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Relational aggression is characterized by attempts to damage another’s relationships or social status and is a major concern affecting academic, socioemotional, behavioral, and health outcomes, particularly for urban, minority youth. Teachers and peers frequently disagree about which students are relationally aggressive. Factors associated with peer and teacher discordant and concordant identification of relationally aggressive students were explored including prosocial behavior, perceived popularity, academic competence, and gender. Participants included 178 3rd–5th grade students across 11 urban classrooms. Findings revealed that students were more likely to be rated as relationally aggressive by their peers but not their teacher as scores on peer nominations for prosocial behavior decreased, while teacher-rated academic motivation/participation increased. Female students were more likely to be concordantly identified by peers and teachers as relationally aggressive when ratings for overt aggression increased. These results highlight the utility of obtaining ratings from multiple informants as well as the difficulty in accurately identifying all students who may benefit from interventions targeting relational aggression. Findings also suggest factors that may be related to the potential shortcomings of current measures and provide avenues for additional research to improve detection of relationally aggressive students.

Given growing concerns regarding the prevalence and seriousness of bullying, the National Education Association recently drew upon its membership to launch a national study of teachers’ and education support professionals’ perceptions of bullying, and need for additional training on bullying prevention efforts and school-wide policies. The data were collected from a representative sample of 5,064 National Education Association members (2,163 teachers and 2,901 education support professionals). Analyses indicated that compared to education support professionals, teachers were more likely to witness students being bullied, more likely to view bullying as a significant problem at their school, and were more likely to have students report bullying to them. Teachers were more likely to be involved in bullying policies at their school, yet both groups reported wanting more training related to cyberbullying and bullying related to students’ sexual orientation, gender issues, and racial issues. Implications for school psychologists and the development of school-wide bullying prevention efforts are discussed.

There continues to be great debate regarding the conceptualization and measurement of peer victimization, particularly with respect to gender differences in children's victimization experiences. We employed traditional and modern psychometric methods (e.g., item response theory) to evaluate a 10-item youth-report measure of peer victimization (e.g., threatening, spreading rumors/lies, and cyberbullying) among 17,198 students in Grades 6-12. A two-factor model that differentiated between direct and indirect victimization subtypes best characterized students' experiences and substantially reduced the potential for gender-based measurement bias. Implications for the gender-sensitive assessment of peer victimization are discussed.