The purpose of the current study was to understand the association between bullying experiences (i.e., bullying, victimization, and defending) and social, emotional, and cognitive factors. The social factor was social skills (i.e., empathy, assertion, cooperation, responsibility); the emotional factor was emotional difficulties (i.e., personal…

Longitudinal links between early childhood temperament, maternal sensitivity, and adolescents' adjustment have been proposed and found in several longitudinal studies, but the mechanisms of influence have not been explored. The authors examined the paths from maternal sensitivity and temperament in early childhood to adolescents' prosocial,…

The ViSC Social Competence Program has been implemented in Austrian schools within the scope of a national strategy plan, Together Against Violence. The program is a primary preventive program designed for grades 5 to 8. The prevention of aggression and bullying is defined as a school development task, and the initial implementation of the program…

This paper examines the effects of the Fast Track preventive intervention on youths' functioning in three domains: disruptive behavior problems, involvement with deviant peers, and social skills during the middle school years. Eight hundred ninety-one children had been randomly assigned by sets of schools within four sites to intervention (n =…

It has been proposed that aggressive behavior may result from unrealistically positive self-evaluations that are disputed by others (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). The present three studies tested this proposition concurrently and longitudinally for the domain of self-perceived social competence (SPSC) in 3-6th grade children on two…

Commitment and attachment to school and perception of school norms were examined in a sample of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to determine whether bullies, victims, bully victims, and students who reported no or low levels of bullying and victimization differed in their level of bonding to school and their perceptions of standards and…

Describes a group-counseling approach to teaching elementary school students social skills designed to reduce their use of aggressive behaviors in the school environment. Eight sessions are described that have activities designed to influence the affective and behavioral components of these behaviors. Several suggestions are described to assess…

Describes a difficult sixth grade girl who spent her elementary school years fighting to feel happy. The article focuses on a teacher's efforts to raise the child's self-esteem by examining her home life then taking appropriate steps to encourage success (e.g., tutoring younger students). (SM)