A large-scale evaluation of the KiVa antibullying program: grades 4-6

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the KiVa antibullying program using a large sample of 8,237 youth from Grades 4-6 (10-12 years). Altogether, 78 schools were randomly assigned to intervention (39 schools, 4,207 students) and control conditions (39 schools, 4,030 students). Multilevel regression analyses revealed that after 9 months of implementation, the intervention had consistent beneficial effects on 7 of the 11 dependent variables, including self- and peer-reported victimization and self-reported bullying. The results indicate that the KiVa program is effective in reducing school bullying and victimization in Grades 4-6. Despite some evidence against school-based interventions, the results suggest that well-conceived school-based programs can reduce victimization.     

Guiding and modelling quality improvement in higher education institutions

The article considers the process of creating quality improvement in higher education institutions from the point of view of current organisational theory and social-science modelling techniques. The author considers the higher education institution as a functioning complex of rules, norms and other organisational features and reviews the social mechanisms and processes through which agencies can stimulate quality improvement. The article provides a few examples of how these social processes might be modelled using social simulation techniques, including agent-based models, discrete event simulation and other modelling techniques developed for representing complex social processes of coordination and cooperation. A better representation of universities as complexes of organisations will support more effective quality improvement by higher education leaders and external agencies.     

The Relation of Gender Understanding to Children''s Sex-typed Preferences and Gender Stereotypes

Our goal was to explore how children's understanding of gender as a social category relates to their acquisition of sex-typed knowledge and preferences. Children's gender concepts, sex-typed preferences, and stereotyped knowledge were measured in 61 boys and girls (3-5 years). Gender concept measures included ability to identify and to discriminate the sexes, understanding gender group membership, temporal stability of gender, and gender consistency over situational changes. Children improved with age on most of the measures except gender consistency. With the exception of consistency, measures of gender concept understanding were found to be related to children's stereotyped toy and clothing knowledge and/or to their sex-typed toy preferences (with age controlled). It was shown that only rudimentary gender understanding is needed prior to children learning about sex stereotypes and prior to showing strong sex-typed preferences for peers or toys. The roles of gender identity, stability, consistency, and group membership in the sex-typing process are discussed.     

Globalisation and educational research: Whose context counts?

This paper relates contemporary educational research to processes of globalisation. While the activity of educational research is essentially cultural, its production is also economic. As global research agenda emerge, the cultural contexts of those who generate funds and ideas for them are increasingly remote from those in a position to utilise research for the promotion of learning.This paper examines two bodies of research in international education located at very different points in the educational research hierarchy. The first, educational assessment, is extensive and accessible to a worldwide audience of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners in education. The second, multigrade teaching, is small, dispersed and accessible only to those who exercise a dogged persistence.The review of educational assessment underlines the need for a greater contextualisation of research and a greater sensitivity to the context of research by global policy-makers. It raises imperatives for the future conduct of research on educational assessment and international education more generally, and identifies areas for future research on the reciprocal effects of globalisation and educational assessment. The review of multigrade teaching describes briefly what multigrade teaching is, its extent, its relative neglect by researchers and policy-makers, and differences in the economic and educational contexts of the North and the South of the multigrade debate.     

Children and traumatic events: Therapeutic techniques for psychologists working in the schools

It is clear that exposure to traumatic events is not uncommon in childhood and adolescence, and psychologists working in schools should have some training in meeting the needs of this segment of the population. One intervention that has been empirically supported in the trauma field is Trauma‐Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF‐CBT). This article seeks to provide an overview of research on the efficacy of TF‐CBT with children and adolescents who have experienced trauma with a primary focus on psychologists working in the schools. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.