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21 J. Sch. Violence 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/wjsv21 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE RoutledAe 2022, VOL. 21, NO. 1, 1-3 .::;r https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2021.2009286 Taylor&Francis Group Introduction to the Special Issue: School Violence/bullying in China Jihong Solomon Zhaoa and Hongwei Zhangb aDepartment of Criminal Justice and Criminology College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA; bSchool of Humanities, and Juvenile & Family Law Research Center, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China School is an important social institution for learning and socialization alike. This is particularly the case in China because students in middle and high schools often spend a significant amount of their time there. For example, one authoritative study found that post-2000s elementary school students spend an average of 8.1 hours every day at school, while junior high school students spend an average of 11.0 hours at school (X. Zhang et al., 2017). Given the fact that adolescent population in the greater China area surpasses any single nation or a combination of European countries in the world, a safe and healthful environment for studying and socialization is an essential precondition for student' academic achievement and social adjustment. Unfortunately, incidents of school violence are frequently reported in the Chinese media, and the empirical evidence available suggests that the frequency of school violence/bullying has been on the rise in the Greater China area for over two decades (Ren, 2017). However, relevant research (especially empirical studies) on this important topic are sporadic at best. The rationale for this special issue is to build on the extant literature in the Greater China area including the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and reflects two primary objectives. First, it attempts to promote and advance our understanding of school violence/bullying through much-needed empirical research. Second, it serves as a platform to international readers regarding the cutting- edge research on the key features of school violence/bullying being done in the Greater China area, a geographic region that has been undergoing rapid economic and societal changes. This special issue starts with two comprehensive review articles that summarize the current status of research on school violence/bullying in mainland China and Taiwan. More specifically, the review articles cover a wide range of topics including the historical evolution of research on school violence/ bullying, the use of promising research methodologies to understand the phenomenon, and the changes in relevant public policies intended to reduce school violence. Four articles included in the special issue take on a variety of topics centering on the issue of school violence/bullying in China, each reflecting three shared characteristics. First, the school-based surveys done in each study took place across various provinces in China ranging from the country's Northern to Southern regions. The four studies each used similar multi-site and/or multi-school sampling approaches. Consequently, the aggregated findings reported should provide a fair representation of school violence/bullying in China as a whole. Next, the theoretical frameworks used to test the effects of explanatory variables on school violence/bullying are derived from theories developed in research carried out in western countries. In fact, this research represents an application of these theories in different social and cultural settings, and the students in the analysis across the four studies probe multiple key topics of school violence, including such key questions as gender differences and the varying types of relationships between aggressors and victims. Finally, the study designs of these analyses explore the effect of important mediating factors (e.g., self-control) on victim behaviors. Such mediating factors are shown to be key elements in our understanding of the phenomenon of school violence/bullying. CONTACT Jihong Solomon Zhao ® jzhao@shsu.edu O Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Box 2296, Huntsville, TX 77341 © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC