Bullying in Schools : An Extension and Replication of Schoolchildren\u27s Attitudes and Helping Behaviour Toward Victims of Bullying

A replication and extension of Rigby and Slee\u27s (1991) study, was conducted in rural Western Australia to investigate age and gender differences in schoolchildren\u27s attitudes and behaviour toward victims of bullying. One hundred and seventy two students (93 Females, 79 males) participated in the study, comprising of, Year 3, Year 7, Year 8, and Year 12 students. Three written, anonymous questionnaires were used: (i) The Peer Relations Questionnaire (Rigby & Slee, 1994) and (ii) the Pro-Victim Scale (Rigby & Slee, 1991) examined students peer interactions and attitudes toward victims; and a self-developed questionnaire, (iii) the Victim Questionnaire, was ased to assess schoolchildren\u27s helping behaviour toward a victim of bullying. Four of the seven hypotheses were supported, these being: the majority of schoolchildren hold supportive attitudes toward victims, girls show more supportive attitudes than boys toward victims, the majority of students act in a pro-social manner toward their peers, and, boys show higher incidence than girls of being victims of direct bullying. The three hypotheses not supported were, Year 3 children show more supportive attitudes than Years 7, 8 and 12 students toward victims, girls show higher incidence than boys of being victims of indirect bullying, and, Year 3 children show more positive forms of helping behaviour toward victims of bullying than Years 7, 8 and 12 students. The results suggested differences between helping behaviour of primary and secondary students particularly, the transition between Year 7 and Year 8. Furthermore, a larger, more representative sample of rural children in the future, should provide more accurate comparisons between urban and rural centres. Such comparisons have implications for the appropriateness or inappropriateness of universal intervention strategies

'What do they tell their friends?' - Intimacy and self-disclosure in young children's friendships

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The research investigated the development of verbal intimacy in young children's (3.5-6.5 years of age) friendships by measuring their capacity for restrictive self-disclosure (i. e. the greater disclosure of information of highly personal content to friends than other individuals, as opposed to the equal disclosure of information of low personal content to all individuals). Young children's capacity for intimate friendships is ill understood, partly due to limited or unsubstantiated data regarding the types of information that are considered high and low in personal content at this age, as the First Study (N = 110) showed. The Second Study (N = 93) attempted to fill this gap in our knowledge by investigating the sort of information that children consider secret. The results showed that children's ability to differentiate secret and non-secret information increased with age: 4-year-old children could not systematically differentiate secret from non-secret information, 5-year-old children systematically identified information that was not secret but were not consistent in their identification of secret items, while 6-year-old children systematically identified and differentiated secret and non-secret items. However, children of all ages identified as secrets the statements which included a specific cue, such as the word surprise, in their wording. The Third Study (N = 209) investigated whether young children employ the restrictive disclosure-to-friends pattern when revealing the secret pieces of information. Moreover, the study investigated whether specific cues influence young children in applying the restrictive disclosure pattern, and to this effect participants were allocated randomly to either the 'clue condition' group (where they were given a clue that some information might be secret) or the 'no clue condition' group. Children in the 'clue condition' group treated the majority of the statements as secret information and therefore tended to only share it with a friend or with nobody. In contrast, in the `no clue condition' group statistically significant differences were found only in the secret items, suggesting that, when not influenced by an adult, children have the ability to identify highly personal/secret information and to treat it by accordingly applying the restrictive disclosure-to-friends pattern. Taken together, the findings suggest that young children engage in restrictive self-disclosure to friends in some, but not all, circumstances, and thus display signs of verbal intimacy in their friendships.This study is funded by the Alexandros S. Onassis Foundation

Friendship networks and physical activity and sedentary behavior among youth: a systematized review

BACKGROUND: Low levels of physical activity and increased participation in sedentary leisure-time activities are two important obesity-risk behaviors that impact the health of today’s youth. Friend’s health behaviors have been shown to influence individual health behaviors; however, current evidence on the specific role of friendship networks in relation to levels of physical activity and sedentary behavior is limited. The purpose of this review was to summarize evidence on friendship networks and both physical activity and sedentary behavior among children and adolescents. METHOD: After a search of seven scientific databases and reference scans, a total of thirteen articles were eligible for inclusion. All assessed the association between friendship networks and physical activity, while three also assessed sedentary behavior. RESULTS: Overall, higher levels of physical activity among friends are associated with higher levels of physical activity of the individual. Longitudinal studies reveal that an individual’s level of physical activity changes to reflect his/her friends’ higher level of physical activity. Boys tend to be influenced by their friendship network to a greater extent than girls. There is mixed evidence surrounding a friend’s sedentary behavior and individual sedentary behavior. CONCLUSION: Friends’ physical activity level appears to have a significant influence on individual’s physical activity level. Evidence surrounding sedentary behavior is limited and mixed. Results from this review could inform effective public health interventions that harness the influence of friends to increase physical activity levels among children and adolescents

Links Between Maternal Emotion Socialization and Adolescents\u27 Social Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Peer Emotion Socialization

Parents remain influential emotion socialization (ES) agents for their adolescents, with parents’ supportive and unsupportive ES associated with youths’ adaptive and maladaptive social outcomes, respectively (Buckholdt, Kitzmann, & Cohen, 2014). However, less research has examined how adolescents’ ES behaviors towards their close friends may mediate these links. Thus, the current study examines whether maternal ES relates to adolescents’ social outcomes (e.g., overt and relational victimization, bullying, friendship quality, receipt of prosocial behavior) through adolescents’ ES behaviors towards their friends. Participants were 158 middle-school age youth (Mage = 12.67 years; 59.5% girls; 78.5% Caucasian; from mostly upper-middle class families) who participated with their mothers and a same-sex close friend. Maternal ES was measured via mother-report, peer ES was assessed through friend-report of expected ES responses from their friend (the parent’s child), and adolescents’ social experiences was measured through adolescent self-report. Ten mediation models were computed using the Process macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). There were significant indirect links between supportive maternal ES and adolescent overt victimization, bullying behaviors, positive friendship quality, and receipt of peers’ prosocial behaviors, such that greater maternal supportive ES behaviors were separately associated with more adaptive social outcomes, through adolescents’ own supportive ES responses. Greater maternal supportive ES behaviors were directly associated with greater friendship quality and fewer bullying behaviors. No significant indirect effects emerged for the potential link between unsupportive maternal ES and adolescents’ social outcomes, through adolescents’ own unsupportive ES behaviors. However, greater maternal unsupportive ES behaviors were related to fewer overt victimization experiences for youths. There were no significant direct or indirect links between supportive or unsupportive ES practices and relational victimization. These results suggest that maternal ES (particularly supportive ES) is associated with adolescents’ own ES, which in turn contributes to youths’ positive social outcomes. Implications and future directions are discussed

The Effect of Maternal Borderline Personality Disorder and Child Temperament on Mother-Child Synchrony

Maternal borderline personality disorder (BPD) and difficult child temperament have individually been associated with reduced quality of mother-child interactions. The current study examined synchrony (a dyadic construct measuring quality of interaction) during a coded observational task in a sample of mothers with BPD and their young children ages 4-7 (n = 36) compared to normative comparisons (n = 34). These mothers’ self-reported borderline features were also used to examine dyad synchrony across the sample as a whole. We also examined the association between child temperament and synchrony as well as the potential moderating effect child temperament has on the relationship between a BPD diagnosis or high borderline features and mother-child synchrony. Analyses were conducted both with original subscales of the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features (PAI-BOR) scale for maternal borderline features and the Child Behavior Questionnaire-Short Form (CBQ-SF) for child temperament as well as with subscales for these two measures factor analyzed with the current sample. Contrary to expectations, there were no group differences in synchrony. Using factor analyzed PAI-BOR subscales, maternal ‘negative relationships’ significantly negatively correlated with synchrony, and maternal total borderline features as well as ‘affective instability’ negatively correlated with synchrony with marginal significance. ‘Impulsivity’ and ‘reckless spending’ did not significantly correlate with synchrony. Similarly, when using original PAI-BOR subscales, maternal negative relationships, identity disturbance, and total borderline features significantly negatively correlated with synchrony, and affective instability marginally negatively correlated. Again, selfharm/ impulsivity did not correlate with synchrony. Furthermore, child temperament was not correlated with synchrony when using factor analyzed CBQ-SF subscales. However, attentional focusing was positively correlated with synchrony when using original CBQ-SF subscales. Child temperament did not play a moderating role between maternal group status and synchrony using either set of subscales. Child temperament also did not play a moderating role between borderline features and synchrony when using original PAI-BOR and CBQ-SF subscales. However, when using factor analyzed PAI-BOR and CBQ-SF subscales, child temperament did act as a moderator such that mothers’ negative relationships were negatively associated with synchrony at low but not high levels of child ‘effortful control’. Clinical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

(RE)-AUTHORING THE STUDENT: AN EXPLORATION INTO FIGURED WORLDS, IDENTITY FORMATION, GENRE, PUBLICS, AND HOW POWER RELATIONS IMPACT CHILDREN'S WRITING

As digital media makes its way into elementary school classrooms, urban school culture moves slowly to join in. The move to integrate new technologies into schools is both enabled and constrained by factors such as the need for students and teachers to be seen as people who are "successful" in both public and social terms. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the complexities for elementary children learning to write in the digital age. I used a case study approach, examining the language choices of eight third and fourth grade students (4 girls and 4 boys) who attended an urban elementary school in a large southeastern city in the United States. I analyzed how the students' language choices contributed to the construction/negotiation of their writer identities and the degree to which these constructs/negotiations were enabled/constrained by what the participants imagined was/not possible from their positions as students while composing with varying technologies. I conclude that it is not only the young writers who imagine what is/not possible from their position as students, it is also those who guide, or "authorize" student writing, including teachers, administrators, and parents. This constructing/negotiating, authorizing/guiding all take place as students seek to maintain membership (textually) within their school world while endeavoring to cultivate new memberships within expanses or publics that coexist alongside their schools. The young writers highlighted in this study, working against from within the school district's accountability and efficiency agenda show that being a "successful" student writer can mean more than their merely reproducing what is expected of them