Since the passage of legislation banning corporal punishment in South African schools, disruptive behaviour in schools has become an issue of national concern. Against this background a research project was undertaken in which the types and causes of disruptive behaviour occurring most frequently in the Foundation Phase of schooling were…

Three models of the prospective relations between child maladjustment and peer victimization are examined: (a) internalizing results directly from victimization, (b) internalizing leads to victimization, and (c) physical aggression fuels retaliatory victimization that leads to increases in internalizing over time. Data came from assessments of…

A multilevel design was used to test a model in which teachers' attitudes (beliefs) about bullying (e.g., it is normative; assertive children do not get bullied; children wouldn't be bullied if they avoided mean kids) were hypothesized to influence if and how they intervene in bullying interactions. In turn, it was hypothesized that teachers'…

Mediator models were examined in which children's emotional reactions to peer aggression were hypothesized to mediate their selection of coping strategies and subsequent peer victimization and internalizing problems. Self-report data were collected from 145 ethnically diverse kindergarten through fifth grade children (66 females and 79 males) who…