Associations between school-wide practices and school-wide bullying: Advancing the cross-country understanding of teachers' perspectives from the U.S. and China.

To understand the role of different school-wide practices in school-wide bullying prevention in the global context, this present study was guided by the social-ecological framework to examine cross-country similarities and differences in the association between three forms of school-wide practices (i.e., punitive, positive, and social and emotional learning [SEL] practices) and school-wide bullying between United States (n = 1,833) and Chinese (n = 1,627) teachers from middle and high schools. Measurement invariance tests confirmed that the associations between the three forms of school-wide practices and school-wide bullying were comparable across the two countries. Results of multilevel analyses suggested that more frequent positive practices at the between-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in the United States but decreased school-wide bullying in the Chinese. Also, more frequent punitive practices at the within-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in both the U.S. and Chinese samples, and this positive association between punitive practices and school-wide bullying was significantly stronger in the Chinese sample than in the U.S. sample. More frequent punitive practices at the between-school level were also associated with increased school-wide bullying in the U.S. sample, but not in the Chinese sample. Moreover, the frequent SEL practices at the within-school level were significantly associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States, but not in China; the frequent SEL practices at the between-school level were associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States but increased school-wide bullying in China. Implications for school-wide practices in bullying prevention and intervention with sociocultural considerations were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Empowerment and silence: A grounded theory exploration among new teachers.

Despite the importance of understanding teacher empowerment and silence to help address issues of teacher shortage and well-being and improve school-based consultation, research on the topic has been understudied and undertheorized, particularly for new teachers. To fill this research gap, we carried out a constructivist grounded theory-based qualitative exploration of factors that contribute to new teachers' empowerment and silence during the COVID-19 pandemic among a sample of 24 first-year new teachers from a large and diverse urban school district in northern California. The findings identified different sets of psychological and social-structural factors contributing to new teachers' empowerment and silence, respectively. Factors contributing to empowerment included autonomy and a sense of accomplishment in the psychological domain and support, appreciation or being acknowledged, and shared beliefs in the social-structural domain. Factors contributing to silence included a lack of self-efficacy in the psychological domain and being limited in the decision-making process, a lack of connected and safe space, and a lack of knowledge of unwritten school norms and procedures in the social-structural domain. Findings suggest that empowerment and silence might be dual-factor constructs driven by different sets of factors that do not fully mirror each other. Findings provided important theoretical and practical implications for creating psychological and social-structural supports to promote new teachers' well-being, increasing school psychologists' effectiveness in providing consultation services with new teachers as their consultees, and creating safe and connected spaces for sharing voices among new teachers with diverse backgrounds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).