Teacher–Student Agreement on “Bullies and Kids They Pick On” in Elementary School Classrooms: Gender and Grade Differences

Students' Reports of Severe Violence in School as a Tool for Early Detection and Prevention

“…Although identifying the victims of violence and gathering information from them may be an easier task than identifying perpetrators, studies show that victims are underreported and are actually also not identified. For example, there is a significant gap between the actual extent of violence in school and the teachers' or other school staff's information and perception of the violence (Ahn, Rodkin, & Gest, ). Furthermore, most students do not report being victims and do not seek help for dealing with violence (Boulton et al., ; Cortes & Kochenderfer‐Ladd, ; Eliot et al., ; Yablon, ).…”

Teacher attunement to peer‐nominated aggressors

“…Teacher attunement is conceptualized as an aspect of teacher involvement which includes understanding students' peer group memberships (Hamm, Farmer, Dadisman, Gravelle, & Murray, 2011) and has important implications for teachers' ability to act as the invisible hand to promote students' positive adjustment in their classroom (Ahn et al, 2013;Farmer, Lines, & Hamm, 2011;Hamm et al, 2011). In an early study of teacher attunement, Hamm et al (2011) found that greater teacher-student attunement was positively related to students' sense of belonging at school, students' willingness to protect peers being bullied, and students' sense that peers would stand up for them if they were bullied.…”

“…Teacher-student agreement on peers' aggressive behavior is typically low (Ahn, Rodkin, & Gest, 2013;Ollendick, Oswald, & Francis, 1989), indicating that teachers may be unaware of some aggressive acts between students. Whether or not the teacher is aware of aggressive acts has direct implications on the acceptability of aggressive behavior and the acceptance of aggressive peers (Brophy & Good, 1986) which can create a classroom context characterized by increases in students' aggressive behavior and may undermine teachers' ability to maintain control of the classroom (Brophy, 1996;Henry et al, 2000).…”

Improving the School Context of Early Adolescence Through Teacher Attunement to Victimization

“…Intervention efforts to improve teacher attunement have demonstrated positive effects on teachers' ability to identify the peer groups of students identified as bullies (Farmer, Hall, Petrin, Hamm, & Dadisman, 2010); in turn, when teachers and students agree which children in their classrooms are aggressive, the social status of aggressive children diminishes over time (Ahn & Rodkin, 2014). Unfortunately, teacher attunement to bully-victim dyads is generally low, particularly as the number of students in a classroom increases (Ahn, Rodkin, & Gest, 2013). Low levels of attunement to victims of bullying, combined with lower levels of responsive teaching (i.e., teacher sensitivity, quality of feedback, positive climate, and quality instructional formats), are related to declines in school bonding and motivation over time (Gest, Madill, Zadzora, Miller, & Rodkin, 2014).…”