The influence of perceived administrator support on the relationship between aggression against teachers and teachers’ reports of well-being in the workplace

The topic of aggression against teachers is of utmost importance in schools and in our communities. While there has been a growing interest in aggression against teachers within the literature over the past two decades, many of these studies have focused on prevalence rates and the topography of aggression against teachers, or have focused on the impact of aggression on students. This study aimed to further explore teachers’ experiences with aggression, specifically student-perpetrated aggression against teachers and the impact of such on teachers’ well-being in the workplace. Teachers’ well-being is compromised when teachers experience aggression in the workplace, which often results in a series of negative implications for the teachers themselves, their students, the school, and the community. While studies have shown that access to support from other staff members in the workplace can serve as a buffer to the deleterious effects of aggression against teachers, the support that teachers receive from their administrators has been found to play a key role in how teachers experience aggression. Framed in Self-Determination theory, this cross-sectional, non-experimental study reviewed survey responses collected from 342 certified special education and general education teachers in the United States to analyze the relationship between aggression against teachers and teachers’ reports of well-being, and sought to determine whether a significant indirect effect exists between aggression against teachers and teachers’ reports of well-being in the workplace when perceived administrator support is included in the model as an intervening variable. Percentile bootstrap confidence intervals were used to find evidence of a statistically significant indirect effect. Results indicated that a negative and statistically significant association existed between aggression against teachers and teacher well-being in the workplace, that a negative and statistically significant association existed between aggression against teachers and perceived administrator support, and finally, that a positive and statistically significant association existed between perceived administrator support and teacher well-being in the workplace. Finally, a theoretical model positing perceived administrator support as an intervening variable to the association between aggression against teachers and teacher well-being in the workplace fit the data well.