Bullying as the main driver of low performance in schools: Evidence from Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa

Worldwide, at least 20% of students are regularly bullied in school. Research from developed countries has associated bullying with several negative outcomes, but little is known about the relationship between bullying and academic achievement, especially in developing countries. Here, data from three African countries participating in the 2011 Trends in Mathematics and Sciences Study and Progress in Reading and Literacy Study were analyzed, including 36,602 participants aged 12 to 16. Results show that bullying is pervasive in all three countries, is one of the root causes of low academic performance, and is more influential than other variables commonly associated with low achievement. This indicates that school violence must become a priority for international development and country level efforts in education

Bullying as the main driver of low performance in schools: Evidence from Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa

Worldwide, at least 20% of students are regularly bullied in school. Research from developed countries has associated bullying with several negative outcomes, but little is known about the relationship between bullying and academic achievement, especially in developing countries. Here, data from three African countries participating in the 2011 Trends in Mathematics and Sciences Study and Progress in Reading and Literacy Study were analyzed, including 36,602 participants aged 12 to 16. Results show that bullying is pervasive in all three countries, is one of the root causes of low academic performance, and is more influential than other variables commonly associated with low achievement. This indicates that school violence must become a priority for international development and country level efforts in education

Pervasive bullying and its negative consequence on standardized tests of Reading, Science and Mathematics – A comparative analysis of three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

School bullying is a common yet unfortunate occurrence associated with several hindering outcomes for children’s educational and psychological development. Using a nationally representative data sample of 26,467 students from three sub-Saharan African countries of Ghana, Botswana and South African, we investigate the prevalence of bullying and its ramification on students’ academic performance. The data reveals that more than 50% of the survey participants were bullied regularly in school. We employ a Propensity Score based matching technique to estimate the effect of bullying of their performance on standardized reading, mathematics and science tests. The results of our estimation reveal statistically significant decreases due to bullying in scores on all three types of standardized evaluations between 3% to 8% for all three countries

Pervasive bullying and its negative consequence on standardized tests of Reading, Science and Mathematics – A comparative analysis of three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

School bullying is a common yet unfortunate occurrence associated with several hindering outcomes for children’s educational and psychological development. Using a nationally representative data sample of 26,467 students from three sub-Saharan African countries of Ghana, Botswana and South African, we investigate the prevalence of bullying and its ramification on students’ academic performance. The data reveals that more than 50% of the survey participants were bullied regularly in school. We employ a Propensity Score based matching technique to estimate the effect of bullying of their performance on standardized reading, mathematics and science tests. The results of our estimation reveal statistically significant decreases due to bullying in scores on all three types of standardized evaluations between 3% to 8% for all three countries

Long-Term Outcomes of the Good School Toolkit Primary School Violence Prevention Intervention Among Adolescents: Protocol for a Nonrandomized Quasi-Experimental Study.

BACKGROUND: Violence against children in schools is a global public health problem. There is growing evidence that school-based interventions can be effective in reducing violence against children in schools. However, there is little evidence on the long-term impact of such interventions. The Good School Toolkit, developed by Raising Voices, a Uganda-based nonprofit organization, is a whole-school violence prevention intervention that aims to change the operational culture of primary schools. In 2014, the Good School Toolkit was evaluated through a cluster randomized controlled trial (Good Schools Study) and found to reduce teacher-to-student and student-to-student violence. OBJECTIVE: This protocol describes quantitative analyses to explore long-term outcomes of the Good School Toolkit intervention among adolescents in Uganda, including the extent to which it is associated with peer-violence victimization (primary outcome) and peer-violence perpetration, intimate-partner violence, acceptance of teacher-violence, equitable gender attitudes, agency, self-regulation, peer connectedness, social assets, psychological assets, and retention in school (secondary outcomes). METHODS: This is a nonrandomized quasi-experimental 4-year follow-up study of adolescents who attended the 42 Good Schools Study primary schools in 2014; 21 schools initiated the Good School Toolkit intervention during the trial from 2012, and 19 schools initiated the intervention after the trial (during the later delivery phase) from 2015; 2 schools did not implement the intervention. Students in the final school grade (Primary 7) during 2014 of the 19 primary schools in the later delivery phase are expected to have left school prior to toolkit delivery in 2015. Wave 1 data were collected in 2014 from 3431 grade Primary 5 to Primary 7 school students aged 11-14 years; these students were followed up in 2018-2019 when aged 16-19 years and invited to participate in the Wave 2 survey. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews by trained Ugandan field researchers. Toolkit exposure groups are defined as exposed during the Good Schools Study trial (from 2012), as exposed during later delivery (from 2015), or not exposed including those expected to have completed Primary 7 prior to later delivery or from the 2 schools that did not implement the toolkit. Associations between outcomes at Wave 2 and toolkit exposure groups will be analyzed using mixed-effect multivariable logistic and linear regression models for binary and continuous outcomes, respectively. This analysis is exploratory and aims to generate hypotheses on if, and under what circumstances, the toolkit influences later adolescent outcomes. RESULTS: Data collection was completed in August 2019. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first long-term follow-up study of adolescents exposed to a school-based violence-prevention intervention in sub-Saharan Africa. If the intervention reduces violence and improves other outcomes in later adolescence, then this study supports primary school interventions as key to achieving long-term population impacts. The pattern of effects will inform where reinforced or additional interventions are needed. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/20940

Attention Reshapes Center-Surround Receptive Field Structure in Macaque Cortical Area MT

Directing spatial attention to a location inside the classical receptive field (cRF) of a neuron in macaque medial temporal area (MT) shifts the center of the cRF toward the attended location. Here we investigate the influence of spatial attention on the profile of the inhibitory surround present in many MT neurons. Two monkeys attended to the fixation point or to 1 of 2 random dot patterns (RDPs) placed inside or next to the cRF, whereas a third RDP (the probe) was briefly presented in quick succession across the cRF and surround. The probe presentation responses were used to compute a map of the excitatory receptive field and its inhibitory surround. Attention systematically reshapes the receptive field profile, independently shifting both center and surround toward the attended location. Furthermore, cRF size is changed as a function of relative distance to the attentional focus: attention inside the cRF shrinks it, whereas directing attention next to the cRF expands it. In addition, we find systematic changes in surround inhibition and cRF amplitude. This nonmultiplicative push–pull modulation of the receptive field's center-surround structure optimizes processing at and near the attentional focus to strengthen the representation of the attended stimulus while reducing influences from distractors

Psychophysik und Physiologie von Aufmerksamkeitseinflüssen auf die Verarbeitung visueller Bewegung

Die Wahrnehmung liefert keine objektive Repräsentation der sensorischen Information sondern wird durch den aktuellen Zustand des Organismus beeinflusst. Aufmerksamkeit ist einer dieser Einflüsse, der die Wahrnehmung durch Veränderung der sensorischen Verarbeitung verzerrt. Das Thema dieser Dissertation sind die Effekte von Aufmerksamkeit auf die Verarbeitung von visueller Information. Hier dient die Verarbeitung von visueller Bewegung als Modell, an dem untersucht wird, wie Aufmerksamkeit die räumliche Selektivität einzelner Nervenzellen verändert und welche Auswirkungen diese Veränderungen auf die Wahrnehmung von räumlichen Beziehungen haben könnten. Der Hauptteil der Dissertation besteht aus zwei Experimenten, in denen mittels Einzelzellableitungen aus dem medialen temporalen Areal (MT) in wachen, sich verhaltenden Makaken die Effekte von Aufmerksamkeit auf die Profile rezeptiver Felder (räumliche Selektivitäts-Profile) untersucht wurden, einer theoretischen Studie in der diese Effekte modelliert wurden, und einer psychophysischen Studie in der Vorhersagen aus den physiologischen Ergebnissen an Humanprobanden getestet wurden

M: Equality judgments cannot distinguish between attention effects on appearance and criterion: A reply to Schneider

Whether attention modulates the appearance of stimulus features is debated. Whereas many previous studies using a comparative judgment have found evidence for such an effect, two recent studies using an equality judgment have not. Critically, these studies have relied on the assumption that the equality paradigm yields bias-free PSE estimates and is as sensitive as the comparative judgment, without testing these assumptions. Anton-Erxleben, Abrams, and Carrasc