Socialization among aggressive friends is believed to play a critical role in the development of aggressive behavior. This study examined the moderating effect of norm salience in the classroom on the association between reciprocal friends' and children's own physical, relational, and general aggression. A total of 713 children (M = 10.32 years,…

The purpose of this article is to examine how the discourse of childhood innocence masks the ways in which sexual violence by boys against girls is perpetrated in kindergarten. Findings from a year-long ethnographic study conducted in two Canadian kindergarten classrooms show that narrow understandings of gender and sexuality in childhood obscure…

Research examining the rates, frequency, and impact of harassment and violence that elementary school educators experience from students, parents, colleagues, and administrators is sparse. Over 1000 educators from publicly funded elementary schools in Ontario completed surveys assessing the rate, frequency, and impact of various forms of…

Children's emotion understanding has emerged as one of the best predictors of their psychological well-being, pro-social competences and school achievement. The main goal of this study was to evaluate for the first time the impact of an easy-to-use and not time-consuming classroom dialogue-based intervention (a) on preschool children's…

Building durable peace through education requires addressing the gender ideologies and hierarchies that encourage both direct physical aggression and indirect harm through marginalization and exploitation. Although formal education systems are shaped by gendered patterns of social conflict, enmity, and inequity, schools can help young people to…

This study investigates the nexus between teacher exposure to student aggression, their level of emotional exhaustion, and the role of belongingness and perceived school safety as mediators. Random-Intercept Cross-Lag Panel Models were conducted among a sample of 2,072 secondary teachers (57.14% female) from grades 7 to 11 in 77 schools. Chronic…

The literature reports high levels of occupational stress for teachers, exacerbated by heavy loads of emotional labour in the classroom. We know less, however, about teacher mental health concerns as they relate to leaves of absences and returns to work, and the role gender may play related to leaves of absences and returns to work. Our pilot…

Identity construction can be very complex for refugee children, especially for Palestinian refugee children. For refugee children, organised violence and immigration are important parts of their life experience that can lead to trauma, which in turn influences how they construct their collective identity. Schools have to consider this specific…

How do young people living in high-violence contexts express a sense of democratic agency and hope, and/or frustration and hopelessness, for handling various kinds of social and political conflict problems? The management of conflict is a core challenge and purpose of democracy, severely impeded by the isolation and distrust caused by violence.…

This paper examines zero tolerance discipline policies in Ontario's public school system legislated as the "Safe Schools Act (SSA)" 2001. The intent of our paper is to argue that the "SSA" set within a discourse of zero tolerance as the panacea to the problems of violence in schools has had a detrimental impact. Since the…

Inclusion of students with special education needs into regular classrooms, and prevention of violence in schools are two important social or public policies with which school administrators and teachers are faced in today's public education system. If school staffs are to be effective at implementing these two public policies, it seems reasonable…

This article argues that bullying is a human rights violation and should be a social studies curriculum concern. It treats bullying not only as a school incident but also as part of any systematic, continuous violence in any context. There is a discussion of legal implications, applicable educational theory, and attempts to deal with bullying in…

Children's drawings about reading and writing have unrealized potential for helping uncover the literacy narratives students bring to school and use to make sense of reading and writing. In this article, we highlight how one boy's drawing about literacy revealed his interpretation of his school's policy on violence as a topic of writing, which…