The Current Status of Social Risks on Educational Systems. An Analysis Through Social Media

Este trabajo ha sido publicado en las actas del citado congreso, y revisados los documentos donde ha sido publicado, no se muestran impedimentos legales para que pueda ser publicado el documento.Social Risk in education such as bullying, are usually invisible to teachers and parents, at all educational levels. However, these risks remain a reality everywhere in the world, turning into a problem that is rapidly globalizing due to the widespread access to the Internet. The Internet has permeated our entire society and is now present in almost every activity. The education and most aspects associated with it, such as Social Risks, are not exempt of this new form of communication within our society. This has led to a significant increase in damage Social Risks can exhort on the victims, due to several causes such as their capacity for dissemination, repetition and virality; greater anonymity of aggressors and the chance for more people joining them; continuity over time even when after school hours; display of intimacy before an endless crowd of people; ease of permanent control through geolocation, control of online statuses and connections; and even the risk of easily impersonating a victim. The first step to prevent these issues is to carry out a study on the current state of Social Risks. An updated snapshot would allow to draw up action plans based on reliable data and develop countermeasures to minimize the damage caused by current Social Risks to minors. The objective of this work is to conduct a study on unsolicited data obtained from Social Media on three of the most prominent Social Risks of our society, namely Bullying, Addictions and Xenophobia within the field of education, with the aim of obtaining an updated snapshot of their current status. The study was carried out during the second semester of 2017 and the first semester of 2018, quantifying the presence and emotion of said risks in Social Media, determining the most relevant terms, as well as the most used communication channels

Dysfunctional accountability in complaint systems: The effects of complaints on public service employees

Item previously deposited in University of Glasgow repository on 14 Jun 2019: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/188357/This article examines the effect that being complained about has on public service employees. The volume of complaints about public bodies is significant: an estimated 543,000 complaints a year are made about central government, while the English NHS was subject to 208,415 complaints in 2016-2017. Despite the significant expansion of complaint procedures following the Citizen’s Charter reforms in the 1990s, there has been no empirical research into the way in which complaints affect employees outwith the healthcare sector. Most scholarly debate has focused on whether complaints procedures within government have improved customer service or been useful for service improvement. Little attention has been paid to the experience of being subject to a complaint and the influence this has on work practice. In this respect, the public accountability literature suggests that significant dysfunctional effects may result from accountability regimes, including: defensive practices, tick-box compliance, excessive formality, and reduced innovation. In the healthcare setting, negative effects arising from being complained about include defensive medical practice, avoidance behaviours, wariness towards service users, and reduced wellbeing. While some positive effects have been reported, the thrust of healthcare studies is that complaints have harmful effects on professionals. To date, however, the effects of complaint systems outwith the healthcare context remain uncharted: we do not know whether other public services are affected in similar ways.https://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/Catalogue/ProductDetails.aspx?recordid=469&productid=7106pubpu

Bullying victimization due to racial, ethnic, citizenship and/or religious status: a systematic review

A resurgent climate of nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia in many parts of the world has drawn attention to the risk of bullying victimization among racial, ethnic and/or religious minority youth. However, no attempt has yet been made to synthesize the literature on this topic to derive better understanding and guide future prevention and intervention efforts. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on individual, school, family, and community -level factors and outcomes associated with racist bullying victimization. Systematic searches of EBSCOhost, Scopus, ASSIA and Web of Science databases identified 73 articles that included quantitative and qualitative analyses on this topic. Overall, this review found that negative stereotypes and discrimination operating in school and community contexts put racial/ethnic minority, immigrant, and refugee youth at an increased risk of racist bullying victimization. The review also found that racist bullying victimization is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes including poor mental health, lower academic engagement, and an increased risk of involvement in delinquent behaviours, especially among older pupils. The review identified several gaps in the research, including the lack of adequate theorization and the infrequent consideration of potential mediators and moderators. Finally, the review outlined future directions, such as the need to study how intergroup processes influence racist bullying victimization

Inter-cultural differences in response to a computer-based anti-bullying intervention

Background and purpose: Many holistic anti-bullying interventions have been attempted, with mixed success, while little work has been done to promote a 'self-help' approach to victimisation. The rise of the ICT curriculum and computer support in schools now allows for approaches that benefit from technology to be implemented. This study evaluates the cross-cultural effects of a computer-based anti-bullying intervention on primary school-aged children's knowledge about bullying and relevant coping strategies. Programme description: FearNot! is an interactive computer-based virtual learning environment designed for use as an anti-bullying intervention. It includes interactive virtual agents who assume the most common participant roles found in episodes of bullying. FearNot! was used by children over three consecutive weeks to allow its effectiveness to be evaluated in a longitudinal in situ programme. Sample: Two comparable samples were drawn from the UK and Germany. In the UK, 651 participants (aged 8-11) were recruited from primary schools in Hertfordshire, Coventry and Warwickshire, whereas the 535 German participants (aged 7-10) were sourced from Grundschulen in the Bayern and Hessen regions. Because of lack of parental consent, late joiners and absences/missing responses, data from 908 participants (UK 493; Germany 415) were analysed. Design and methods: A quasi-experimental, pre/post-tests control group design employed pre-published and bespoke questionnaires to collect data. Descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted. Results: UK students possessed higher coping strategy knowledge scores than German participants, but German children's scores improved over time and as a result of the FearNot! intervention. Conclusions: Overall, while not effective at increasing children's coping strategy knowledge in this study, the FearNot! intervention could prove a useful classroom tool to approach the issue of bullying as part of a wider initiative. Cultural differences at baseline and reactions to the intervention are discussed

Collective efficacy in the school context: Does it help explain victimisation and bullying among Greek primary and secondary school students?

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association between collective efficacy at the class-level and individual-level bullying perpetration and victimization using survey data from 1,729 Greek students, aged 11 to 14 years. School class collective efficacy was defined as cohesion and trust among class members combined with their willingness to intervene in the case of aggressive or bullying incidents. Our findings indicate that individual-level victimization is more frequent in classes with lower levels of collective efficacy. We conclude that the notion of collective efficacy might also prove useful in explaining bullying involvement