School bullying and tackling strategies in Hong Kong

In view of the rising problem of school bullying in Hong Kong, scholars have endeavored to study the prevalence, causes, and tackling strategies of school bullying. This article highlights some typical incidences of school violence and reports research results of school bullying. It is noted unresolved school bullying problems are often a precursor of school violence and delinquency. Based on results from local studies of bullying, this article identifies risk and protective factors that contribute to the emergence and continuation of the bullyvictim problem in Hong Kong. The article argues that suppressive tactics, such as reprimanding bullies, calling parents to school, and suspension, are ineffective. Other than suppressive tactics, adopting a comprehensive antibullying strategy such as assisting students to develop adequate self-competency, strong social skills, and good relationships with parents and teachers seems to be a useful antiviolence strategy.     

Bullying in schools: It's not a crime - is it?

The nature and prevalence of school bullying, and the detrimental and serious impact that it has upon its victims, has been the focus of research and debate since the early 1980s. Where a response is made to incidents of bullying, this is typically seen as the domain of the school, which has a powerful role to play in terms of socialising and disciplining its pupils. From the perspective of the victims of bullying, I argue that despite the existence of school disciplinary mechanisms, intervention by those working within the criminal justice arena is appropriate in two situations. First are situations where school measures are ineffective and the school is unable or unwilling to tackle the bullying. Second are situations that are too serious to be dealt with by the school alone. This issue is rarely discussed in literature on bullying. Using Lacey's metaphor of a set of lenses, I examine the 'criminalisation' of bullying, both at a formal level and at a practical level. I draw upon research that has studied the attitudes of adults and children to crime generally, as well as a qualitative survey of teachers, in order to explore the social construction of bullying as a crime and barriers to this.     

Is the Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Violence Relative to the Level of Consumption?

Two ideas concerning the link between bullying in school and violence on the streets are investigated. (1) Bullying and victimization in school is a product of the school situation and people's inability to choose their levels of exposure to others. According to this hypothesis, bullying is largely a phenomenon that is isolated to the school context. (II) Bullying behaviour in school and inflicting damage to others outside school is a reflection of a more general aggressive behaviour pattern and, hence, bullying in school and violence on the streets will, to a great extent, involve the same individuals. The literature offers suggestions that either could be the case. Participants were 2915 14-year-olds in a medium-sized county in Sweden who responded to a self-report questionnaire.Theresults showed that bullying others in school was strongly linked to violent behaviour and weapon-carrying on the streets, both among boys and girls. It was also found that bullying others in school was related to being violently victimized on the streets. The findings remained the same when statistically controlling for loitering and nights spent away from home, which were both related to bullying behaviour. It is concluded that bullying behaviour in school is in many cases a part of a more general violent and aggressive behaviour pattern and that preventive efforts targeting individuals with bullying behaviour in school could, according to the present study, decrease violence among adolescents out in the community as well.     

How do Traditional Bullying and Cyberbullying Victimization Affect Fear and Coping among Students? An Application of General Strain Theory

School bullying victimization represents an important type of strain (or stressful event) experienced by individuals because it usually occurs frequently, over a long period of time, and is an intentional violation against another person. The current study utilizes the 2009 School Crime Supplement (SCS) of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to assess the effect of bullying victimization on avoidance behaviors and carrying weapons to school. This study also examines how bullying victimization affects fear and whether this emotion mediates the relationship between victimization and outcomes. As expected, traditional bullying and cyberbullying increase the likelihood of fear. In addition, traditional bullying and cyberbullying victimization increase the likelihood of avoidance behaviors and bringing a weapon to school. Contrary to expectations, fear did not mediate the relationship between bullying and coping behaviors.     

The Ubiquitous Family Environment: Examining Emotional Insecurity in the Family and Adjustment in School

The present study examines adolescents' emotional insecurity and problem behaviors at school. Adolescents (n = 280; 136 boys, 144 girls, Median age = 13) and their parents reported on adolescents' emotional security and adjustment problems. Adolescents' teachers (n = 240) also reported on adolescents' school adjustment. Results support that emotional insecurity is related to adjustment problems in the home and at school. Emotional insecurity in the family system was a better predictor of adolescents' adjustment problems than emotional insecurity in the interparental relationship. Findings have implications for teachers, parents, school administrators and policy‐makers, as adolescents' problem behaviors at school can be explained by their emotional insecurity.     

Belief in a Just World as a Resource of Victimized Students

In a cross-sectional questionnaire study with N?=?2593 German students, aged between 12 and 17 years (M?=?14.1, SD?=?0.5), we investigated the relation between students’ personal belief in a just world (BJW) and their victimization in bullying situations. According to the just-world theory and research, we expected that the more strongly the students endorsed the personal BJW, the less likely they were to report being victimized by other students. We aimed to extend previous findings that failed to confirm this negative relation by considering students’ personal experience of teacher justice as a possible mediator in this relation, while statistically controlling for sex and school type. We further considered the nested data structure with regard to school classes in our analyses. The results of latent mediation analyses at the individual and group levels showed that the more the students endorsed personal BJW, the more they evaluated their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as being just, and the less likely they were to report that they were bullied. However, the students’ personal experience of teacher justice did not mediate the relation between personal BJW and victimization at the individual or group level when controlled for sex and school type. We discussed the adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research and practice.     

Conduct unbecoming: The dilemma of a school's responsibility in respect of teacher misconduct towards pupils

It was recently remarked that if the infamous schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers, in Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby , was around today his pupils would probably accuse him of assault and the police would be paying a visit to his school, Dotheboys Hall. Though a casual comment, a great deal of truth lies therein. In the 'rights culture' of today, the manner in which adults may exercise authority over children is markedly different to that of even 20 years ago. The majority of teachers act in a professional manner and carry out their duties, often under great pressure, with the best interests of their students uppermost in their minds. However, this is not always the case. With reasonable frequency, there are reports of teachers behaving towards their students in ways which range from inappropriate to culpable. In the worst scenario the accusations are of sexual abuse, but there are also those of physical or verbal bullying. There is nowadays an increased recognition of the harmful and lasting effects of different forms of abuse, and the responsibility of those in authority to prevent it happening. In recent years New Zealand school administrators have been faced with dealing appropriately with allegations of a teacher's misconduct in a variety of different ways towards their students. A school board of trustees has a dilemma in that it must discharge dual responsibilities, in respect of its students and its staff. This article examines the legal implications of those responsibilities. It also considers the responsibility of a school in a wider context — to other schools and to the community at large.     

Learning to Manage Shame in School Bullying: Lessons for Restorative Justice Interventions

Shame management is purported to be part of the healing process that is a goal of restorative justice. However, the development of shame management capacities and how they are engaged in conflict resolution remains a relatively understudied phenomenon. This study examines how shame management (acknowledgment and displacement) is employed by children as they move into and out of cultures of school bullying. The analysis is based on self-reported changes in bullying experiences of 335 Australian children over a three-year period. Children were classified into bully, victim, bully-victim, nonbully-nonvictim, or residual conflict groups. Shame displacement and bullying tolerance accompanied transition into bullying. Shame acknowledgment and control of bullying marked desistence from bullying. Effects of shame management and social control were not uniform across groups. Findings indicate that interventions to change behaviour need to be flexible and responsive to prior bullying experiences so specific risk and protective factors can be targeted. This study demonstrates that responsiveness to context, building socially responsible relationships, and adaptive shame management are all integral to behaviour change, supporting the use of restorative justice as a way of dealing with school bullying as well as other forms of harm.     

Punking and bullying: strategies in middle school, high school, and beyond

Punking is a practice of verbal and physical violence, humiliation, and shaming usually done in public by males to other males. This definition is based on interviews and discussion groups with 32 adolescent boys and on media sources within which adolescent males are embedded. Discourse analysis findings reveal that punking terminology and behaviors are usually interchangeable with bullying terminology and behaviors. Both practices are purposeful strategies taken up and used by many boys to affirm masculinity norms of toughness, strength, dominance, and control. Implications from this research promote a shift in understandings of how masculinity norms are achieved. Further, the research suggests that by bringing critical attention to social accountability for production of unhealthy norms and the violent practices that affirm these norms, we might well extend the scope and focus of intervention into harmful practices of violence, such as punking and bullying.     

Functions of parental involvement and effects of school climate on bullying behaviors among South korean middle school students

This study uses an ecological systems theory to understand bullying behavior. Emphasis is given to overcome limitations found in the literature, such as very little empirical research on functions of parental involvement and the impacts of school climate on bullying as an outcome variable. Two functions of parental involvement investigated are (a) bridging the negative experiences within the family with bullying behaviors at schools, and (b) influencing school climate. Bullying behaviors were measured by a modified Korean version of Olweus' bully/victim questionnaire (reliability range: .78-.84) from 1,238 randomly selected Korean middle school students in 2007. Findings from structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses showed that (a) individual traits are one of the most important influence on bullying, (b) negative experiences in the family do not have direct influence on bullying behaviors at school, (c) parental involvement influences school climate, and (d) positive school climate was negatively related to bullying behaviors.     

Green Criminology and the Reconceptualization of School Violence: Comparing Green School Violence and Traditional Forms of School Violence for School Children

School crime and violence continue to be important topics of criminological inquiry. Forms of violence that have received much attention from criminologists include school gun violence, assaults, and bullying. What appears missing from criminological studies are analyses of different forms of violent victimization imposed on school children related to environmental injustice, pollution, and exposure to toxins. In this article, we argue for the interpretation of these harms as violent victimizations. To facilitate this, we draw upon definitions of violent victimization developed in green criminology, conceptualizing exposure to environmental toxins as violent assault, and introduce the term green school violence (GSV). Next, we draw upon the medical, environmental, and public health literature to offer a series of examples of GSV in the United States, discuss numerous environmental hazards present in American schools, and describe their scope and severity. A conservative estimate of the frequency of GSV suggests that far more school children are victimized by GSV than forms of interpersonal acts of violence.     

行为问题儿童成因及教育路径选择

对儿童纵向发展和现实行为表现的分析表明,早年生活经验尤其是家庭生活环境,是一个不容忽视的诱因.家长的态度直接影响到对行为问题儿童的干预,家长工作是缓解和预防儿童产生行为问题的关键;适当的帮助和干预是改善行为问题儿童的有效途径;建立良好的亲子互动、积极的同伴关系及有效的教师指导等良好的生态环境,是帮助行为问题儿童"回归主流"的有力保障.     

Outside the brackets: Why school administrators fail to see gendered harassment within an antibullying law

Much of school bullying involves students policing the gender roles and sexuality of other students. The proliferation of antibullying laws presents an opportunity to formally punish and mark gendered harassment as unacceptable. However, when this form of peer policing involves girls, administrators often consider it to fall outside the purview of the law. We use bracketing theory to understand how middle school administrators in New Jersey assess whether student behavior violates a statewide harassment, intimidation, and bullying law. We find that, according to administrators, violations require relational asymmetry between an aggressor and victim: an imbalance of power and disproportionate participation. Administrators rarely see gendered harassment as bullying because of the relational stereotypes they attach to girl students, which often preclude interpretations of relational asymmetry. We discuss how gender beliefs among administrators and “bracketing failures” explain the ways antibullying laws allow hegemonic beliefs about gender and sexuality to remain untroubled.     

Bullying among adolescents in North Cyprus and Turkey: testing a multifactor model

Peer bullying has been studied since the 1970s. Therefore, a vast literature has accumulated about the various predictors of bullying. However, to date there has been no study which has combined individual-, peer-, parental-, teacher-, and school-related predictors of bullying within a model. In this sense, the main aim of this study was to test a multifactor model of bullying among adolescents in North Cyprus and Turkey. A total of 1,052 adolescents (554 girls, 498 boys) aged between 13 and 18 (M = 14.7, SD = 1.17) were recruited from North Cyprus and Turkey. Before testing the multifactor models, the measurement models were tested according to structural equation modeling propositions. Both models indicated that the psychological climate of the school, teacher attitudes within classroom, peer relationships, parental acceptance-rejection, and individual social competence factors had significant direct effects on bullying behaviors. Goodness-of-fit indexes indicated that the proposed multifactor model fitted both data well. The strongest predictors of bullying were the psychological climate of the school following individual social competence factors and teacher attitudes within classroom in both samples. All of the latent variables explained 44% and 51% of the variance in bullying in North Cyprus and Turkey, respectively.     

The Effect of Maternal Victimization on Children: A Cross-Informant Study

The impact of maternal victimization on the behavioral, social, emotional, and cognitive development in a group of 206 low-income, predominantly African American children from inner city, pediatric primary health care clinics was explored using mother, teacher, and self-report data. Results revealed that mothers with a victimization history reported more externalizing and internalizing behaviors in their children, compared to mothers who had not been victimized. Maternal victimization history was not related to teachers' ratings of children's behavior, child reports of social competence and depression, or standardized assessments of cognitive development. The relation between mothers' history of victimization and their reports of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems in their children was mediated by pathways through maternal depression and disciplinary practices (verbal aggression). These findings provide evidence for the link between maternal victimization and children's behavior problems. Treatment for victimized mothers that reduces their depressive symptoms and promotes adaptive parenting practices may lead to fewer behavior problems in their children.     

The Impact of Self Control and Neighborhood Disorder on Bullying Victimization

PurposeWhereas past research has examined the effect of individual-level and neighborhood-level predictors of bullying victimization separately, the current study examines their effects collectively.MethodsMiddle and high school students (n = 1972) in randomly selected classes within a Southeastern school district completed a battery of self-report measures. Levels of self-control (an individual-level factor) and neighborhood disorganization (a neighborhood-level factor) were regressed onto measures of the six-week prevalence of verbal, physical, and cyber bullying victimization.ResultsLow self-control and neighborhood disorder were found to be associated with each type of bullying victimization, though the impact of self-control was partially mediated by neighborhood disorder when included in the same model. The effect of self-control was mediated when subsequently controlling for poly-victimization experiences. Net of these controls, neighborhood disorder continued to be associated with a statistically significant increase in the odds of bullying victimization.ConclusionsEconomic and social decay within neighborhoods increased the likelihood of bullying victimizations. These effects hold true across verbal, physical and cyber victimizations, suggesting a need to consider both community characteristics when staging bullying intervention campaigns. Additionally, the findings suggest a need for further research considering the relationship between self-control and neighborhood conditions on the risk of victimization generally.     

Digital Uses,Victimization and Online Aggression: A Comparative Study Between Primary School and Lower Secondary School Students in France

With the growing use of electronic communication among children and adolescents, the Internet has become an important tool for their socialization and has opened up new perspectives for network and community building opportunities. However, the Internet and electronic communication tools can be used either positively or negatively and the spread of its use in these recent years has led to online risky behaviours and harm. This questionnaire survey was completed in five primary schools and seven lower secondary schools in the South of France. It sets out to assess the digital uses, risk taking and negative experiences online among primary and secondary school students in France (N?=?4200). Findings show that primary school students are pretty well involved in digital communication since they spend an average of 150 min per day online vs. 190 for secondary school participants. Social networking is also part of their lives with 17 % of primary school children and 50 % secondary school students who use Facebook. In terms of risk taking, only 49 % of primary students and 39 % of secondary school students report they personally know all their online friends. Cyberbullying figures show that quite a few respondents have been affected with negative experiences among which some were repeatedly victimized (14 % in primary schools and 5 % in secondary schools). These findings highlight the necessity to take the issue of educating towards a positive and safe use of the Internet seriously and that primary school children also need to be provided with proper guidance towards a safer Internet.     

The place of law in the leadership and management of schools

Change is a feature of life in all communities and results in heightened demands being made of individuals and organizations alike. In the school setting administrators and classroom teachers have to respond to a great variety of demands that change has brought. Accountability, in various guises, is one area where changes in societal attitudes have resulted in greater demands being exacted of all professions including that of teaching. In this regard legal accountability is of considerable concern to schools as legal matters increasingly impact on school policies, practices and procedures. In this article research into the relationship between the law and school leadership and management is explored. A brief overview of research into school management and principals as leaders is followed by a discussion of the need for knowledge of areas of law impacting on schools. The article concludes that in order to ensure a school's legal safety, a preventive legal risk management culture is needed.     

The correlation of childhood physical abuse history and later abuse in a group of Turkish population

Domestic violence is passed from one generation to the next, and it affects not only the victim but also the psychological states of the witnesses, and especially the psychosocial development of children. Studies have reported that those who have been the victim of or witnessing violence during their childhood will use violence to a greater extent as adults in their own families. This research examines the relationships between a history of childhood physical abuse, likelihood of psychiatric diagnoses, and potential for being a perpetrator of childhood physical abuse in adulthood among women who received psychiatric treatment and in the healthy population from Turkey. Estimates of the prevalence of childhood physical abuse vary depending on definition and setting. The frequency of witnessing and undergoing physical abuse within the family during childhood is much higher in the psychiatrically disordered group than the healthy controls. Childhood physical abuse history is one of the major risk factors for being an abuser in adulthood. The best indicator of physically abusing one's own children was found to be as physical abuse during the childhood period rather than psychiatric diagnosis. There is a large body of research indicating that adults who have been abused as children are more likely to abuse their own children than adults without this history. This is an important study from the point of view that consequences of violence can span generations. Further studies with different risk factor and populations will help to identify different dimensions of the problem.     

A friend in need: the role of friendship quality as a protective factor in peer victimization and bullying

This study examined friendship quality as a possible moderator of risk factors in predicting peer victimization and bullying. Children (50 boys and 49 girls, ages 10 to 13 years) reported on the quality of their best friendship, as well as their bullying and victimization tendencies. Parents reported on their child's internalizing and externalizing behaviors, in addition to bullying and victimization tendencies. Results indicated that externalizing problems were related to bullying behavior; however, friendship quality moderated this relation such that among children with externalizing behaviors, a high-quality friendship significantly attenuated bullying behavior. Internalizing problems and low friendship quality were significantly related to victimization; however, friendship quality did not moderate the relation between internalizing problems and victimization. Implications for interventions based on these findings are discussed.