Abstract:

The digitalization of schools is a multi-dimensional process, spanning many different areas from infrastructure and administrative routines to pedagogical issues, competence development, and student learning [1]. In an increasingly digitalized society cyberbullying of children and young people constitutes a high-profile problem [2-4] yet there are also reports where teachers become vulnerable in the digital environment. Digital vulnerability refers to pressure, violations, and bullying in digital environments. This may include receiving threatening messages on the school's learning platform or being hung out on social media. For example, Kauppi and Pörhölä [5] conducted a study among primary and lower secondary school teachers in Finland which showed that 7.6% of the teachers experienced cyberbullying from pupils at least occasionally. However, as of today, we have little knowledge of how teachers' digital vulnerability is manifested in practice. This study aims to explore teachers' experiences of digital vulnerability in relation to the teaching profession. An online questioner was developed and distributed to teachers (K-12) via teachers' Facebook groups. The questionnaire was based on open-ended questions where teachers were asked to tell in their own words about their experiences of digital vulnerability, including in which situations, how they were affected, and what support they received. The data analysis was conducted based on an iterative process by qualitative content analysis and the use of ideal types [6]. The purpose of the analysis was to create narratives with the most important characteristics of different experiences. The ideal types are thus a composition of the respondents' perspectives and experiences The contribution of the paper includes theorization about teachers' digital vulnerability by ideal types, and future directions for research are discussed.

References:
[1] S. Willermark, "Understanding the meaning of digitally competent leadership in schools: A review of research," in INTED2021, 2021, 2021, pp. 3095-3103, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21125/inted.2021.0655.
[2] S. Kaiser, H. Kyrrestad, and S. Fossum, "Cyberbullying status and mental health in Norwegian adolescents," Scandinavian journal of psychology, vol. 61, no. 5, pp. 707-713, 2020.
[3] P. L. Lindfors, R. Kaltiala-Heino, and A. H. Rimpelä, "Cyberbullying among Finnish adolescents–a population-based study," BMC public health, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1-5, 2012.
[4] A. Arnarsson et al., "Cyberbullying and traditional bullying among Nordic adolescents and their impact on life satisfaction," Scandinavian journal of public health, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 502-510, 2020.
[5] T. Kauppi and M. Pörhölä, "Teachers bullied by students: Forms of bullying and perpetrator characteristics," Perspectives on Bullying: Research on Childhood, Workplace, and Cyberbullying, vol. 27, no. 3, p. 117, 2015.
[6] M. Weber, Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Univ of California Press, 1978.

Keywords:

'digital vulnerability’, cyberbullying, digitalization, school, teacher.