When the Mean Girls Grow Up: Workplace Bullying in Education

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being bullied in a profession devoted to children, belonging and inclusion.

Perhaps you have experienced it. You walk into the staff room and conversations change. People who once spoke freely around you become guarded. You discover that conversations about you have been taking place without you. You stop being included. Information everyone else seems to have somehow does not reach you. Your ideas are dismissed, but occasionally resurface later through someone else. Your accomplishments receive little attention while your mistakes suddenly seem remarkably important.

Nothing is quite serious enough to point to as the incident. That is often the problem.

There may be no shouting, threats or obvious confrontation. Instead, there can be dozens of smaller experiences: exclusion, gossip, humiliation, withholding information, fault-finding, questioning competence, alliances, favouritism, reputational damage or interference with someone’s ability to do her job. Researchers use terms such as workplace bullying, relational aggression, workplace incivility, ostracism, social undermining and social exclusion to describe different aspects of these behaviours.

Eventually, something begins happening inside the person being targeted. She starts wondering whether the problem is actually her.

“Mean girl” is not a psychological diagnosis, and relational aggression is certainly not exclusively female. Men and women can exclude, manipulate, intimidate, gossip, undermine and bully. There is also insufficient evidence to claim that education attracts a disproportionate number of women who behaved this way during adolescence.

Yet the phrase resonates with many women because they recognize a particular form of aggression that does not depend upon physical intimidation. It operates through relationships. It determines who belongs, who is invited, who receives information, who is trusted, who has access to influential people, who becomes the subject of conversation and who gradually finds herself outside the circle.

Crothers, Lipinski and Minutolo (2009) examined female workplace bullying through the lens of relational aggression, including behaviours involving cliques, rumours and gossip. The behaviour may look more sophisticated in adulthood than it did in junior high, but some of the social mechanisms can be remarkably familiar.

The lunchroom has simply become the staff room.

We Bring Our Relational Histories to Work

Adults do not arrive in workplaces without histories.

Long before we become teachers, principals, superintendents, secretaries, educational assistants or counsellors, we learn about relationships somewhere else. For most people, the family is the first place where we learn what happens when people disagree, whether love is secure or conditional, whether mistakes are tolerated, how anger is expressed, whether people apologize and whether vulnerability is safe.

We also learn something about power. We learn whether conflict is discussed directly or managed through silence, alliances and triangulation. We learn whether one family member becomes the problem whenever the family is under strain. We learn whether people speak to one another or about one another. We learn whether affection can be withdrawn as punishment. We learn whether belonging is secure or something that can be taken away.

Children do not simply forget these relational templates when they become adults.

Developmental research, social learning theory and the broader family-relations literature all give us reason to consider how early relational patterns can influence later interpersonal functioning. This does not mean every workplace bully came from a dysfunctional family, and it certainly does not mean a difficult childhood creates a bully. Many people emerge from profoundly unhealthy families and become highly compassionate, self-aware adults.

Human development is not that deterministic.

But patterns can travel.

A child who grows up learning that conflict is handled through triangulation may continue triangulating as an adult. Someone who learned that alliances provide safety may become exceptionally invested in alliances at work. Someone raised in a family where one person was routinely blamed may become comfortable participating in scapegoating. A person who learned that vulnerability is dangerous may respond to criticism by attacking or discrediting the person who raised the concern.

Likewise, someone whose sense of worth became organized around comparison may experience another person’s success not simply as good news for that person, but as a threat to herself.

Our families of origin do not determine our destinies, but unless we examine what we learned there, we can carry old relational strategies into new rooms.

Sometimes the new room is a school.

Competition, Status and the Need to Belong

Education is built upon collaboration, at least in principle. Good teachers share resources, mentor younger colleagues, exchange ideas, solve problems together and celebrate one another’s successes.

Schools, however, are also human organizations, and human organizations contain status.

There are desirable assignments, leadership opportunities, preferred committees, public recognition and different levels of access to decision-makers. Some teachers are especially well-liked by parents or students. Some are seen as innovative. Some receive praise from administration. Some become department heads or move into leadership more quickly.

Professional ambition is not inherently unhealthy, and neither is competition. Excellence should be recognized.

The problem begins when another person’s success is experienced as one’s own diminishment.

Collaboration can quietly become comparison. Admiration can become envy. A gifted new teacher can be experienced as a threat. A colleague who is particularly well-liked by parents can become irritating rather than impressive. A teacher who challenges established practice can be labelled difficult. Someone receiving recognition can suddenly need to be “taken down a notch.”

In unhealthy workplaces, relationships themselves can become professional currency. Proximity to leadership matters. Seniority matters. Popularity matters. Access matters. Information matters.

And informal power can sometimes be every bit as consequential as the title printed on someone’s office door.

This is where an important distinction needs to be made. The person doing the bullying is not necessarily socially awkward or obviously unpleasant. Sometimes the opposite is true.

A relationally aggressive person may be socially sophisticated. She may understand alliances exceptionally well. She may know exactly which relationships matter. She may be charming upward while behaving very differently laterally or downward. She may be attentive to reputation and skilled at cultivating the people who can advance or protect her.

This helps explain the bewildering question many targets eventually ask:

How does nobody else see this?

Perhaps because everyone else is not being treated the same way.

The administrator may know one version of the person. Parents may know another. Students may know another. Close allies may know another. The target may be experiencing behaviour that occurs only where the aggressor believes it is socially safe.

Professional competence and relational maturity are not the same thing. A person can be creative, intelligent, organized, charismatic, popular with students and admired by parents while simultaneously being deeply damaging in adult relationships.

That is one reason bullying can be so difficult for organizations to recognize.

When Fault-Finding Becomes a Weapon

One of the most corrosive features of workplace bullying is selective fault-finding.

Everyone makes mistakes. Healthy workplaces understand this. Problems are addressed proportionately, people learn, corrections are made and work continues.

But once someone has become a target, her mistakes can acquire a significance that other people’s mistakes do not.

A small oversight becomes evidence of carelessness. A disagreement becomes evidence that she is difficult. A question becomes evidence that she is resistant. A bad day becomes evidence of instability. An ordinary misunderstanding becomes part of a larger narrative about her character.

At the same time, something almost inverse may begin happening to her accomplishments.

They disappear.

The successful program receives little attention. The struggling student she helped is forgotten. The initiative she developed becomes something “the department” did. The parent who praises her is dismissed. Her years of strong evaluations somehow carry less weight than a recent criticism. An idea she introduces can be ignored and later celebrated when someone else presents something remarkably similar.

Sometimes her accomplishments are not merely overlooked but ridiculed.

She is “showing off.” She “thinks she’s better than everyone.” She is “trying too hard.” She “always has to be noticed.”

The target begins to discover that there is no safe way to succeed.

If she performs poorly, she is incompetent.

If she performs exceptionally well, she is arrogant.

If parents appreciate her, she is cultivating parents.

If students love her, she is trying to be popular.

If she receives recognition, she wants attention.

If she introduces something innovative, she thinks she is better than everyone else.

This creates a no-win relational system because failure confirms the negative narrative and success is reinterpreted so that it confirms the narrative too.

That is not constructive feedback.

Healthy criticism has a purpose. It is proportionate, specific, tied to performance and reasonably consistent across employees. The goal is improvement.

Fault-finding in a bullying dynamic is different because the target herself has become the problem.

The standard keeps moving.

She addresses one concern and another appears. She corrects that concern and something else suddenly becomes important. She works harder, becomes more careful and prepares more thoroughly, but she never quite arrives at the place where the scrutiny stops.

Sometimes the problem was never actually her work.

Scapegoating and the Creation of a “Problem Person”

Selective fault-finding often leads naturally into scapegoating.

A complicated workplace problem gradually becomes attached to one individual.

She is negative. She is difficult. She causes conflict. She does not collaborate. She cannot take feedback. She has an attitude. She is not a good fit.

Once this identity becomes established, almost anything the person does can be interpreted through it.

If she speaks up, she is confrontational. If she becomes quiet, she is disengaged. If she defends herself, she is defensive. If she becomes emotional, she is unstable. If she remains composed, she is cold. If she documents what is happening, she is obsessive. If she fails to document it, there is no evidence.

The target begins losing access to neutral interpretation.

Everything now means something.

And once several people begin repeating the same description, repetition itself can start sounding like proof.

One person says, “I’ve had concerns about her.”

Someone else replies, “Actually, now that you mention it, I’ve noticed something too.”

Soon the language becomes, “Several people have concerns.”

Eventually it becomes, “There have been longstanding concerns.”

But ten people repeating variations of one circulating narrative do not necessarily represent ten independent sources of evidence.

Sometimes it is one story travelling through ten people.

Healthy leadership knows the difference.

When Other People Join In

Popular culture sometimes calls the people recruited around a bully “flying monkeys.” It is not a scientific or diagnostic term, but many targets immediately understand what it describes: people who begin carrying, reinforcing or acting upon someone else’s negative narrative.

Not everyone who joins in is malicious.

Some genuinely believe the story they have been told. Some want the approval of the more powerful person. Some recognize where influence lies and choose the safer side. Some fear becoming the next target. Some simply want to belong.

Others may not actively mistreat the target at all. They withdraw.

They stop inviting. They stop defending. They stop correcting misinformation. They stop challenging comments they suspect are unfair.

And slowly, the original interpersonal conflict becomes a social environment.

This is one of the reasons ostracism can be so psychologically destructive. The target is no longer dealing only with one difficult person. She begins to feel as though she has lost the group.

For a person who has spent years believing she belonged to a staff community, that can be devastating.

Sabotage Rarely Looks Dramatic

The word sabotage sounds extreme, but workplace sabotage can be remarkably ordinary.

Someone does not receive information necessary to complete a task. A message is not passed along. Instructions are incomplete, but the resulting mistake becomes evidence of incompetence. The employee is excluded from planning and later criticized for being uninformed. Her idea is appropriated. Her mistake is amplified. Her accomplishment disappears. Questions about her competence begin circulating before she even enters the room. Sometimes her workload is massively increased making her late to arrive at fixed times. She is looked at as “tardy” or “disorganized.”

Recent scholarship on toxic teacher behaviour has identified gossiping and sabotaging colleagues among behaviours that can damage trust, professional respect and school culture.

This is why organizations get into trouble when they look only for one dramatic act.

Relational aggression often leaves a pattern rather than a smoking gun.

Sometimes the most effective sabotage is not making the target fail outright. It is creating conditions that make her job more difficult, then using the resulting struggle as evidence that the original criticism was justified.

When the Bully Gains Formal Power

This becomes even more consequential when someone skilled at social influence, alliances or intimidation acquires formal organizational power.

It would go beyond the evidence to claim that workplace bullies generally rise through educational leadership faster than everyone else. We do not have sufficient research to say that.

But organizational research gives us reason to examine what happens when manipulative or destructive interpersonal behaviour coexists with political skill, charisma or formal authority.

Once informal power becomes formal power, the tools available to exclude another person become much greater.

The person who once controlled the social group may now influence assignments, committees, opportunities, professional development, access to decision-makers, recommendations, evaluations and whose concerns receive attention.

She may influence whose accomplishments are noticed and whose mistakes matter.

And sometimes she may influence which version of events becomes the official one.

At that point, relational aggression stops looking like “mean girl behaviour.”

It can begin looking administrative.

When Administration Joins the Dynamic

This is where workplace bullying can become profoundly damaging.

A disagreement between two colleagues is one thing.

A colleague with organizational authority behind her is something else entirely.

Research on workplace bullying repeatedly identifies organizational context and leadership as important. Leadership can reduce aggression, ignore it, inadvertently reward it or sometimes participate in it.

Teacher-specific research is particularly revealing. Kollerová and colleagues (2023), studying 740 teachers, found workplace-bullying victimization was positively associated with teacher exhaustion. Social support, including leadership support, mattered.

I saw a version of this firsthand during my own years in education.

Interestingly, the employees involved were not teachers. They were two secretaries working in a junior-high-school setting.

One secretary persistently mistreated the other.

What stayed with me, however, was not simply the original bullying. It was watching the dynamic expand. Administration became involved, and what had begun as mistreatment between two employees acquired organizational power. I was in a meeting where where the Principal literally started making fun of the ostracized secretary, and mocking her to the group. This was only one example that I witnessed at this highly toxic workplace in a Junior High School.

That experience changed how I understood workplace bullying.

Sometimes the most damaging part is not the original aggressor.

It is what happens when the surrounding system begins participating in her interpretation of the target.

The person being mistreated is no longer simply navigating one difficult relationship. She may feel that she is now facing the organization itself.

And that changes everything.

The Slow Erosion of Self-Trust

Perhaps this is the part of workplace bullying that outsiders understand least.

People imagine that bullying hurts because someone is being mean to you.

It goes much deeper.

Sustained relational mistreatment can begin altering your relationship with yourself.

The target generally does not possess all of the information. Other people may know what is being said about her. She does not.

She simply notices that people are behaving differently. Someone stops talking to her. Another person becomes guarded. She is no longer included. An administrator who once seemed supportive suddenly appears suspicious.

She senses that something has changed, but she cannot locate its source.

So she searches herself for an explanation.

What did I do? Did I offend someone? Am I difficult? Maybe I am too sensitive. Why does everyone else seem to like her? Perhaps I really am the problem. Maybe I’m not as good at my job as I thought.

That is how self-doubt accumulates.

Not necessarily in one catastrophic moment.

Drop by drop.

Selective fault-finding accelerates this process. When someone repeatedly identifies your shortcomings while ignoring your strengths, eventually you may start doing the same thing to yourself.

You become your own fault-finder.

You notice the sentence in your email that could have been phrased better rather than the twenty things you accomplished that day. You remember the student you could not reach instead of the hundreds you helped. You become afraid of mistakes because mistakes no longer feel like ordinary mistakes.

They feel like evidence.

Eventually the target may stop asking only, “Why are they doing this?” and begin asking, “Can I even trust myself?”

Perhaps the colleague is delightful in front of everyone else. Perhaps the administrator insists there is no problem. Perhaps coworkers privately agree with you and then become silent when asked publicly. Perhaps the person mistreating you has many friends. Perhaps she is charismatic. Perhaps she is considered an excellent teacher. Perhaps she has been at the school for twenty-five years and you are new.

Perhaps several people are now repeating the same characterization of you.

Repetition begins to sound like confirmation.

This is where workplace bullying becomes psychologically destabilizing. The target appears to be surrounded by people experiencing a completely different reality.

The natural conclusion becomes:

Maybe their reality is the correct one.

The Emotional and Professional Cost

Workplace bullying can affect far more than job satisfaction.

Teacher-specific research associates bullying victimization with exhaustion. Broader workplace research links bullying and ostracism with psychological distress, burnout, poorer occupational well-being and deteriorating attitudes toward work.

The academic words can sound almost too tidy.

Exhaustion. Burnout. Strain.

The lived experience looks different.

It can mean waking at three in the morning replaying yesterday’s meeting. Your stomach drops when a particular name appears in your inbox. Sunday evening begins feeling different from Saturday evening. You rehearse conversations before entering the building. You reread a perfectly ordinary email five times before pressing send.

You stop volunteering ideas.

You eat lunch in your classroom.

You take the longer route down the hallway.

You become quieter.

You cry in the car.

You tell your spouse the same story repeatedly because you are still trying to understand what happened.

You begin dreading a profession you once loved.

And eventually you may begin believing something that would once have seemed impossible.

Maybe I am not a good teacher.

That belief can become especially powerful because teaching is not merely employment for many educators. It becomes part of identity.

You trained for it. You developed expertise. You remember former students. You stayed late. You spent your own money. You advocated for children. You learned from mistakes. You accumulated years of evidence that you were competent.

Then another person, or eventually a group, begins questioning not only what you did but who you are professionally.

A teacher with twenty years of successful experience can gradually begin wondering whether she somehow fooled everyone.

So she works harder.

She prepares excessively. She overexplains. She apologizes unnecessarily. She becomes hypervigilant about mistakes. She tries desperately to please people who have already decided not to be pleased.

And there is the trap.

If the problem were genuinely poor performance, improved performance might resolve it.

But if the function of the behaviour is social dominance, competition, exclusion, scapegoating or reputational harm, becoming even better at your job may change nothing.

Sometimes your competence was never the problem.

Why Targets Do Not Simply Leave

People sometimes ask why someone does not just leave.

Leaving can mean abandoning students you love, colleagues you value, seniority, benefits, a preferred assignment, years of accumulated professional relationships or the school where you expected to finish your career.

There is also something profoundly unjust about being driven away from something you love because another person behaved badly.

And by the time some people finally consider leaving, their confidence has been eroded so badly that they no longer believe another school would want them.

“Just leave” profoundly underestimates what prolonged workplace bullying can do.

The same is true of bystanders. Targets frequently ask why nobody says anything.

Because bystanders understand power too.

They want favourable assignments. They need positive references. They may hope for promotion. They want belonging. They do not want to become the next target.

Some privately acknowledge what is happening and then become silent publicly.

That silence may be understandable.

It is not neutral.

To the target, silence can feel like agreement.

To the aggressor, silence can feel like permission.

And to administration, silence can create the appearance that everything is fine.

And Then There Are the Students

There is another reason workplace bullying in schools should never be dismissed as staff drama.

Children inhabit the same relational system.

This does not mean a bullied teacher will mistreat students. Many exceptional educators continue caring beautifully for children while enduring terrible workplace environments.

But teachers do not leave their nervous systems in the staff room.

Chronic stress consumes emotional and cognitive resources. Teacher exhaustion matters. School climate matters. And children are exceptionally perceptive observers of adults.

They notice hierarchy. They notice contempt. They notice favourites. They notice who is afraid to speak. They notice whose mistakes are tolerated. They notice whether adults apologize. They notice whether kindness applies only to people we like.

Research involving students across 94 schools found less bullying victimization in schools with more favourable school climates.

That does not prove that adult workplace bullying directly causes student bullying.

It tells us something broader.

Culture matters.

Research also requires us to confront the uncomfortable possibility that relational aggression can move from adult relationships into teacher-student relationships.

Gusfre, Støen and Fandrem’s (2023) scoping review found teacher-to-student bullying documented internationally and identified potential consequences involving students’ mental and physical health, educational participation and later well-being.

A 2024 longitudinal study involving 1,299 adolescents found that students’ perceptions of teacher relational unfairness predicted greater subsequent reactive and proactive aggression and lower school satisfaction. Another 2024 investigation examining more than 106,000 high-school students found teacher bullying associated with elevated student risk behaviours, with students reporting both peer and teacher bullying showing particular concern.

We should not turn associations into simplistic claims of causation.

But neither should we look away.

The Irony Is Difficult to Ignore

Imagine a school holding an anti-bullying assembly in the morning.

Children are told not to exclude people, spread rumours, humiliate someone or use social power to hurt another person. They are told not to stand silently beside someone who does.

Then imagine those same adults attending a staff meeting that afternoon where one employee is systematically marginalized, ridiculed, fault-found or scapegoated and everyone remains silent.

What exactly did we teach that day?

Children learn from curriculum.

But they also learn from culture.

And culture may be the more powerful teacher.

If You Are the Person Being Bullied

If you recognize yourself in this article, stay close to observable behaviour.

You do not need to diagnose the aggressor as narcissistic, sociopathic or anything else in order to recognize mistreatment. In fact, trying to diagnose the person can sometimes distract you from the evidence that actually matters.

Document patterns.

“She hates me” is an interpretation.

“On October 4, every member of the department except me received the revised schedule, and I was subsequently criticized for following the previous schedule” is an observable event.

Keep appropriate communications. Record dates and witnesses. Separate what you know from what you suspect.

And document accomplishments too.

This is important.

When you have been subjected to chronic fault-finding, do not allow the aggressor to become the sole historian of your professional life.

Keep positive evaluations. Remember successful programs. Remember the students you helped. Remember the feedback that existed before the conflict. Remember colleagues who respected you. Remember your successful years. Remember what you know.

A socially powerful group can make its opinion feel like objective reality.

It is not.

Consensus and truth are not synonyms.

Seek reality-based support from people capable of believing workplace bullying exists while still helping you evaluate your situation accurately. Depending upon your circumstances, that may include your union or professional association, a trusted administrator, human-resources professional, physician, therapist, coach or employee-assistance program.

The goal is not simply to prove someone else wrong.

It is to prevent someone else’s behaviour from permanently rewriting how you understand yourself.

Because perhaps the meanest part of prolonged workplace bullying is what happens inside the target.

Eventually the external bully can acquire an internal voice.

Maybe I’m incompetent.

Maybe nobody likes me.

Maybe I create problems.

Maybe I’m too sensitive.

Maybe they’re right about me.

Maybe I should stop speaking.

Maybe I don’t belong here.

At that point, the aggressor no longer has to be in the room.

The target has begun carrying the message herself.

Recovery therefore can involve more than leaving an unhealthy environment or resolving a workplace complaint. It may mean rebuilding trust in your own perceptions, reclaiming professional confidence, learning to tolerate an ordinary mistake without experiencing it as proof of inadequacy, remembering your accomplishments without hearing someone else’s ridicule in your head and separating legitimate feedback from reputational distortion.

It means rediscovering the person you were before someone else began telling you who you were.

Maybe We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

Do “mean girls” grow up and become teachers?

Some undoubtedly do.

So do former bullies who become nurses, lawyers, executives, counsellors, accountants, administrators and parents. Some adolescents who behaved terribly also grow into thoughtful and compassionate adults.

Current research does not demonstrate that education contains a disproportionate number of adult “mean girls.”

So we should not claim that it does.

But research gives us ample reason to ask a much more important question.

What happens when relational aggression enters a profession built upon relationships?

What happens when old relational patterns enter new workplaces? When competition replaces collaboration? When gossip becomes information? When alliances become power? When fault-finding becomes a weapon? When accomplishments are minimized and failures magnified? When one employee becomes the scapegoat? When subtle sabotage is difficult to prove? When other employees are recruited into the narrative? When informal influence becomes formal authority? When leadership joins the dynamic instead of interrupting it?

And what happens inside the teacher, secretary, educational assistant, counsellor or administrator who lives with this month after month?

Those questions matter.

They matter to the teacher eating lunch alone in her classroom because the staff room has become unbearable. They matter to the school secretary crying in her car before entering the building. They matter to the young teacher who has stopped contributing ideas. They matter to the experienced educator wondering how decades of confidence disappeared. They matter to administrators trying to understand why good employees keep leaving.

And ultimately they matter to children.

Because students spend thousands of hours watching adults demonstrate what power looks like. They watch how we treat people who disagree with us. They watch whether difference leads to curiosity or exclusion. They watch what happens when someone makes a mistake. They watch whether the powerful protect the vulnerable. They watch whether people repair relationships. They watch whether kindness extends to people we do not particularly like.

And they are learning.

Always.

Perhaps the most important anti-bullying initiative a school can undertake, therefore, does not begin with another poster directed at children.

Perhaps it begins when the adults become willing to examine themselves.

A healthy school cannot convincingly teach belonging to children while practising exclusion among adults.

If you are experiencing workplace bullying and find yourself increasingly unsure of how to respond, what to say, when to speak up or even whether you are seeing the situation clearly anymore, you do not have to navigate those decisions alone. Practical coaching can be particularly helpful in rebuilding assertiveness, strengthening boundaries and developing the discernment needed to separate legitimate workplace feedback from manipulation, scapegoating or relational aggression.

At Waypoint Wellness & Performance Coaching, George and Lesley work with individuals who need practical, grounded support while navigating difficult interpersonal and workplace relationships. Coaching can help you think through what is happening, identify patterns, communicate more assertively, determine where your influence actually lies and make thoughtful decisions about what to address, what to document, what boundaries may be needed and how to protect your confidence while moving forward.

If this article feels uncomfortably familiar, we invite you to reach out to George or Lesley at Waypoint. Sometimes having an experienced, objective person help you sort through the relational noise can make it much easier to see the situation clearly and decide what comes next.

• To reach out to George or Lesley for coaching support head over to the contact page. Click Here

• For further reading check out, “Embracing Growth.” Click Here

Did you know Lesley is also an author?
Her book Blindsided: Help, Hope & Healing for Parents Coping with Estrangement has reached parents worldwide, offering strength and direction.
📖 See it here on Amazon

 

References

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Crothers, L. M., Lipinski, J., & Minutolo, M. C. (2009). Cliques, rumors, and gossip by the water cooler: Female bullying in the workplace. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 12(2), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/10887150902886423

Fahie, D., & Devine, D. (2014). The impact of workplace bullying on primary school teachers and principals. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 58(2), 235–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2012.725099

Gini, G., Angelini, F., & Pozzoli, T. (2024). Unfair teachers, unhappy students: Longitudinal associations of perceived teacher relational unfairness with adolescent peer aggression and school satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1321050. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1321050

Gusfre, K. S., Støen, J., & Fandrem, H. (2023). Bullying by teachers towards students: A scoping review. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 5, 331–347. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00131-z

Hultin, H., Ferrer-Wreder, L., Engström, K., Andersson, F., & Galanti, M. R. (2021). The importance of pedagogical and social school climate to bullying: A cross-sectional multilevel study of 94 Swedish schools. Journal of School Health, 91(2), 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.12980

Kollerová, L., Květon, P., Zábrodská, K., & Janošová, P. (2023). Teacher exhaustion: The effects of disruptive student behaviors, victimization by workplace bullying, and social support from colleagues. Social Psychology of Education, 26, 885–902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09779-x

McMahon, S. D., Worrell, F. C., Reddy, L. A., Martinez, A., Espelage, D. L., Astor, R. A., Anderman, E. M., Valido, A., Perry, A. H., Dudek, C. M., & Bare, K. (2024). High school teacher bullying and student risk behavior. Journal of Adolescent Health, 75(3), 392–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2024.04.028

Nielsen, M. B., Einarsen, S. V., Parveen, S., & Rosander, M. (2024). Witnessing workplace bullying: A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual health and well-being outcomes. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 75, 101908.

Özer, G., & Escartín, J. (2023). The making and breaking of workplace bullying perpetration: A systematic review on the antecedents, moderators, mediators and outcomes of perpetration. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 69, 101823.

A Note About Terminology

“Mean girl” is used in this article as familiar cultural shorthand rather than as a psychological diagnosis. Relevant research constructs include relational aggression, workplace bullying, workplace incivility, ostracism, social undermining and social exclusion. People of any gender can engage in these behaviours.

The discussion of family-of-origin patterns should likewise not be interpreted to mean that a difficult childhood creates a workplace bully. Early experiences are one of many influences on adult interpersonal functioning, and people are capable of reflection, growth and profound change.

Current research also does not establish that relationally aggressive people disproportionately enter education or that workplace bullies generally advance through educational leadership more rapidly than other employees. What the evidence does support is serious examination of how personality, power, leadership, organizational culture, alliances, social undermining and workplace structures can permit bullying to develop and persist.