Setting up and Sustaining Peer Support Systems in a Range of Schools over 20 Years

This article begins by detailing some of the key ideas behind the concept of peers helping peers. The history of peer support schemes in the UK and of the author's particular and important role in this development are explored. The use of Re-Evaluation Counselling in this model is described. She also details the processes of setting up and sustaining peer support schemes in schools. The factors that are key to these processes are identified and exemplified via case studies.     

Disciplined freedom,branded authenticity,and dependable independence: how tensions enact flexibility in lifestyle blogging careers

Analyzing 219 blog posts from 52 self-employed women lifestyle bloggers in North America, this study shows how these digital professionals navigate tensions and communicatively constitute work flexibility. In their narratives, women bloggers employed tension management approaches such as reframing, continual connections, and reflective practice in response to tensions in enacting temporal–spatial, identity, and financial flexibility. Specifically, women followed oxymoronic constructions – disciplined freedom, branded authenticity, and dependable independence – to embrace and transform competing poles of fluidity?structure, authenticity?marketability, and independence?interconnection. Expanding work–life research to the self-employed digital labor context, this study responds to recent calls to uncover more-than tension management strategies in empirical settings and contributes to a tension-centered, contextual, and processual analysis of workplace flexibility construction.     

The Impact of Workplace Bullying on Primary School Teachers and Principals

While previous research has consistently cited education as a high risk profession for negative workplace relationships, there has been little consideration of the impact of workplace bullying for those involved. This paper seeks to address this lacuna through the analysis of 24, in-depth interviews with self-identified victims of workplace bullying who work, or have worked, in primary schools. The study reveals the profound physical, psychological, social, and economic effects of these toxic behaviors upon the interviewees, along with the resistance strategies they employed to help them cope with their experiences. Through a lens of Foucauldian conceptualisation of power, this study explores the broader implications for school organizational culture, as well as for individual teachers and the pupils they teach.     

心理学视域下校园欺凌的形成机理及对策

校园欺凌是国内外中小学中普遍存在的现象,从心理学角度考察其成因、探索相应干预措施有着重要意义。有关欺凌事件直接参与者的研究表明:部分欺凌者存在一定程度的反社会行为或认知特征,欺凌行为也是青春期个体获取、维护社会支配地位的一种手段;某些"另类"特征、情绪和社会交往问题会让儿童青少年成为易受欺凌的对象;欺凌和受欺凌都可能导致个体情绪、行为等方面的适应障碍,其不良影响甚至会延续相当长的时间;欺凌-受欺凌者是最不稳定的一类角色,兼具欺凌者与受欺凌者两者的缺点,适应状况通常最差。班级内的同伴生态、旁观者的行为和朋友关系都会影响欺凌事件的发生几率及所导致的后果。某些家庭和父母特征也是与欺凌行为联系密切的危险性或保护性因素。积极的师生关系有助于减少欺凌事件的发生,也能对其后果起到缓冲作用。但缺乏培训的父母和教师,通常无法及时准确地识别欺凌事件并做出有效应对。当前教育实践中,可以有效防控校园欺凌的措施大致可以划分为两类;一是面向特定相关群体的单水平干预,二是要求学生、家长、教职员工等都要参与其中的多水平干预。     

关于儿童欺负行为研究的思考

儿童欺负行为主要发生在校园或者以校园为媒介的社交群体内,是一种常见的校园不良行为,并有可能发展为校园暴力。对欺负行为及其动机进行分析,培养儿童健康人格,采取科学教养方式,加强正面教育是对欺负行为进行有效干预的重要途径。     

The relationship between school belonging,sibling aggression and bullying involvement: implications for students with and without disabilities

Bullying is grounded in the interactions between an individual and complex social–ecological systems. Therefore, bullying involvement is not just confined to the classroom or school. Recent research suggests that sibling aggression may be a predictor for peer-level aggression. These findings may be more relevant for students with disabilities because studies suggest that students with disabilities are disproportionately involved in the bullying dynamic. Therefore, this study explored the intersection between sibling aggression and school belonging on bullying, victimisation and fighting for 14,508 students, including 1183 students with disabilities and 13,325 students without disabilities in grades 6 through 12. As hypothesised, students with disabilities reported higher levels of victimisation, bullying and fighting. Additionally, high levels of school belonging partially buffered fighting and bullying behaviours for students with and without disabilities. These findings demonstrate the importance of establishing an inclusive and safe environment for school-aged youth.     

Bullying and the Unique Socioemotional Needs of Gifted and Talented Early Adolescents: Veteran Teacher Perspectives and Practices

Much is written at the elementary school level concerning bullying and the socioemotional needs of gifted and talented (GT) students; however, in the last 10 years, little qualitative research exists concerning the early adolescent GT age group. In the social environment of classroom life, early and current research indicates that many of these students experience neurotic perfectionism, overexciteabilities (OEs), developmental asynchrony, and bullying. The formation of autonomous classes (GT-only classes) has afforded some hope concerning the amelioration of such problems; nevertheless, in this study, detailed evidence of classroom bullying in the form of social ostracism and teasing has been found with this GT age group. If left unchecked, psychological autopsies have shown these students suffering emotional difficulties and even committing suicide as a result of school and classroom torment. With such potential for classroom bullying problems, few studies address what veteran teachers of early adolescent GT students do to keep students psychologically safe. Within the social milieu of classroom life, and in comparison to research standards, this study explores three efficacious teacher perspectives and practices.     

Safe spaces? A social-ecological perspective on student perceptions of safety in the environment of the school canteen

ABSTRACT

Background Research suggests that negative peer interactions that compromise student safety and wellbeing often occur in spaces at school that are not easily visible, not adequately monitored, overcrowded and/or relatively unstructured. In a large online survey conducted in Swedish schools by the anti-bullying organisation, Friends, a small proportion of students indicated that they felt unsafe in the school canteen and responded to a question about why they felt unsafe there. As the canteen is often reported to be a space where negative peer interactions, such as harassment, bullying and other forms of school violence, occur, but little is known about why negative peer interactions occur there, we were particularly interested in exploring why some students perceived their school canteen to be an unsafe space.

Purpose Taking a social-ecological perspective, our aim was to investigate why students reported feeling unsafe in the environment of the school canteen.

Method In order to investigate this question, we analysed 1,547 responses from students in Swedish schools in grades 3–6 (ages 9–12). The responses were from the anti-bullying organisation Friends’ online questionnaires from 2011 to 2016. In the responses, students who indicated that they felt unsafe in the school canteen explained why they felt this way. Data were analysed qualitatively, using a six-step thematic approach.

Findings The analysis identified four key themes: Space constraints, Time restrictions, The risk of social blunders and The negative actions of others. We discuss the findings in terms of the macrosystem, exosystem, mesosystem and microsystem.

Conclusions In matters of student safety and wellbeing, we argue that it is not only important to consider the social context, but also how that context is interconnected with environmental and structural elements.     

Ethno-national boundaries in the construction of “dirty-work” occupational identity: The case of nursing care workers in diversified workplaces

Diversified domains, such as workplaces, are suitable social fields for the study of ethnic identities, because identities are constructed through comparison and negation, that is, by identifying what or who the “other” is. In the present study I explore the talk of hands-on nursing care work, a stigmatized occupational field, to illuminate ethnic identities and the strategic boundary work that care workers conduct. The study is based on 14 months of field work and 51 interviews and observations at two Israeli geriatric wards with highly diverse staff. I show that actors negotiate their care worker identity by the opposite strategies of making and unmaking ethno-national boundaries. The first strategy denies and erases ethno-national boundaries by stressing universal professional values and individual virtues; the second one demarcates boundaries between ethno-national groups, using perceived cultural differences. The discussion addresses these antithetical evaluation frameworks in relation to theories of boundary making and unmaking.