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The purpose of this study was to assess whether burnout and personality were linked to the perceived severity of 24 undesirable student behaviors among experienced and trainee teachers. Results indicated that teaching experience, student gender, and type of behavior were important determinants of their perceptions. Burnout had a significant effect on the severity ratings of antisocial and oppositional/defiant behaviors, suggesting that the more stressed teachers are, the less tolerant they become of such challenging and aversive behaviors. With regard to personality, severity ratings of students' undesirable behaviors were associated with high levels of conscientiousness and neuroticism. Findings indicate that burnout and personality provide a lens through which teachers appraise the severity of students' behaviors. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Teachers are a primary mental health referral source for children with behavior problems. As a consequence, their attitudes and decision-making processes regarding children's behavior may have important implications for parents' and schools' decisions to seek professional help for behaviorally disturbed children. Recent research has indicated that teachers' attitudes about students' behavior problems affect their decision making in classroom behavior management (Prawat, 1992;Westerman, 1991). Among both expert and novice teachers, cognitions are assumed to drive behavior, which is in turn affected by prior knowledge and skills (Clark & Peterson, 1986). Kagan (1992) demonstrated that teachers' cognitions affect not only their own behavior but also students' actions and academic performance. In turn, undesirable student behaviors are more likely to evoke unfavorable impressions of the student and yield negative attitudes on the teacher's part. As teachers accumulate experience they may become better judges of the severity of students' problem behavior, but as they also become increasingly stressed by their job demands, they may be hindered in making accurate appraisals.A multitude of factors have been found to affect teacher perceptions of students' undesirable behaviors. First, student characteristics such as gender, race, age, and economic background influence teacher views (Dulin, 2001;Hindmand, 1999;Neese, 1998). For example, Borg (1998), Falzon (1993), andLangfeldt (1992) found that gender stereotypes were evident for disruptive and withdrawn behavior patterns. Second, characteristics of the behaviors themselves influence the way they are perceived. Molins (1999) found that teachers are primarily concerned by the behavior of children who demonstrate externalizing problems, particularly boys, and require to be sensitized with information before they notice internalizing behaviors as significant. In the United Kingdom, the Elton Report (DES and Welsh Office, 1989) suggested that teachers generally identify misbehavior in terms of outward active manifestations such as verbal interruption, distracting other students, inappropriate moving about, and physical aggression. Pa...

Bullying is a common problem faced by children and adolescents in schools. One hypothesis that needs to be examined regarding the causation of this problem is whether being a bully or a victim may stem from disparate underlying patterns of psychopathology. Results are particularly scarce regarding the association between bully-victim problems and disruptive behavior disorders. The present study sought to investigate the association between DSM-IV symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Conduct Disorder (CD), and bully-victim problems in a sample of 202 adolescents, aged 12-15, attending two junior high schools in Cyprus, to determine whether these symptoms differentiate between bullies and victims and provide a new approach to the understanding of bully-victim problems. Students completed measures of bullying, victimization, disruptive behavior disorder symptoms, and self-esteem, along with demographic questions. On the basis of their responses, teenagers were classified as bullies, victims, or both bullies and victims. Those who were bully/victims reported greater CD symptomatology. CD and low self-esteem were predictive of bullying, whereas ODD and low selfesteem were predictive of victimization. Aggr. Behav. 30:520-533, 2004. r

The present study examines whether heterogeneous groups of children identified based on their longitudinal scores on conduct problems (CP) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits differ on physiological and behavioral measures of fear. Specifically, it aims to test the hypothesis that children with high/stable CP differentiated on CU traits score on opposite directions on a fear-fearless continuum. Seventy-three participants (M age = 11.21; 45.2% female) were selected from a sample of 1,200 children. Children and their parents completed a battery of questionnaires assessing fearfulness, sensitivity to punishment, and behavioral inhibition. Children also participated in an experiment assessing their startle reactivity to fearful mental imagery, a well-established index of defensive motivation. The pattern of results verifies the hypothesis that fearlessness, assessed with physiological and behavioral measures, is a core characteristic of children high on both CP and CU traits (i.e., receiving the DSM-5 specifier of limited prosocial emotions). To the contrary, children with high/stable CP and low CU traits demonstrated high responsiveness to fear, high behavioral inhibition, and high sensitivity to punishment. The study is in accord with the principle of equifinality, in that different developmental mechanisms (i.e., extremes of high and low fear) may have the same behavioral outcome manifested as phenotypic antisocial behavior.