Beyond the individual: Latent growth patterns of schoolwide bullying perpetration, traditional victimization, and cyber victimization in relation to social and emotional learning

Guided by the social-ecological model, we employed growth mixture models in this study to examine (a) the trajectories of student perceived schoolwide bullying perpetration, and the prevalence of traditional bullying victimization and cyberbullying victimization aggregated at school level and (b) the longitudinal impact of four domains of social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, school level, ethnic diversity index, and school size, on these trajectories. Through results of the latent class growth modeling on four years (2017–2020) of longitudinal data collected from 142 schools with an average of 36,403 students in the state of Delaware, United States, we found that schoolwide bullying perpetration followed four growth trajectories: high-start-high-growth, moderate-start-high-growth, moderate-start-low-growth, and low-start-low-growth. Schoolwide cyberbullying victimization showed two growth trajectories, including high-start-low-growth, and low-start-high-growth. Schoolwide traditional bullying victimization followed a linear growth over four years. In terms of the longitudinal impact of SEL competencies, only social awareness negatively contributed to the growth of schoolwide bullying perpetration. School levels and ethnic diversity index were also associated with some growth trajectories for schoolwide bullying and cyberbullying victimization. Practical implications for schoolwide efforts in bullying interventions and programming are discussed.