An Anti-Bullying Program in Review

This project will focus on one parochial Catholic elementary (K4-8) school that implemented the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) over four years ago. This qualitative research examines the impact that support or lack of support had on the program outcomes. The study will provide research on the OBPP along with various, alternative anti-bullying programs, efficacy of the anti-bullying program, and review the school community awareness of the OBPP. The research participants are administrators, faculty, staff, parents and community’s members who directly affect the Olweus Bullying Prevention program

Non-Violent Childhoods : Action Plan for the Prevention of Violence against Children 2020–2025

The objective of the action plan on Non-Violent Childhoods 2020–2025 is to prevent violence against children aged 0–17 in different growth and operating environments. The action plan deals with the rights of the child, inclusion, factors that protect against violence as well as risk factors and their consequences. The aim is to improve the position of the child victim in the current service, care and crime systems, also taking into account those children who are at risk of ending up using or have already used violence. The action plan contains 93 actions and consist of fourteen chapters dealing with the prevention of emotional and physical violence and sexual violence from three different perspectives: prevention, minimising harmful impact and providing treatment, with the main focus on prevention. The plan seeks to take into account issues related to children in particularly vulnerable situations with regard to violence, as well as some topical specific issues. The plan emphasises the importance of multidisciplinary cooperation. A broad group of experts from various organisations, ministries and NGOs wrote the action plan. A steering group nominated by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is responsible for monitoring and directing the objectives and actions. In 2022, a mid-term review will be carried out concerning the implementation of the action plan's objectives and actions

Desarrollo de un chatbot de asesoría en casos de acoso escolar

Bullying is an issue that many children and teenagers face at some point in their lives, either by being victimized, by witnessing it or even by bullying others. Research has shown that being victimised at early stages of life can have a tremendous negative impact on mental and physical development. This project aims to develop a system that can be used as a tool for future psychologists in their training for school bullying therapy. Using the features offered by AIML, OttoBot was developed as a prototype model of in-therapy conversation by a 13 year-old boy. Based on a review of the literature, the emotional model of OttoBot was created as a set of variables that could increase, decrease, and combine to map to the different behaviours of OttoBot. In order to test the features of the system, a formative evaluation was carried out by experts of the field. The four phase assessment combined conversations with OttoBot as well as formative evaluation questionnaires in which the experts had not only to rate but also to comment on the key features of OttoBot. The results indicate that, with the appropriate optimizations, OttoBot might be a powerful tool for the training of future psychologists. Further research and work is needed to improve and enrich the possibilities ot OttoBot as a training tool

Beyong bullying: a holistic exploration of the organizational toxicity phenomenon

A toxic organization is characterized by a narrow focus on bottom line profits and malicious or abusive behaviors go unnoticed or undisciplined (Kusy & Holloway, 2009; Macklem, 2005). It produces a toxic work environment where employees suffer emotional pain generated from damaging behaviors (Samuel, 2010). While some degree of toxicity is unavoidable, the unrelieved intensity of pressures over a prolonged period of time tends to wear people down (Bacal, 2000; Samuel, 2010) Much of the academic and popular literature addressing organizational toxicity focuses on bullying and dysfunctional behavior. This research shows that harmful behaviors are symptomatic of more complex systemic problems. The purpose of this study was to uncover the organizational antecedents of toxicity using Bolman and Deal\u27s (2008) Four-Frame Model of holistic analysis addressing the role that structure, human resources management, political systems, and organizational culture in creating or perpetuating organizational toxicity. The study was guided by 4 research questions: 1. What role, if any, does the Structural Frame play in creating or perpetuating organizational toxicity? 2. What role, if any, does the Human Resources Frame play in creating or perpetuating organizational toxicity? 3. What role, if any, does the Political Frame play in creating or perpetuating organizational toxicity? 4. What role, if any, does the Cultural Frame play in creating or perpetuating organizational toxicity? The researcher used a phenomenological methodology and purposeful sampling strategy. Fifteen working professionals were interviewed to share stories of their experiences working in a toxic organization. Data extracted from the stories were synthesized through a holistic framework to identify the systemic sources of toxicity. The results revealed dysfunctions with organizational hierarchies, strategies, goals, policies, rules, standards, technology; failures in human resources management and political power sources; and the impact of leadership, values, and norms on organizational culture. These dysfunctions culminate in a toxic work environment. This study was intended to provide leaders, students, and victims of toxicity with information for early and accurate identification of organizational toxicity. It concludes with suggestions for understanding the organizational antecedents of toxicity and provides a strategy for managing within, and emotional release from, the toxic work environment

My Virtual Colleague: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Conversational Agents for the Workplace

Conversational interfaces at the workplace are not a new idea, but it is only the recent technological advancements that turned what was once a vision into near-future reality. Improved reliability and accuracy enable conversational systems to be used in higher stake environments, such as the workplace. In this work, we perform a literature review on concepts proposed to incorporate Conversational Agents (CA) into the workplace. We found 29 workplace CAs designed for workers that contribute to eight different application domains. Based on the studies of these CAs, we compiled a list of aspects to be considered when designing such CAs and identified starting points for further research

Move Over Ms. Professor!

This paper seeks to identify the professional challenges, success factors, work environment, institutional culture, research support and gender explicit practices for women in higher education in a post-apartheid South Africa, thereby contributing toward supporting women in academia at different stages in their careers. The study is contextualized within the context of national and global scholarship on the professional challenges faced by women in the academy. This included theoretical explanations and studies of perceptions of the glass ceiling, the glass wall, the mommy track, academic roles, academic bullying, the queen bee syndrome, strategies for the advancement of women and stress experienced by women. Women in the academy are unique and so too are their experiences and coping strategies. In order to fully understand effective coping strategies adopted by women in higher education; as they progress along their careers, it is integral to understand their lived encounters. This study was qualitative, using in depth interviews and collected evidence from twenty women at different levels at the University of KwaZulu Natal. The results of the study are strengthened by existing scholarship and contextualised with the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1979)

SEEKER: A Conversational Agent as a Natural Language Interface to a relational Database

Managers of companies are typically not SQL (Structured Query Language) experts but require information 24/7. Therefore, a growing need for Natural Language Interfaces to Databases (NLIDs) has been identified, with a vast amount of research being undertaken in the area. The existing approaches to NLIDs present many weaknesses including the inability to deal with grammatical mistakes in user input, the inability to communicate with the user to correct mistakes and the inability to allow refinement of query results. This paper proposes a system, SEEKER, which uses a Conversational Agent (CA) as the Natural Language Interface (NLI) in a NLID. The CA is used to capture key words in the user's utterance. Once these key words have been identified, the most appropriate SQL template is selected by the expert system using rule based reasoning. The identified variables are mapped to the SQL template in order to create an SQL query. SEEKER allows for refinement of query results. SEEKER was evaluated in terms of user satisfaction and task completion. The results of the evaluation were promising

Negotiating Invisibility: Addressing LGBT Prejudice in China, Hong Kong, and Thailand

This research serves as a consolidation of information regarding the global response to LGBT prejudice, and in particular, the response of organizations situated in China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Interviews with activists and researchers from organizations that address LGBT prejudice served as the main form of data. Findings and subsequent analysis point to the ways in which organizations respond to the lack of visibility of the LGBT community, and how this invisibility is related to various manifestations of LGBT prejudice. Strategies that organizations have developed to respond to LGBT prejudice reveal how organizations negotiate contextual variables in their attempts to promote positive representations of LGBT people, claim space and identity in society, create safe spaces for members of the LGBT community, encourage mutual understanding between parents and LGBT youth, and build agency amongst members of the LGBT community. The discussions proffered in this study are a promotion for deeper reflection of these strategies; suggesting points for reflection that could yield alterations to strategies in order to more effectively address the invisibility of the LGBT community. This study concludes with points for further investigation and the development of policies that target invisibilization factors