INTRODUCTION

Teacher's leadership for extermination of bullying

    Bullying is a serious problem all over the world today. When asked for the solution of bullying, people will come up with some ways such as ethic education or strict punishment. However, there is another key to decreasing bullying; teacher's behavior. According to Shinkichi Sugimori, who is a professor of Tokyo Gakugei University, teacher’s character is highly connected with bullying, that is, teacher's behavior has a big impact on whether students bully someone or not. So, if teachers as classroom leaders try to have a fine attitude, it is possible to create a school environment where bullying is not likely to occur.
    However, what is the fine attitude? According to PM theory which a social psychologist Misumi proposed in order to describe what the favorable leader is, people who have both P (Performance function which is for goal achievement) and M (Maintenance function which is for group stability) strongly tend to work well as a leader. Applying this theory to teachers, Fujihara and Ohki report that teachers who show P and M highly seem to make a comfortable school climate in which students are getting along with one another. It can be said that PM teachers as leaders in classroom can contribute to the extermination of bullying.
    This paper will show how bullying is a serious problem and the importance of teacher's behavior as a key to suppressing bullying. Firstly, it will identify what bullying is and how bullying is terrible. Secondly, it will introduce PM theory to show the leader's impact on the group mood. Lastly, it will present how teacher's behavior affects students in order to show the possibility to get rid of bullying from school.