School Bullying: A Crisis or an Opportunity?

In 1999, a U.S. Supreme Court justice asked lawyers for a young woman who had endured years of peer sexual harassment, “Is this just kids being kids?” (Stein, 2003). In doing so, the justice posed a question that is often applied to bullying. Many adults view ostracism, demeaning behavior, even physical assaults among young people to be normal or “growth experiences” for the victims. Yet considerable evidence indicates that bullying can deny young people basic educational opportunities, as they attempt to escape daily harassment through truancy or dropping out (Slee, 1994), or develop maladaptive ways of coping with emotional trauma (e.g., Graham & Juvonen, 1998). Effects are not restricted to those actively bullied. Bystanders learn that aggression pays. They may experience a disturbing mix of feelings such as fear, pleasure, guilt, and moral confusion (O’Connell, Pepler, & Craig, 1999; Jeffrey, Miller, & Linn, 2001)

Changing Adolescents\u27 Attitudes About Relational and Physical Aggression: An Early Evaluation of a School-Based Intervention

A pilot study evaluating the Second Step, Middle School/Junior High®program was conducted to determine its effect on students’ attitudes regarding aggression and perceived difficulty of performing social skills. Sixth-through eighth-grade students (N = 714) were surveyed before and after the pro-gram was implemented by teachers in intervention classrooms. Second Step students were taught curricular modules corresponding to their year in middle/junior high school. Program effects were tested using a repeated measures design. Relative to nonparticipants, Second Step students in their second year of school de-creased in their overall endorsement of aggression and perceived difficulty of per-forming social skills. Program effects were less consistent for those in their first year of middle/junior high school. Additional research is needed to investigate program effects under varying conditions (e.g., lesson quality, pacing of lessons) and with long-term exposure

Observed Reductions in School Bullying, Nonbullying Aggression, and Destructive Bystander Behavior: A Longitudinal Evaluation

This study was a longitudinal extension of a random control trial of the Steps to Respect antibullying program. Students in Grades 3–5 were surveyed (n = 624) and observed on the playground (n = 360). Growth curve models of intervention students showed 2-year declines in playground bullying, victimization, nonbullying aggression, destructive bystander, and argumentative behavior. Grade-equivalent contrasts indicated group differences in all problem behaviors. Problem behaviors in the control group increased or remained stable across grade. Intervention group students reported less difficulty responding assertively to bullying compared with control students. Within both groups, older students perceived themselves to be more aggressive and less frequently victimized than younger students. Methodological issues posed by inconsistencies between self-reported and observed behavior are discussed

Effects of a School-Based Social-Emotional Competence Program: Linking Children\u27s Goals, Attributions, and Behaviors

This study examined the effects of the Second Step social–emotional learning program and addressed the relations between social cognitions and prosocial and antisocial behavior. Children (N = 1,253) in intervention and control groups were assessed by teacher ratings, self report, and observation in two conflict situations. Intervention children were more likely to prefer prosocial goals and give egalitarian reasons for satisfaction than control children. Intervention children also required less adult intervention, and behaved less aggressively and (among girls) more cooperatively. Teacher ratings of social behavior showed improvement over time. Individual and dyadic behavior varied as a function of goals, hostile attributions, and attitude concordance within dyads. Findings are discussed with respect to social-cognitive models of aggression and prosocial behavior

Walking the Talk in Bullying Prevention: Teacher Implementation Variables Related to Initial Impact of the \u27Steps to Respect\u27 Program

This study examined relationships between teacher implementation of a comprehensive bullying prevention program and student outcomes. Implementation in third- through sixth-grade classrooms (N = 36) was measured by observation and teacher report. Student outcomes were measured by student surveys and teacher ratings of peer social skills (N = 549) and observations of playground behaviors (n = 298). Multilevel modeling showed that teacher coaching of students involved in bullying was associated with less observed victimization and destructive bystander behavior among students engaged in these problems at pretest, and less observed aggression among fifth- and sixth-grade students. Support for skill generalization related to reductions in observed aggression and victimization among older students. Adherence to lessons was associated with higher ratings of peer social skills. Quality of lesson instruction corresponded to greater self-reported victimization, as well as more perceived difficulty responding assertively to bullying. Implications for school-based practice and future research directions are discussed

Reducing Playground Bullying and Supporting Beliefs: An Experimental Trial of the \u27Steps to Respect\u27 Program

Six schools were randomly assigned to a multilevel bullying intervention or a control condition. Children in Grades 3–6 (N = 1,023) completed pre- and posttest surveys of behaviors and beliefs and were rated by teachers. Observers coded playground behavior of a random subsample (n = 544). Hierarchical analyses of changes in playground behavior revealed declines in bullying and argumentative behavior among intervention-group children relative to control-group children, increases in agreeable interactions, and a trend toward reduced destructive bystander behavior. Those in the intervention group reported enhanced bystander responsibility, greater perceived adult responsiveness, and less acceptance of bullying/aggression than those in the control group. Self-reported aggression did not differ between the groups. Implications for future research on the development and prevention of bullying are discussed

Far-Persons

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a distance that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons

Genetic association study of QT interval highlights role for calcium signaling pathways in myocardial repolarization.

The QT interval, an electrocardiographic measure reflecting myocardial repolarization, is a heritable trait. QT prolongation is a risk factor for ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death (SCD) and could indicate the presence of the potentially lethal mendelian long-QT syndrome (LQTS). Using a genome-wide association and replication study in up to 100,000 individuals, we identified 35 common variant loci associated with QT interval that collectively explain ∼8-10% of QT-interval variation and highlight the importance of calcium regulation in myocardial repolarization. Rare variant analysis of 6 new QT interval-associated loci in 298 unrelated probands with LQTS identified coding variants not found in controls but of uncertain causality and therefore requiring validation. Several newly identified loci encode proteins that physically interact with other recognized repolarization proteins. Our integration of common variant association, expression and orthogonal protein-protein interaction screens provides new insights into cardiac electrophysiology and identifies new candidate genes for ventricular arrhythmias, LQTS and SCD

A Factor Graph Nested Effects Model To Identify Networks from Genetic Perturbations

Complex phenotypes such as the transformation of a normal population of cells into cancerous tissue result from a series of molecular triggers gone awry. We describe a method that searches for a genetic network consistent with expression changes observed under the knock-down of a set of genes that share a common role in the cell, such as a disease phenotype. The method extends the Nested Effects Model of Markowetz et al. (2005) by using a probabilistic factor graph to search for a network representing interactions among these silenced genes. The method also expands the network by attaching new genes at specific downstream points, providing candidates for subsequent perturbations to further characterize the pathway. We investigated an extension provided by the factor graph approach in which the model distinguishes between inhibitory and stimulatory interactions. We found that the extension yielded significant improvements in recovering the structure of simulated and Saccharomyces cerevisae networks. We applied the approach to discover a signaling network among genes involved in a human colon cancer cell invasiveness pathway. The method predicts several genes with new roles in the invasiveness process. We knocked down two genes identified by our approach and found that both knock-downs produce loss of invasive potential in a colon cancer cell line. Nested effects models may be a powerful tool for inferring regulatory connections and genes that operate in normal and disease-related processes