Student victimization by peers in elementary schools: individual, teacher-class, and school-level predictors

Objectives

This study examined individual and contextual factors that explain students’ victimization by peers among 4th- through 6th-grade Jewish and Arab students.

Method

A total of 120 homeroom teachers and 3,375 students from 47 schools participated. The study explored how students’ reports of violence are influenced by individual factors (gender, age, perception of school climate, victimization by teachers, and fear) teacher-class factors (school climate, homeroom teachers’ characteristics such as self-efficacy, and education) and cultural affiliation as a school level factor.

Results

The results showed that levels of victimization vary significantly between classes and between schools. However, the vast majority of variation in students’ victimization lay at the individual level. Factors such as fear, physical and emotional victimization by teachers, and gender affected levels of students’ victimization by peers.

Conclusions

Students victimized by peers are more likely to be victimized by their teachers and to miss school because of their fear of violence. Further research should be conducted to investigate additional teacher, class and school factors that can predict levels of students’ victimization.

Practice implication

Based on the study's results, efforts to deal with school violence should be targeted to students and school staff. It is essential to design and implement a “whole school” approach that includes participation of the entire school community. Furthermore, intensive individual treatment should be given to victimized students to improve their sense of safety and protection on school property. In addition, the findings emphasized the need to design and implement school intervention programs in a sensitive way that takes into consideration children's developmental stages and other factors that affect their levels of victimization. The results showed that younger children do not take advantage of the many positive effects that can be achieved from positive school policy and good relationships with staff. It might be that more efforts should be made to raise victimized students’ awareness by emphasizing that schools have rules that are there to protect them.     

The Importance of Being Colorful and Able to Fly: Interpretation and implications of children's statements on selected insects and other invertebrates

Children have served as research subjects in several surveys on attitudes to insects and invertebrates. Most of the studies have used quantitative scoring methods to draw conclusions. This paper takes a different approach as it analyzes children's free-text comments to gain an understanding of their viewpoints. A total of 246 children aged 9–13 completed a standard questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward 18 invertebrates indigenous to Switzerland. Fourteen insect species and four other invertebrates were individually presented in a color photograph without any further background information. The children were given the opportunity to provide comments on each animal to explain the attitude score they had awarded. Nearly 5,000 comments were coded and categorized into 7 positive and 9 negative categories. A significant correlation between fear and disgust was not detected. Based on a hierarchical cluster analysis, we concluded that flying in the air versus crawling on the ground was a major differentiator for attitude and underlying reasons, only being trumped by the fear of getting stung. The visualization of our findings in a cluster heat map provided further insights into shared statement categories by species. Our analysis establishes that fear and disgust are separate emotions with regard to insects and other invertebrates. Based on our findings, we believe that prejudice-based fear and culturally evolved revulsion can be overcome. We suggest promoting environmental education programs, especially if they allow for personal experience, provide information in emotion-activating formats, and include content that resolves existing misinformation and myths.     

跨栏教学中克服学生心理恐惧的实践性研究

根据学生在跨栏跑学习与练习过程中对跨栏架普遍存在的恐惧的心理现象 ,笔者针对性地采用“软式跨栏架”的教学方法进行实验性教学 ,结果表明 ,“软式跨栏架”教学能使学生克服跨栏跑教学过程中对跨栏架存在的恐惧心理 ,提高学习兴趣和效率。     

Sports coaches as ‘dangerous individuals’—practice as governmentality

Recent concern surrounding sports coaches' interaction with young people has reflected a fundamental change in the way coaches and others regard the role of sports. In this paper, we consider the identification and definition of the contemporary sports coach (whether acting in a professional or volunteer capacity) as, in Foucault's term, a ‘dangerous individual’. We suggest that the mainstream discourse of child protection and safeguarding, variously interpreted and applied, has contributed to a culture of fear in sports coaching practice. Drawing on data from a recently completed Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project, we argue that contradictions in policy and practice, which serve to privilege a particular discourse, have cast the coach as both predator and protector of young sports performers. This has undermined the role of the coach, led to intergenerational fear, created doubt about coaches' intentions and promoted their adoption of defensive and protective practices. Utilising the concept of governmentality, we argue that, as a consequence, fundamental trust-based relationships, necessary in healthy athlete???coach engagement, have been displaced by a discourse embodied in sterile delivery and procedure governed by regulation and suspicion.     

浅论如何提高普通高校公体课中长跑教学质量

本文研究了韶关学院公共体育课学生耐力素质较差的原因,提出在教学中应根据学生特点,提高其自觉性练习的方法,对公共体育课中长跑教学法具有重要意义.     

条件性恐惧的大脑回路研究概述

近年来 ,条件性恐惧的研究表明 :杏仁核是大脑中参与恐惧记忆获得、贮存和表达的一个重要组成部分 ;听觉条件性恐惧的神经回路是条件刺激和无条件刺激传递到杏仁核 ,在杏仁核中运行 ,并将这些信息投射到脑干控制系统 ,控制恐惧反应 ;条件性恐惧具有可塑性 ,杏仁核中的外侧神经核是可塑性的中枢部位 ,参与其可塑性的神经递质是N 甲基 D 天冬氨酸受体 ;恐惧情感的产生可能是前额叶皮层、海马和杏仁核三个脑区共同激活的结果。     

High School Students’ Attitudes Towards Spiders: A cross‐cultural comparison

Spiders are traditionally considered to be among the least popular of animals. Current evidence suggests that a negative attitude towards spiders could be influenced by both cultural and evolutionary pressures. Some researchers suggest that science education activities could positively influence students’ perceptions of spiders. Their evidence is, however, ambivalent. Using a five‐point score Likert‐type questionnaire in which the items were developed in a similar way to four of Kellert’s categories of attitude (scientistic, negativistic, naturalistic, and ecologistic) towards invertebrates, we compared the level of knowledge of and attitudes towards spiders of high school students from two countries, Slovakia (n = 354) and South Africa (n = 382). The students represented different cultures and followed dissimilar science education curricula. Only among the Slovakian students there was a statistically significant but low correlation between knowledge and attitude (r = 0.30). The South African students scored higher in the categories of scientistic, naturalistic, and ecologistic attitudes. Comparison of attitude towards spiders of indigenous Africans from coeducational Catholic schools revealed that South African students have greater fear of spiders than Slovakian students, supporting the biological preparedness hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts a greater fear of spiders in South Africa than in Europe since several South African spiders possess venoms that are dangerous to humans. The results of this study are discussed from science education, cultural, and evolutionary perspectives.     

体育教学中如何培养中学生的心理素质

培养学生健康的情感和良好的心理素质是学校体育重要任务之一。从教学实际出发,根据体育教学特点和学生在体育活动中的心理状态,学校体育与健康教学以育人为宗旨,与德育、智育和美育相配合,促进学生身心的全面发展,消除学生在运动中的恐惧心理,克服不良个性,对学生进行集体主义、爱国主义和意志品质的教育,从而为国家培养高素质的体育人才。     

论高校足球教学中学生畏惧心理的产生与消除

在高校足球教学中学生或多或少存在畏惧心理,本文试图就学生存在的主观因素和客观因素在学习足球基本技术时产生畏惧心理的原因、特征及消除畏惧心理等方面进行分析,其目的是促进学生更好地掌握足球基本技术,提高教学质量,实现教学目标。     

优化课堂教学 减轻学习负担

针对在校学生普遍存在学习心理负担较重的特点，如果教师的教学方法单一，不注重激发学生学习的积极性，学生学习心理负担必然加重，教学效果也就不尽人意。因此，如何减轻学生学习心理负担，已成为教师备课的重点。旨从优化课堂教学入手，探讨如何减轻学生学习的心理负担。