Student,classroom, and teacher factors associated with teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims

Teachers are instrumental in antibullying efforts given their position of authority in the classroom context, yet teachers can only be effective at reducing victimization and bullying in their classrooms if they are aware of who is involved. Consequently, teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims is a critical component of social dynamics management and antibullying practices. Given the importance of teacher attunement, there is a pressing need to identify relevant factors related to the degree to which teachers are attuned to bullies and victims. The major objective of the current investigation was to examine student- (gender, popularity status), classroom- (average bullying, norm salience of bullying, popularity hierarchy, class size), and teacher-level (gender, teaching experience) factors associated with teachers’ attunement to bullies and victims. Using a sample of students in 5th-grade classrooms, we analyzed the likelihood of teachers being attuned to 267 bullies (76.8% boys) nested in 112 classrooms and 343 victims (55.1% boys) nested in 120 classrooms using multilevel mixed-effects generalized linear models. Results indicated that teachers were more likely to be attuned to boy bullies and victims but less likely to be attuned to bullies and victims with higher popularity status. No classroom or teacher level factors related significantly to the likelihood of teachers’ attunement. Implications for social dynamics management and bullying intervention efforts are discussed.     

Bullying and 'Theory of Mind': A Critique of the 'Social Skills Deficit' View of Anti-Social Behaviour

Bullying in schools has been found to be widespread. The popular stereotype of a bully, supported by theories based on the social skills deficit model, is of a powerful but 'oafish' person with little understanding of others. In this article, we trace the origin of this view, and present an alternative view: that some bullies, at least, will need good social cognition and theory of mind skills in order to manipulate and organise others, inflicting suffering in subtle and damaging ways while avoiding detection themselves. Such skills, although likely to be utilised in all bullying, may be particularly useful for ringleader bullies and in the indirect forms of bullying which are more common between girls. Suggestions for further research in this area are made, and implications for anti-bullying work briefly discussed.     

Patterns of Bully/Victim Problems in Mixed Race Groups of Children

This study investigated the extent of bullying within and between British Asian and White girls and boys (n = 156) and some of the reasons why it occurs. There was no significant difference in the percentage of peers that nominated Asian and White children as either bullies or victims. Contrary to our prediction (derived from Tajfel's social judgement theory), both Asian children and White children were significantly more likely to be named as bullies of same-race classmates than to be named as bullies of other-race classmates. Again contrary to our prediction, for Asian boys and White boys there were no significant correlations between general racial preferences/attitudes on the one hand, and the extent to which they were named by classmates as bullies of other-race children on the other hand. In order to investigate the types of bullying directed at own-race and other-race pupils, a subset of the sample of children (n = 60) were also asked about the specific types of bullying they had experienced, and who was responsible. Some significant racial differences emerged, most notably that proportionally more Asian children than White children reported that they had been teased about their colour or race by children of the other-race, and the opposite was the case for non-racial types of teasing. The implications of these results for children's social development, and for school's attempts to remove bully/victim problems, are discussed. One recommendation was that teasing, and especially racial teasing by racial majority pupils, should be a focus for intervention.     

Effect of relational bullying on attitudes,behavior and injury among adolescent bullies,victims and bully-victims

This study examined whether dysfunctional correlates of relational bullying parallel those that have been found for physical bullying. We used data from the population of 2,494 respondents in grades 7–12 from a school district in Colorado to compare latent variables of self-esteem, attitudes toward school, delinquent behavior, physical injury, physical bullying, and physical victimization among 291 relational bullies, 303 victims, 213 bully-victims, and 1,687 neutrals. We used gender as a control variable. Neutrals had the best school attitudes, least problem behavior, least injury, and were less likely to be physical bullies or victims. Bully-victims reported worse outcomes on the latent variables than either neutrals or victims, and they were more likely to be physically victimized than bullies. These outcomes parallel findings among physical bullies in a similar sample. Results show the need for improved intervention, heightened awareness, and particular attention to relational bully-victims.     

The Relationship between Bullying Roles and Children's Everyday Dyadic Interactions

This study investigated the behaviour and communication of seven‐ to eight‐year‐old children during a dyadic computer task. The children participating were identified by peers as: (1) initiators of bullying (‘bullies’); (2) defenders of those victimised (‘defenders’); and (3) those who generally do not take on a consistent role in relation to bullying (‘non‐role’ children). Children were videotaped during the task and the interaction was coded, 34 dyads participated. Defenders used significantly higher levels of supportive communication such as explanation and guidance than bullies. The task performance of dyads consisting of defenders with non‐role children was significantly superior to that of dyads comprising bullies plus non‐role children. The behaviour of the non‐role children was influenced according to whether they were working with a bully, a defender or another non‐role child. The study suggests that the roles that children adopt in relation to bullying influence their behaviour in other, non‐bullying contexts.     

Participant roles in preschool bullying: The impact of emotion regulation,social preference,and quality of the teacher–child relationship

The present work investigated whether emotion regulation and social preference were associated with participant roles in bullying as a function of the quality of the relationship with teachers. Participants were 332 children (172 boys), in the age of 42–76 months (M = 58.74; SD = 7.84). Peer nominations were employed to assess social preference and participant roles (bullying, victimization, defending the victim, and outsider behavior). Teachers completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist, which yields the dimensions of emotion regulation and lability/negativity, and the Student – Teacher Relationships Scale, to evaluate conflict and closeness with the teacher. Multilevel models highlighted that emotional lability was positively associated with bullying and outsider behavior, emotion regulation was positively related to bullying and defending behavior, and social preference was negatively associated with bullying and victimization and positively with defending behavior. Interactions indicated that lability and low social preference were associated with bullying, and emotion regulation with outsider behavior, in children with a conflictual relationship with the teacher whereas social preference was related to defending behavior in children with a close relationship with the teacher. Results are discussed highlighting the importance of the quality of teacher–child relationship and the relevance of intervention programs aimed at promoting social wellbeing in preschool.     

Bullying and Victimization Among School-age Children: Stability and Links to Proactive and Reactive Aggression

The main aim of the study relates to the links between bullying and victimization on the one hand and reactive and proactive aggression on the other. In addition, we also investigated stability and incidence of bullying and victimization. At age 7, 236 children were rated on bullying and victimization using peer reports. At age 8, 242 children were rated again. Two hundred and fifteen children (114 girls and 101 boys) were present at both time points. Reactive and proactive aggression was assessed by teachers. The results showed that bullies and bully/victims were both reactively and proactively aggressive, while victims were only reactively aggressive. A moderate degree of stability of bullying and victimization was found, with bullying being more stable than victimization. Boys were more often bullies than girls and more stable than girls in victimization. Stable victims and stable bully/victims were more reactively aggressive than their unstable counterparts. The relevance of the outcomes to preventing future maladjustment and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Disentangling the Frequency and Severity of Bullying and Victimization in the Association with Empathy

This study disentangled the frequency and perceived severity of experienced bullying and victimization by investigating their associations with cognitive and affective empathy. Participants were 800 children (7–12 years old) from third‐ to fifth‐grade classrooms who completed self‐report measures of the frequency and perceived severity of their bullying and victimization and of cognitive and affective empathy. Results showed that the frequency and perceived severity of bullying were moderately correlated in the entire sample but unrelated within the subsample of bullies. Frequency and perceived severity of victimization were significantly and positively correlated in the entire sample (moderate effect) and the subsample of victims (small effect). Frequent, but not severe, bullies reported less cognitive empathy than non‐bullies whereas both frequent and severe victims reported more affective empathy than non‐victims. Within subsamples of bullies and victims, frequency of bullying was negatively associated with cognitive and affective empathy, and perceived severity of bullying was positively associated with affective empathy. Frequency of victimization was not associated with cognitive and affective empathy, but perceived severity of victimization was positively associated with both forms of empathy.     

Bullying Involvement and Empathy: Child and Target Characteristics

This study investigated how the bullying involvement of a child and a target peer are related to empathy. The role of gender was also considered. We hypothesized that empathy primarily varies depending on the bullying role of the target peer. Participants were 264 7–12‐year‐old children (M_age = 10.02, SD = 1.00; 50% girls) from 33 classrooms who had been selected based on their bullying involvement (bully, victim, bully/victim, noninvolved) in the classroom. Participants completed a cognitive and affective empathy measure for each selected target classmate. We found no differences in cognitive and affective empathy for all targets combined based on children's own bullying involvement. However, when incorporating the targets’ bullying involvement, bullies, victims, and bully/victims showed less empathy for each other than for noninvolved peers. Noninvolved children did not differentiate between bullies, victims and bully/victims. Girls reported more cognitive and affective empathy for girls than boys, whereas boys did not differentiate between girls and boys. The results indicated that children's empathy for peers depends primarily on the characteristics of the peer, such as the peer's bullying role and gender.     

Cumulative Risk,Negative Emotionality,and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Social Competence in Transition to School: A Mediated Moderation Model

The goals of this study were to examine the additive and interactive effects of cumulative risk and child negative emotionality on children's social competence in the transition from preschool to school and to test whether these associations were mediated by child emotion regulation within a sample of 310 low‐income, ethnically diverse boys. Multiple informants and methods were used to measure contextual risk factors and negative emotionality at the ages of 1.5 and two, emotion dysregulation at the age of 3.5, and social competence in the home at the age of five and in school at the age of six. Results indicated that the relation between cumulative risk and emotion dysregulation was amplified for children with higher levels of negative emotionality. In turn, emotion dysregulation predicted lower social competence across both the home and the school contexts. This study represents an early effort to develop an integrative model of social competence by considering joint contributions of contextual risk, negative emotionality, and emotion regulation.     

Toddlers' Social‐emotional Competence in the Contexts of Maternal Emotion Socialization and Contingent Responsiveness in a Low‐income Sample

Early social‐emotional development occurs in the context of parenting, particularly via processes such as maternal emotion socialization and parent–child interactions. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that maternal contingent responsiveness partially mediated the relationship between maternal emotion socialization of toddlers (N = 119, ages 12–36 months) and toddlers' social‐emotional competence. Effect size was strongest for the direct path between maternal emotion socialization and toddler social–emotional competence. Toddler age and maternal demographic risk status (covariates) predicted toddler competence. Study results extend the previous literature on early competencies by focusing on toddlers rather than preschool‐aged children and by employing a contextual model in which both low‐income mothers' emotion socialization and their contingent responsiveness predicted toddlers' competencies.     

Halo and association effects: Cognitive biases in teacher attunement to peer‐nominated bullies,victims, and prosocial students

This study examined whether teachers’ perceptions of students’ behavior (referring to halo effects) and the behavior of teacher‐perceived friends (referring to association effects) influenced teachers’ ability to recognize students identified as bullies, victims, and prosocial by their peers. Data came from 1,458 children (M_age = 10.5, 47.5% girls) and 56 teachers (M_age = 40.8, 66.1% females). Perceived likeability was associated with decreased odds and teachers’ perceptions of popularity and externalizing behavior were associated with increased odds for teacher attunement to bullying. Perceived likeability and affiliation were associated with decreased odds for teacher attunement to victimized students. Teachers’ perceptions of externalizing behavior were associated with decreased odds, whereas teachers’ perceptions of affiliation and academic competence were associated with increased odds for attunement to prosociality. Finally, a positive association was found between teacher attunement and the average behavior of teacher‐perceived friends for bullying, victimization, and prosociality.     

Temperament,mothers' reactions to children's emotional experiences,and emotion understanding predicting adjustment in preschool children

It is expected that both children and their parents contribute to children's development of emotion knowledge and adjustment. Bidirectional relations between child temperament (fear, frustration, executive control) and mothers' reactions to children's emotional experiences were examined to explore how these variables predict children's emotion understanding, social competence, and problem behaviors. Preschool‐aged children (N = 306) and their mothers were assessed across four‐time points. Children's temperament and mothers' non‐supportive reactions to children's emotional experiences were assessed when children were 36 and 45 months of age. Emotion understanding was assessed when the children were 54 months of age and teachers reported on children's problem behaviors and social competence when the children were 63 months of age. Covariates included family income, child cognitive ability, gender, and child adjustment at 36 months. Results from path analyses demonstrated that bidirectional relations between children's temperament and mothers' non‐supportive reactions were not significant. However, mother's non‐supportive reactions directly predicted fewer problem behaviors, and children's emotion understanding mediated the relation between children's executive control and their later social competence. As such, emotion understanding appears to be one mechanism through which executive control might impact social competence.     

The Role of Social Goals in Bullies' and Victims' Social Information Processing in Response to Ambiguous and Overtly Hostile Provocation

Understanding what social goals are associated with bullying and victimization behaviours, even after allowing for biases in interpretation of and affective responses to social events, is critical for understanding the socio‐behavioural profile of bullies and victims. In the present study, 181 nine‐ to ten‐year‐olds' affective responses, attribution of intent, and social goals were assessed in the context of a series of ambiguous and overtly hostile provocation vignettes. Results showed that even after allowing for other social information processing biases, social goals were meaningfully associated with bullying and victimization scores. Bullying was inversely associated with relationship‐building goals, and positively associated with goals to be assertive over the provocateur when provocation was overtly hostile. Being victimized was associated with having submissive goals even when provocation was ambiguous and after accounting for attribution of hostile intent. Findings are discussed in light of theoretical and practical implications.     

School Bullying and Moral Reasoning Competence

To examine whether high moral reasoning competence of adolescents is associated with low levels of bullying, and to understand whether moral disengagement mediates or moderates this relationship, 925 German children ranging from 11 to 17 years of age (M = 14.18, SD = 1.21) completed questionnaires on moral reasoning competence and moral disengagement in surveys at three different schools. The children were classified according to their bullying role, based on a peer‐nomination procedure. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that moral reasoning competence negatively predicted whether a student took an aggressive role. Moral disengagement partially mediated this relationship. Corresponding effects for defenders and outsiders were not found. These results extend previous findings about the effect of moral reasoning on bullying in primary school. The implications for the prevention of bullying are discussed.     

Parent emotion socialization and children's socioemotional adjustment: when is supportiveness no longer supportive?

Parents' supportive emotion socialization behaviors promote children's socioemotional competence in early childhood, but the nature of parents' supportiveness may change over time, as children continue to develop their emotion‐related abilities and enter contexts that require more complex and nuanced social skills and greater autonomy. To test whether associations between parents' supportiveness of children's negative emotions and children's socioemotional adjustment vary with child age, 81 parents of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children completed questionnaires assessing their responses to children's negative emotions and their children's emotion regulation, lability, social competence, and behavioral adjustment. As predicted, child age moderated the associations between parents' supportiveness and children's socioemotional adjustment. For younger children, parents' supportiveness predicted better emotion regulation and less anxiety/internalizing and anger/externalizing problems. However, for older children, these associations were reversed, suggesting that socialization strategies which were supportive for younger children may fail to foster socioemotional competence among 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children. These results suggest the importance of considering emotion socialization as a dynamic, developmental process, and that parents' socialization of children's emotions might need to change in response to children's developing emotional competencies and social demands.     

Are the Competent the Morally Good? Perspective Taking and Moral Motivation of Children Involved in Bullying

The present study tested the hypothesis of the cognitively competent but morally insensitive bully. On the basis of teacher and peer ratings, 212 young elementary school children were selected and categorized as bullies, bully–victims, victims, and prosocial children. Children's perspective-taking skills were assessed using theory-of-mind tasks, and moral motivation was assessed with a task about moral emotion attributions after moral rule transgressions. Analyses at the group level revealed that only bully–victims, but not bullies, were characterized by a deficit in perspective taking, while both aggressive groups showed a deficit in moral motivation. Analyses at the individual level, however, revealed that bullies were a more heterogeneous group, including children with an asymmetry between perspective taking and moral motivation, as well as children scoring consistently low or high on both measures. The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between (1) strategic social–cognitive and moral competencies and (2) different subgroups of bullies.     

The relations of children’s emotion knowledge to their observed social play and reticent/uninvolved behavior in preschool: Moderation by effortful control

Using data from a study of 140 preschool children (39% female), we examined the relations between direct assessments of emotion knowledge and naturalistic observations of behavior during free‐play periods, and tested parent‐ and teacher‐reported effortful control as a moderator of these relations. Basic emotion recognition was unrelated to social play and reticent behavior, whereas situational understanding of emotions (thought to be a relatively sophisticated aspect of emotion knowledge) was negatively related to reticent/uninvolved behavior and marginally positively related to social play. Effortful control significantly moderated these relations, such that situational emotion understanding was more strongly related to reticent/uninvolved behavior and social play at low levels of effortful control, and unrelated to outcomes at high levels of effortful control. These results highlight the unique role of situational understanding in predicting children’s social competence and suggest that emotion knowledge is particularly important for children who struggle with effortful regulation skills.     

Emotion Knowledge, Social Competence, and Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-analytic Review

The present meta-analytic review examined the magnitude of the relation between discrete emotion knowledge and three of its most commonly studied correlates in childhood and adolescence: social competence, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems. Emotion knowledge demonstrated small to medium-sized relations with each correlate. Moderators of effect size were also examined and included multiple sample and methodological characteristics. Using random effects models, significant moderators of effect size for relations between emotion knowledge and externalizing problems included sample recruitment, sample age, and the source of externalizing problems ratings. Moderators of effect size were not found for emotion knowledge and social competence, and the effect sizes across samples for emotion knowledge and internalizing problems were homogeneous. Results highlight the relatively consistent yet modest relations between emotion knowledge and its correlates. Implications for applied research and new directions for research on emotion knowledge using innovative methods are discussed.     

Bullying in secondary schools: through a discursive lens

Abstract

This paper analyses students’ constructions of bullying from a social constructionist perspective. Interviews were conducted with 24 students at a small semi-rural secondary school in New Zealand. These were taped, transcribed and a discourse analysis, informed by the work of Foucault, was carried out. It was found that students made sense of bullying by drawing on constructions that included bullying as a consequence of differences and as a form of discipline. These constructions had the effect of legitimizing the school's institutional power imbalance. This was supported by students and teachers who both played an active role in simultaneously enforcing, and being subjected to, the disciplinary technologies of normalization characterized by bullying. The goal of this research is to provide a critical focus to the political nature, power relations and ideological effects of these prevailing discourses that function to both create and support bullying behaviour in our schools.