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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1432013

Associations between Teachers’ Beliefs and Their Perception of Hate Speech in School: A Study in Germany and Switzerland

Provisionally accepted
Julia Kansok-Dusche Julia Kansok-Dusche 1*Alexander Wettstein Alexander Wettstein 2Saskia Fischer Saskia Fischer 1,3Sebastian Wachs Sebastian Wachs 4,5Ludwig Bilz Ludwig Bilz 1
  • 1 Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Senftenberg, Germany
  • 2 University of Teacher Education Bern, Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 3 Faculty of Applied Social Sciences, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden, Germany
  • 4 Department of Educational Sciences, University of Muenster, Germany, Münster, Germany
  • 5 Anti-Bullying Research Centre, Dublin City University, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Hate speech is a global issue that is also prevalent among adolescents and requires an educational response. Teachers handle hate speech as part of their professional role. To date, we know little about their beliefs in relation to the early stages of their interventional actions, specifically to their perception of hate speech in school. Thus, this study examined associations between teachers' social dominance orientation, their pluralist attitude, and their hate speech perception in school. A sample of 471 secondary school teachers from 38 schools (Germany: n = 251; Switzerland: n = 220) participated in a self-report survey from December 2020 to April 2021 (MAge = 42.8 years; 57.7% females; 21.0% with migration status). Data from a total of 3,560 students from grades 7 to 9 (Germany: n = 1,841; Switzerland: n = 1,719)were matched with teachers' data to control for students' hate speech perception in school.Fixed effects multilevel regressions were run, including covariates (teachers' age, gender, migration status, students' hate speech perception), teachers' social dominance orientation, pluralist attitude, and their hate speech perception in school. Teachers perceived a higher frequency of offline hate speech than online hate speech. Contrary to the hypotheses, social dominance orientation was positively associated with offline and online hate speech perception. As predicted, teachers' pluralist attitude was positively linked to their off-and online hate speech perception. Further research must now clarify how the investigated beliefs and attitudes and teachers' hate speech perception in school relate to other aspects of their professional competence.

    Keywords: hate speech perception, teachers, School, beliefs, Social dominance orientation, pluralist attitude

    Received: 13 May 2024; Accepted: 07 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kansok-Dusche, Wettstein, Fischer, Wachs and Bilz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Julia Kansok-Dusche, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Senftenberg, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.