Over the last decade as well as currently, teachers confront new challenges arising from the emergence of on ine bullying acts, known as cyberbullying phenomenon (Espelage & Sung-Hong, 2016; Eden et al., 2014). Cyberbullying (CB), "The threat without a face", is defined as an intentional online act via electronic media aiming to harm, embarrass and/or humiliate another person (Smith et al., 2008; Bilik, 2013). Coping with CB raises new challenges as a result of its' unique characteristics, mainly characterized by an overtime repetitive pattern, anonymity, massive audience, easy access, online disinhibition effects, difficulty in exposure, revealing and reporting and absence of non-verbal massages. CB has a direct impact on the learning and teaching dynamics as well as an impact on student emotional and social functioning in class and in school, Teachers are requested to cope with CB in three main dimensions : the harm to the student (Cyber-victim/cyber-perpetrator) as an individual or a group, the scholastic, social, and psychological impacts on the student and as cyber-victims themselves. In current research literature there are only few studies concerning teachers' coping with CB among their students and the factors affect the effectiveness of teachers' coping. This study examined teaching background factors and personal-psychological factors that may affect their coping with CB. 644 teachers with the majority of female teachers (81.5%), fulfilled self-reported questionnaires referring to: CB coping, empathy, level of teachers communication with students and teacher' self-efficacy. Results have shown that overall teachers reported on moderate levels of cyberbullying coping (M= 3.96, SD = 0.49), moderate levels of teachers' communication with students (M= 3.66, SD = .39), high levels of sense of empathy (M= 3.11, SD = .35), and high levels of teachers' self-efficacy (M= 4.29, SD = .53). Pearson correlations have indicated that female teachers reported on significantly higher level of empathy and communication with students than males. Seniority of teaching was correlated significantly positively with high level of empathy and high levels of communication with students, which illuminate the fact that the more teachers are experienced in the educational system, the higher their levels of communication with students and self-efficacy as teachers. CB coping was also correlated positively with empathy, with communication with students and with teachers' self-efficacy. A multiple regression analysis for predicting teachers' effective coping with CB have revealed a significant model showing that the independent variables: seniority, empathy and teachers' communication with student may predict teachers' coping with CB, whereas age and gender do not. In addition, the interaction between teachers' self-efficacy and communication showed as significant main effect. Furthermore, in order to examine whether teachers" communication with students may affect CB coping via empathy and teachers' self-efficacy, a mediation model was conducted linking communication with students to CB coping through empathy and teachers' self-efficacy, controlling age, gender, and seniority. Results showed significant positive indirect effects of the communication with students on CB coping through empathy and through teachers' self-efficacy. The results indicate that empathy and teachers' self-efficacy mediates the influence of teachers' communication with students on CB coping. However, no direct effect was found of teachers' communication with students on CB coping. The implications of these results for teachers' education training programs will be discussed.
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