This study examined whether authoritarian parenting, children's negative emotionality and negative coping strategies independently or jointly predict children's aggressive behaviour at school. Participants included the teachers and mothers of 185 Hong Kong resident Chinese children (90 girls and 95 boys), aged 6-8. Teachers rated the children's aggressive behaviour at school, and mothers reported how often they adopted an authoritarian parenting style and rated the children's negative emotionality and coping strategies. A model predicting children's aggressive behaviour with maternal authoritarian parenting and children's negative emotionality affecting children's aggressive behaviour at school through the mediating effect of children's negative coping strategies was examined. Mother's adoption of authoritarian parenting was not related to their perception of the children's negative emotionality. Neither authoritarian parenting nor negative emotionality alone predicted children's aggressive behaviour at school. The mediation model was supported. The results imply that school personnel should take children's emotionality into consideration when offering training programmes on emotion coping strategies for children.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430902981447]

In the search for time-sensitive, brief and effective interventions for school problems, a practical approach is suggested for Hong Kong teachers. This approach endorses the competency orientation of the humanistic tradition, offers the advantages of systems thinking, and provides a theory of change with cognitive-behavioral and solution-focused strategies of intervention that is complementary with the constraints and needs of the school environment. Specifically, based on these assumptions, three general intervention guidelines are suggested and illustrated with corresponding case examples, demonstrating successful applications of this practical approach for brief interventions in the school setting. Implications for the use of this practical approach are discussed in the context of the whole school approach to guidance in Hong Kong schools and the movement toward a constructivist perspective in school guidance and counseling.
本文針對香港教師如何處理校內的學生問題提出一個快捷、簡易和有效的實用取向介入模式。此介入模式源自傳統「人本主義」中的能力取向，配合學校環境的限制和需要，著重從「系統思考」、「認知行為」和「尋解導向」實施介入輔導。基於這些假設，本文提出三個一般的介入原則，配合真實的個案例子，說明如何能夠成功地將有關的介入模式應用在學校的實際環境中。討論部分結合了香港學校現行的校本輔導取向，探討如何從「建構主義」的角度建立有效的學校輔導模式。
[Copyright of Asian Journal of Counselling is the property of The Hong Kong Professional Counselling Association at http://www.hkpca.org.hk/]

Background: In Hong Kong, secondary school students face high levels of stress due to the examination oriented curricula. According to Sun (2006), some secondary school students cannot bear the pressure when facing the examinations, and some of them may exhibit destructive behaviors such as suicide and bullying. Therefore, cases of school bullying break out frequently (Ming Pao, 2003, 2004). Moreover, school alienation contributes to the risk of bullying while support from teachers and peers decreases one's tendency towards bullying (Natvig et al., 2001).
Aims: The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between students' stress and bullying. Based on an insight into prevention of bullying in school, some applicable strategies to prevent students' academic and interpersonal stress will be suggested.
Sample: Altogether 340 Fung Kai No. 1 Secondary School students, 200 boys and 140 girls, participated in the present study.
Methods: Students completed and returned two questionnaires: the Subjective Stress Scale (Li and Ng, 1992) and the Bullying Checklist (Chui, 2001), in class.
Results: The results show that girls felt more stressed than boys in the family, and they also exhibited more social bullying than boys did. Both interpersonal and personal stress are factors leading to bullying.
Conclusion: In the present study, girls felt more stressed than boys in the family. They were eager to be more independent from the family. This arouses conflict between parents and daughter. It was found that Form 3 perceived higher levels of academic and personal stress than Form 1 students. It is understood that they were experiencing identity formation and making decisions on future study in art or science. Provision of a one-week orientation program for Form 1 students before the commencement of the school term is recommended. Finally, workshops for parents were introduced to enhance parent-child relationships and to help them communicate

Whole-school anti-bullying programs are widely recognised as the best, evidence-based approaches to reducing school bullying. Despite this, few published studies have been conducted within high schools to systematically evaluate anti-bullying interventions using a control group design. To this end, a quasi-experimental study of anti-bullying interventions was conducted in four international secondary schools in Hong Kong. The four secondary schools were randomly assigned to: (a) a whole school curriculum intervention, (b) a combined Year 7 curriculum and shared concern intervention, (c) a shared concern only intervention and (d) a control school. The sample consisted of 549, year 7 students who anonymously completed a pre-test / post-test questionnaire. Results were analysed using several ANOVA procedures. When post-test composite bullying scores were adjusted for pre-test school differences, a highly significant main effect for schools was found (F = 7.70 p < .001). In further comparisons, a repeated-measures ANOVA showed the most significant reduction in bullying composite scores occurred when a whole school intervention was used (F = 10.73 p < .001). Bullying levels increased from pre-test to post-test over the school year for both the control school and the school that adopted a shared concern only approach. These results provide strong support for the need for high schools to adopt a whole-school preventative and management approach if they are to be effective in reducing student bullying.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

A review is provided of recent research literature on the topic of troublesome classroom behaviour, published over the past decade or so with particular reference to research carried out in Australian schools. Nine Australian studies are reviewed, as well as a further seven from the USA, Hong Kong, Jordan, Greece and Malta. Seven of the studies deal with the early years and primary level of schooling, with six studies at the secondary level, and three that span primary and secondary levels of schooling. The following main themes are elucidated: the prevalence of behaviourally troublesome students; time spent managing troublesome behaviour; gender differences; and types of classroom (mis)behaviours, their severity and their frequency, Recent research confirms earlier findings that classroom misbehaviour is of widespread concern to teachers but that the main causes of disruption, while being frequent, are often relatively trivial in nature ('talking out of turn' behaviours in particular). While prevalence rates for troublesome students across classes are variable, boys are consistently identified as being more troublesome than girls.
[Copyright of Australasian Journal of Special Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10300110701189014]