Sexual and gender minority (SGM) students are more likely to experience violence and bullyingvictimization, and to feel unsafe than heterosexual, cisgender students, in secondary (12-18 years old) and vocational schools (16+ years old). These disparities may be buffered by teacher practices and school policies. However, existing research on SGM students has three vital shortcomings: (1) It disregards improvement in social acceptance of sexual and gender diversity. (2) It pays insufficient attention to the role of teacher practices in addressing sexual and gender diversity in class. (3) It neglects potentially protective school policies and how they correspond to SOGIE-disparities. Countering these limitations, we combine student-reports of perceived school safety, violence, and bullying-victimization with teacher-reports of practices and administrator-reports of school policies to answer our central research question: How large are differences between SGM and heterosexual, cisgender students in perceptions of school safety, violence, and bullying-victimization in Dutch schools, how have they changed over time, and how can they be reduced through teacher practices and school policies? With three part-projects, we move from individual student experiences to teacher perspectives, and then examine these associations in interaction with school-wide policies in both secondary and vocational education. Using a combination of rich mixed-method existing and new data as well as cutting-edge statistical techniques we examine links between teacher practices and school policies and disparities in perceived school safety, violence, and bullying-victimization from multiple perspectives. This deepens our understanding of teachers’ role in addressing sexual and gender diversity and school policies in reducing disparities.

The research school ICS pursues a coherent overarching research program on the nature and dynamics of Social Networks, Solidarity, and Inequality. The aim is to model and explain how social networks affect, and are affected by, solidarity and inequality in different social settings. People strive for private goals, but need to contribute private resources for common ends without direct compensation for such contributions. This tension creates social dilemmas or ?level paradoxes?: strategies that are rational at the level of the individual can lead to unintended or suboptimal outcomes at group or society level, thereby creating solidarity and inequality problems. The ICS likewise maintains a graduate research training program for research master students and PhD students. This overarching research program is closely tied to the graduate research training program. The training program provides a broad set of research and training options for graduate students, while at the same time ensuring guidance, support, and intensive supervision. The graduate research training program includes four sociology/social science research master programs as they are realized under the responsibility of the Graduate Schools of Social (and Behavioral) Sciences at the universities of Groningen, Nijmegen, and Utrecht. The integration of theory formation, methodologically advanced empirical research, and state of the art statistical modeling is a core feature of the research program and of graduate training. The program explicitly aims at solving sociological and social science problems and wishes to contribute to the advancement and growth of theoretical and empirical knowledge in sociology and social science. The program aims at high quality research in its field, on a par with internationally leading research groups. Research master students and PhD students are trained in year-groups, allowing for systematic and rigorous feedback on how theory and methods should be applied to specific or new areas of research under the common theme. The common theme are problems of social solidarity. Solidarity problems are directly related to an overarching problem studied by sociology and social science: the problem of social coordination, cooperation, and cohesion. Solidarity problems are studied in informal settings such as families, ethnic groups, and neighborhoods, and in formal settings, such as relations within and between formal organizations. The common approach in theory building is structural individualism. Social phenomena are thereby explained as results of purposive behavior of individuals and of corporate social actors. While behavior is purposive, results of behavior are often unintended. Purposive behavior is shaped by constraints and opportunities posed by social and institutional contexts, including ties and interdependencies between actors. The so-called ?macro-micro-macro question? guides theory building: this helps to avoid a reduction of social science to the perfect market model of neoclassical economics or the over-socialized conception of human beings in traditional sociology. Common methods are applied in empirical testing of theories and hypotheses. Structural individualism implies that data sets comprise individual as well as contextual information. Accordingly, ICS researchers play a key role in the collection of multi-actor, multi-level, and multi-event data sets, including: (a) information about the actors and their interdependence with respect to constraints, actions, and outcomes, (b) information about the various levels of aggregation (individual, various types of context), and (c) information about multiple events over time that can provide information on how later events are conditioned by earlier ones. Different and complementary kinds of data are employed, including not only large-scale survey data, but also, for example, historical data and archival data, experiments, and data from case studies. Employing complex data sets for testing hypotheses requires, in turn, appropriate statistical models that mathematically express the main theoretical relations between the observed variables bearing on the various actors, levels, and events. The ICS actively contributes to the further development of such models.

Recently, the Inspectorate of Education has shown that segregation and inequalities in education are rising. One moment in the school career in the Netherlands is crucial: the transition from primary to secondary school. In this project, we will study how student peer relations in primary education affect educational decisions and outcomes in secondary education. Among the same students, we collect complete network data within school classes in the final year of primary education, and ego-network data during primary education and the first year in secondary education. This innovative design enables us to study the impact of peer relations on social, behavioral, and academic outcomes. These new data can form the basis for future research into the role of classmates with the NCO Database. This project consists of two PhD projects about (1) how peer relations in primary education affect academic aspirations and educational decisions in secondary education, and (2) how positive aspects, such as friendships and helping, and negative aspects of peer relations, such as bullying and loneliness, affect educational outcomes in secondary education. We do not only collect new data to study short-term consequences during the transition from primary to secondary education but also lay the foundation for research on the importance of the peer context for further educational careers as they unfold in the NCO. This will provide opportunities to investigate how early-life peer relations affect later life outcomes.

Peers play a crucial role in the development of children and adolescents, influencing a wide range of behaviors. Much emphasis has been put on peers as a risk factor; however, little is known about whether and how peers might protect against antisocial development or promote positive development. Recent methodological advances allow examination of peer processes (referring to influence and selection) in a statistically suitable way. However, influence and selection dynamics are encapsulated in contexts, such as classes and schools. Unfortunately, little is known about how contextual factors affect selection and influence processes. This proposal responds to this gap by examining to what extent contextual factors promote or hinder the development of antisocial behavior (bullying, aggression), prosocial behavior (defending, helping), and academic performance. This proposal offers an excellent opportunity to expand two databases of extraordinary quality for relatively low additional costs with four (KiVa) and six (SNARE) extra waves.

Bullying is a common phenomenon that exacts a staggering cost in human suffering. Anti-bullying interventions can be effective, as shown by KiVa findings from randomized-controlled trials in Finland and the Netherlands. The percentage of Dutch children who said they were being bullied dropped by 53% in KiVa schools versus 35% in control schools. Unfortunately, 13.5% of the children (about 3 per classroom) at KiVa schools were still bullied (monthly or more)? which emphasizes that additional interventions should be developed. As an expert in bullying and victimization, I am highly motivated to take a new step and tackle a difficult problem: developing strategies for bullying cases that have so far been resistant to interventions. To achieve this, I will use a combined theoretical and empirical approach to investigate why bullying persists in some school classes, and design and test novel interventions based on the concept that bullying may be reduced if: (1) goal-related and social network processes are better understood and utilized for interventions; (2) bullies can be taught to adopt prosocial strategies to achieve non-aggressive status goals; (3) schools are helped with the peer support intervention for victims; (4) teachers are given the skills and means to become more capable in taking an active stance against bullying. I will develop, implement, and evaluate these tailored interventions using my existing network of KiVa schools as a living laboratory. I expect that this will deliver new insights into the group processes of bullying and create the possibility to minimize bullying. The project will contribute to the emerging literature of school-based social network interventions, and will convert scientific knowledge into practice and vice versa. Through providing an understanding of the mechanisms of intervention success, the project will make a unique contribution to the design of the next generation of anti-bullying programs.