AGGRESSIVE ATTITUDES AND PREVALENCE OF BULLYING BYSTANDER BEHAVIOR IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

Separate lines of research find that proaggressive attitudes promote peer aggression and that bystanders play a pivotal role in deterring or facilitating bullying behavior. The current study hypothesized that proaggressive attitudes in middle school would deter students from standing up to bullying and encourage them to reinforce bullying behavior. Middle school students (n = 28,765) in 423 schools completed a statewide school climate survey that included an aggressive attitudes scale and their bystander response to a recent episode of bullying, which was categorized as upstanding, reinforcing, or passive. Multilevel logistic regressions indicated that higher aggressive attitudes were associated with less upstanding behavior at the school level and less upstanding behavior and more reinforcing behavior at the individual level, while controlling for other school and student demographic variables. These findings suggest that antibullying programs might address student attitudes toward aggression as a means of boosting positive bystander intervention.     

Software and human agents in Knowledge Codification

In the age of digital networks and databases, gathering data is no longer a differentiating attribute. Instead, the onus is upon creating knowledge and codifying it into the organizational routine. The central theme of this paper is to offer a systematic knowledge codification routine that embodies specific agent attributes and best re-engineering practices. The knowledge process re-engineering schema is proposed as a routine comprising extraction, transformation, and loading to encompass seeking knowledge inputs, converting them based on context, and codifying knowledge for organizational reuse. Using the organization as the primary unit of analysis, the scope of our discussion explicates an agent-mediated process re-engineering model of knowledge creation and codification. The proposed re-engineering captures the synthetic transformation of data into information, information into explicit knowledge, the use of explicit knowledge as an input to tacit knowledge, and the codification of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge in an attempt to shift the ownership and control of knowledge from the individual to the organization.     

Capacity building of a district education system: insights from Kenya

Both (a) in-school factors such as over-focus on academic performance, absence of uniform, and corporal punishment, and (b) out-of school factors such as caring for ailing parents, child labour, etc., hinder participation of orphan and vulnerable children (OVC) in Free Primary Education (FPE) system in Nyanza Province, Kenya. In this context Concern Worldwide Kenya undertook an appreciative capacity building approach and appropriately positioned District Education Office (DEO) of the Ministry of Education and local civil society organisations (CSOs) to address in-school and out-of-school factors, respectively, to ensure quality education for OVC. The outcome of the programme is promising and has demonstrated the need for greater cooperation between CSOs and the government to develop creative strategies in overcoming the causes of marginalisation within the contexts of the growing AIDS pandemic and poverty in Kenya.