Increasing reports of bullying and cyberbullying in schools in recent years are undeniable and have been recognized as a serious public health problem. Conventional bullying and cyberbullying are not only a problem in higher educational institutions in Pakistan, but also in primary and secondary schools. Although statistics show higher levels of bullying and cyber-risky behaviors among youth, policies and interventions to control the consequences of conventional and cyberbullying are rare in the Pakistani context.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConnecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher educational institutions worldwide switched to emergency distance learning in early 2020. The less structured environment of distance learning forced students to regulate their learning and motivation more independently. According to self-determination theory (SDT), satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and social relatedness affects intrinsic motivation, which in turn relates to more active or passive learning behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
June 2021
The sudden switch to distance education to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered adolescents' lives around the globe. The present research aims to identify psychological characteristics that relate to adolescents' well-being in terms of positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation, and key characteristics of their learning behavior in a situation of unplanned, involuntary distance education. Following Self-Determination Theory, experienced competence, autonomy, and relatedness were assumed to relate to active learning behavior (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCOVID-19 and its containment measures have uniquely challenged adolescent well-being. Following self-determination theory (SDT), the present research seeks to identify characteristics that relate to well-being in terms of positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation under distance schooling conditions and whether SDT's core postulates hold true in this exceptional situation. Feeling competent and autonomous concerning schoolwork, and socially related to others were hypothesised to relate to positive emotion and intrinsic learning motivation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle is known about the associations between cultural class composition, teacher support for diversity (TSD), cognitive and affective empathy, and bullying and victimisation. Research shows that empathy is negatively associated with bullying and victimisation; and support for diversity and classroom cultural diversity are positively linked to social skills. The present study examines whether cultural diversity and perceived TSD are protective factors against bullying and victimisation, either directly or mediated by empathy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe theory of reasoned action (ToRA) has been proposed as a framework for cyberbullying prevention design, targeting attitudes and norms. In this study effects of a long (10 weekly sessions) and a short (one day, four sessions) cyberbullying prevention program based on the ToRA were compared with a control group over 9 months. Longitudinal data from 722 students (mean age = 13.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCyberbullying is a ubiquitous topic when considering young people and internet and communication technologies (ICTs). For interventional purposes, it is essential to take into account the perspective of adolescents. This is the reason why our main focus is (1) investigating the role of different criteria in the perceived severity of cyberbullying incidents, and (2) examining the differences between countries in the perceived severity of cyberbullying.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is considerable debate over whether cyberbullying is just another form of bullying, or whether it is a problem distinct enough to require specific intervention. One way to explore this issue is to analyze whether programs designed to prevent traditional bullying help prevent cyberbullying, and whether programs designed to prevent cyberbullying prevent traditional bullying. The main goal of the current study was to analyze the spillover effects of the cyberbullying prevention program Media Heroes (Medienhelden) on traditional bullying.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the world's population increasingly relies on the use of modern technology, cyberbullying becomes an omnipresent risk for children and adolescents and demands counteraction to prevent negative (online) experiences. The classroom-based German preventive intervention "Medienhelden" (engl.: "Media Heroes") builds on previous knowledge about links between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and cyberbullying, among others.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe manualized Medienhelden (engl. Media Heroes) program (Schultze-Krumbholz, Zagorscak, Siebenbrock, Scheithauer, 2012) is implemented in the school environment either as a ten-week program during lessons (curriculum; IGL) or as a single project day with reduced content of the long version (IGK). In consecutive lessons, topics of the program are, for example: definition of cyberbullying, its negative impact, how to protect oneself on the internet, and opportunities to react in appropriate ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrax Kinderpsychol Kinderpsychiatr
July 2014
A steadily growing number of empirical research on cyberbullying exists retaining the traditional definition of bullying. However, whether this scientific and theoretical definition represents youths' perceptions and experiences with cyberbullying is a subject of further investigation. Scenarios of cyberbullying incidents were used and later discussed in three focus groups with 20 adolescents (55 % boys, 45 % girls, 11-16 years old).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough cyberbullying is characterized by worrying prevalence rates and associated with a broad range of detrimental consequences, there is a lack of scientifically based and evaluated preventive strategies. Therefore, the present study introduces a theory-based cyberbullying prevention program (Media Heroes; German original: Medienhelden) and evaluates its effectiveness. In a pretest-posttest design (9-month interval), schools were asked to randomly assign their participating classes to either control or intervention group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral criteria have been proposed for defining cyberbullying to young people, but no studies have proved their relevance. There are also variations across different countries in the meaning and the definition of this behavior. We systematically investigated the role of five definitional criteria for cyberbullying, in six European countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe fairplayer.manual is a school-based program to prevent bullying. The program consists of fifteen to seventeen consecutive ninety-minute lessons using cognitive-behavioral methods, methods targeting group norms and group dynamics, and discussions on moral dilemmas.
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