Elisa Poskiparta

Bystanders Matter: Associations Between Reinforcing, Defending, and the Frequency of Bullying Behavior in Classrooms

This study investigated whether the bystanders’ behaviors (reinforcing the bully vs. defending the victim) in bullying situations are related to the frequency of bullying in a classroom. The sample consisted of 6,764 primary school children from Grades 3 to 5 (9–11 years of age), who were nested within 385 classrooms in 77 schools. The students filled out Internet-based questionnaires in their schools’ computer labs. The results from multilevel models showed that defending the victim was negatively associated with the frequency of bullying in a classroom, whereas the effect of reinforcing the bully was positive and strong. The results suggest that bystander responses influence the frequency of bullying, which makes them suitable targets for antibullying interventions.

Learning difficulties, social intelligence, and self–concept: Connections to bully–victim problems

Learning skills, social intelligence, and self-concept were related to each other and to bully-victim problems among fifth-grade children (79 boys and 62 girls, aged 11-12 years). In addition to exploring connections between single variables, a person-oriented approach was applied in order to analyze childrens value patterns with respect to learning skills, self-concept, and social intelligence, and how these value patterns are related to bully-victim problems. Social intelligence was found to be positively correlated with learning skills, but negatively related to victimization. Bullying was positively correlated with self-concept scores. However, this was true only of boys. According to cross-tabulations, there were significantly more bullies among children with learning difficulties (LD) than would have been expected by chance. Victimization, on the other hand, was not related to LD. LD childrens proposed victim status was in some degree supported by cluster analysis: a group of LD children emerged, who not only scored high on bullying, but also tended to be victimized by others. In addition, two groups of bullies appeared: one whose members could be interpreted as socially unskilled and another as socially skilled. This finding is in line with recent theoretical reasoning, which calls into question the idea of bullies as a unified group, lacking in social skills.

Counteracting bullying in Finland: The KiVa program and its effects on different forms of being bullied

In 2006, the Finnish Ministry of Education mandated our research group to develop an antibullying program for comprehensive schools. The new program, KiVa, includes both universal and indicated actions to reduce bullying. The present study reports the effects of KiVa on nine different forms of being bullied in a sample of 5,651 fourth to sixth graders from 78 schools (39 intervention, 39 control). The findings showed positive effects on each form of being bullied assessed. After 9 months of intervention, control school students were 1.32— 1.94 times as likely to be bullied as students in intervention schools. A well-designed, research-based program can thus reduce multiple forms of being bullied, and there might be no need to develop specific programs for different forms of bullying.

Development of and Relationship Between Phonological and Motivational Processes and Naming Speed in Predicting Word Recognition in Grade 1

In this 2-year longitudinal study the developmental relationships among letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and task orientation were examined, and linguistic-motivational pathways of word reading acquisition were traced from kindergarten to Grade 1 by means of structural equation modeling. The participants were 100 Finnish-speaking nonreaders. Results showed that kindergarten (5–6 years) letter knowledge predicted subsequent preschool (6–7 years) phonological awareness and task orientation. RAN was a unique longitudinal and concurrent predictor of word recognition, suggesting that rapid naming provides a reliable prediction of prospective word reading ability at least in a transparent language. Controlling for phonological awareness and rapid naming, task orientation contributed uniquely to the prediction of word reading competence, suggesting that motivational and linguistic factors are both at work as children face the gradually growing demands of learning to read and write in Grade 1.

Going to Scale: A Nonrandomized Nationwide Trial of the KiVa Antibullying Program for Grades 1-9.

OBJECTIVE The effects of school-based antibullying programs have typically been examined on small samples, with number of schools ranging from 1 to 78 (Farrington & Ttofi, 2009). This study investigated the effectiveness of the KiVa antibullying program in the beginning of its nationwide implementation in Finland. METHOD At each time point, the participants included 888 schools with approximately 150,000 students in 11,200 classrooms in Grades 1-9 (8-16 years of age; 51% boys and 49% girls). Victims and bullies were identified with the global questions from the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1996), utilizing the criteria suggested by Solberg and Olweus (2003). The program effects were examined by calculating odds ratios based on a cohort-longitudinal design, correcting the standard errors for clustering. RESULTS During the first 9 months of implementation, the KiVa program reduced both victimization and bullying, with a control/intervention group odds ratio of 1.22 (95% CI [1.19, 1.24]) for victimization and 1.18 (95% CI [1.15, 1.21]) for bullying. CONCLUSIONS Generalized to the Finnish population of 500,000 students, this would mean a reduction of approximately 7,500 bullies and 12,500 victims.

Motivational-emotional vulnerability and difficulties in learning to read and spell

BACKGROUND Although the relationship between motivation and learning problems has been studied in older children, little is known about how these factors interact during the first years of schooling or even earlier. AIMS To compare the development of motivational-emotional profiles from preschool to grade 2 between groups classified as poor readers, good decoders and good readers in grade 2. To study the possibility that diverging motivational-emotional paths occur concomitantly with school experience. SAMPLE A total of 127 children were followed longitudinally from preschool up to the second grade. In preschool, their mean age was 6 years 8 months. METHOD Two different methods tapping motivational-emotional vulnerability were used. Firstly, researchers at preschool age and classroom teachers in grades 1 and 2 rated childrens task, ego-defensive and social dependence orientations. Secondly, an experimental situation was arranged each year where childrens play behaviour with LEGO bricks was observed in free play vs. in induced pressure situations, and their motivational orientations were scored. RESULTS In preschool, the motivational-emotional profiles were almost the same among the three prospective reading-level groups, but in grades 1 and 2, classroom teachers rated poor readers as less task-oriented and more ego-defensive and socially dependent compared to good decoders and good readers. The ratings were corroborated by observational data on play behaviour in induced pressure situations. CONCLUSIONS Early problems in learning to read and spell are related to motivational-emotional vulnerability in learning situations in the school context.

Predicting writing skill development with word recognition and preschool readiness skills

In this longitudinal study, the writing skill development of154 Finnish-speaking children was followed from preschool to thethird grade. The focus was on predictive associations betweenpreschool writing readiness skills and later mechanics ofwriting, as well as between word recognition skill, mechanics ofwriting, and composition coherence. In addition, comparisons weremade between boys and girls to see to what extent writing skilldevelopment is gender-specific. Multi-group structural equationmodeling was used for statistical analysis. The results indicatedthat both mechanics of writing and composition coherence could bepredicted from performance on the same skill at an earlier pointin time. Preschool measures of phonological and visual-motorskills predicted later mechanics of writing. Word recognitionworked as a predictor of later mechanics of writing andcomposition coherence, but only starting from second grade, whenthe development of the word recognition skill had becomestabilized at a high enough level. Furthermore, first grademechanics of writing predicted second grade compositioncoherence, but only at this early stage of productive writingwhen there were still difficulties in the mechanics of writing.Girls were better at tasks measuring mechanics of writing andwrote more coherent stories than boys. The gender difference inthe mechanics of writing at the first grade level was explainedby the presented model. Educational implications were discussed.

Cortical Sequence of Word Perception in Beginning Readers

Efficient analysis of written words in normal reading is likely to reflect use of neural circuits formed by experience during childhood rather than an innate process. We investigated the cortical sequence of word perception in first-graders (7–8 years old), with special emphasis on occipitotemporal cortex in which, in adults, letter-string-sensitive responses are detected at 150 ms after stimulus. To identify neural activation that is sensitive to either the amount of basic visual features or specifically to letter strings, we recorded whole-head magnetoencephalography responses to words embedded in three different levels of noise and to symbol strings. As was shown previously in adults, activation reflecting stimulus nonspecific visual feature analysis was localized to occipital cortex in children. It was followed by letter-string-sensitive activation in the left occipitotemporal cortex and, subsequently, in the temporal cortex. These processing stages were correlated in timing and activation strength. Compared with adults, however, the timing of activation was clearly delayed in children, and the delay was progressively increased from occipital to occipitotemporal and further to temporal areas. This finding is likely to reflect increasing immaturity of the underlying neural generators when advancing from low-level visual analysis to higher-order areas involved in written word perception. When a salient occipitotemporal letter-string-sensitive activation was detected (10 of 18 children), its strength was correlated with phonological skills, in line with the known relevance of phonological awareness in reading acquisition.

Who Benefits From Training in Linguistic Awareness in the First Grade, and What Components Show Training Effects?

Who among first graders benefit from training in linguistic awareness, and what components of the linguistic awareness are most amenable to training effects? At the beginning of Grade 1 prospective at-risk readers (26 out of 117) were identified on the basis of very low phonological awareness. In the autumn term, they received practice in linguistic awareness. When compared to controls individually matched controls on phonological awareness, listening comprehension, and WISC-R scores, the intervention group showed a more rapid building-up of phonological awareness, especially phoneme-blending ability, as well as superiority in word recognition, spelling, and listening comprehension, which were sustained until the end of Grade 1. Reading comprehension could not be compared because 8 of the 26 controls did not read fluently enough to be tested. The half of the control group with cognitive delays, receiving normal special education instruction, performed consistently worse than their matched pairs in the intervention group. The latter group showed development of phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling equal to that of the cognitively nearly average intervention group and their matched pairs in the control group, who received no additional support. These three groups, originally defined as at-risk readers, performed at the level of other preschool nonreaders at the end of Grade 1. In sum, the children with cognitive delays benefitted from training in linguistic awareness. The results underscore the importance of phoneme synthesis skills in beginning reading and spelling, at least with regular languages.

Precursors of Reading Skill from Infancy to First Grade in Finnish: Continuity and Change in a Highly Inflected Language.

The course of language acquisition from infancy to public primary school was followed in a sample of 56 Finnish children to examine precursors to reading at first grade. Structural equation modeling of continuity suggested effects from growth in early vocabulary to mastery of inflectional forms at preschool age. The early language directly influenced early phonological awareness (PA) and only indirectly influenced later development in PA and word reading. The course of development in PA progressed from detecting larger multiphonemic units toward recognizing and producing phonemes in words, which, in turn, were positively associated with differences in producing new words by deleting and blending phonemes at kindergarten age. Including word reading before school entry levelled out the influence of the concurrent phonemic awareness factor on reading at first grade. Hence, in a highly inflected language with a transparent orthography, the pathway to reading consisted of skills learned in succession, the last phase being characterized by simultaneous development involving phonemic awareness and emerging reading skill. The finding led to the conclusion that, in addition to universal routes, language- and culture-specific routes to literacy must be acknowledged when searching for the precursors to reading at school age.