Bullying in schools has been identified as a serious and complex worldwide problem associated with negative short-and long-term effects on children's psychosocial adjustment (Smith 1999; Ttofi and Farrington, Aggressive Behav 34(4):352-368, 2008). Entering kindergarten is a crucial developmental step in many children's lives mainly because it is within this context where they participate, for the first time, as members in a stable peer group and well-organized team activities. Consequently, preschool may be the first context beyond the home environment where children's difficulties in social interactions with peers can be primarily detected and assessed by adults and professionals. This paper reviews recent empirical evidence over the nature and different aspects of bullying among preschool children. Recent findings concerning the development of preschool bullying and its prevalence, family and genetic factors, gender and age differences, participant and peripheral roles, school context, methodological issues, and prevention policies are reviewed while directions for future research are addressed.Bullying in schools has been identified as a serious and complex worldwide problem associated with negative short-and long-term effects on children's psychosocial adjustment (Smith 1999;Ttofi and Farrington 2008). Most of the research undertaken for studying bullying in schools has emphasized on middle childhood and adolescence, while there is scarce empirical evidence concerning the manifestation and development of the problem in early childhood years (

This study examines the relationship between both bullying and victimization (as a whole and in its different forms) and: (a) self-efficacy measures; (b) peer-interactions and (c) attitudes towards bullying and victimization. It also examined whether bully/victims are a distinct group in terms of the above-mentioned variables. The sample consisted of 448 4th to 6th grade primary education pupils (206 girls, 242 boys). The results of the study clearly indicate that self-efficacy measures, peer interactions and attitudes are associated with both bullying and victimization. In particular: (a) high self-efficacy for aggression is associated with both bullying and victimization, whereas high-self efficacy for assertion and for intervening in bully/victim situations is associated with lower scores on physical victimization for boys and girls respectively; (b) higher scores on positive interactions with peers are associated with lower scores on victimization and (c) higher scores on pro-bully attitudes are associated with higher scores on both bullying and victimization. Bully/victims seem to be a distinct group in terms of their strong pro-bully attitudes and their lack of positive interactions. They are also found to be similar to bullies with respect to self-efficacy for aggression but similar to victims with respect to self-efficacy for assertion. The results of the study are discussed in terms of their implications for school practice and intervention policy.

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The aim of this paper was to examine the short-term and long-term effects of a curriculum-based anti-bullying intervention program on students' attitudes towards bullying, intentions to intervene in bully-victim problems, perceived efficacy of intervening and actual intervening behavior. The intervention program was applied in primary schools and was implemented by trained teachers within the classroom context. The sample consisted of 454 pupils drawn from fourth to sixth grade classrooms of 10 primary schools in central Greece. A quasiexperimental pre-test/post-test design was used. The findings indicate positive short-term program outcomes concerning students' attitudes towards bullies and victims, perceived efficacy of intervening in bully-victim incidents and actual rates of intervening behavior. However, the magnitude of the program effects was quite small, since the positive short-term outcomes were not sustained in the longterm (post-test two measures). The results of the study also indicated clear time effects for attitudes towards bullies and victims, self-efficacy of intervening and intention, as well as actual intervening behavior. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for anti-bullying interventions.

Emotional difficulties, and especially depressive symptomatology, constitute a serious and relatively frequent childhood problem which are often overlooked. Teachers' responses to pupils' depression seem to be related to their understanding concerning the causes of this problem. Thus, the aims of the present research are: (a) to estimate the proportion of pupils displaying depressive symptomatology; (b) to examine teachers' readiness and ability to identify those pupils; (c) to search for teachers' perceptions concerning the causation of pupils' behavioural-emotional problems including depression and (d) to explore the differences between younger and older teachers' causal attributions. The sample consisted of 323 pupils from the fifth to sixth grades and their teachers, in the area of Volos, Greece. Pupils completed the Children's Depression Inventory, while their teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their perceptions of the incidence and causes of their students' emotional-behavioural problems and depressive symptoms. The results indicate that approximately 30 percent of the students indicated a high level of depressive symptoms, while their teachers seemed to lack readiness and skills for identifying this; they reported more often behaviour problems and tended to attribute students' difficulties to factors lying outside the school context. Implications are discussed in terms of developments in teachers' training and policies leading to greater support for pupils experiencing depressive symptoms.

The aim of the current study was to examine the role of resilience in the victimization experiences of students and their subjective well‐being as well as to explore gender and age‐related effects. Initially, 558 students (52.15% male) from grades 6 to 10 participated in the study completing The Student Aggression and Victimization Questionnaire, The Mental Health Continuum, and the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale. One‐hundred and twenty‐seven (22.8%) students were excluded from the final analysis, as they did not report any victimization experience during the past 3 months. Males in all year levels reported higher levels of well‐being and resilience compared with females. No gender differences were found in victimization experiences. Languishing students were found to be at higher risk of experiencing serious victimization. Resilience was not found to moderate the effects of victimization on mental health, but a higher level of resilience appeared to be related to more positive well‐being for boys and younger students. Limitations of the study and implications for anti‐bullying interventions are briefly discussed.

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Merikangas et al., 2011). Unlike adults who often initiate services themselves, understanding low rates of service use by youth requires a focus on the adults, often parents and teachers, who serve in referring roles (