and emotional intelligence predict intervention intentions, these attributes might be undermined by interpersonal dynamics (i.e. student characteristics: angry victims, high-achieving perpetrators) and systemic barriers (i.e. heavy workloads, lack of autonomy and academic-focused cultures) that push teachers toward punitive measures, non-intervention or protecting high-achieving bullies. This multi-tiered cross-level influence might create an ongoing circle where ineffective responses become normalised, affect their peers’ responses and shape school culture that reinforces societal acceptance of bullying. This study takes initial steps towards conceptualising teacher responses to bridge theoretical understanding with actionable practice. The study has implications for teacher professional development and beyond in equipping the workforce with the capacity to identify bullying and students’ emotional needs and effectively prevent and address school bullying. This can contribute to developing whole-school strategies to deal with school bullying and fostering secure learning environments where teachers are part of the solution, not carrying the burden alone.

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