TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2011//
TI  - It's Murder Out Today: Middle School Girls Speak Out about Girl Fighting
JO  - Children and schools
A1  - Letendre, Joan
A1  - Smith, Ellen
SP  - 47
EP  - 57
VL  - 33
IS  - 1
N2  - Girl fighting and its relational context is a problem that is receiving extensive attention in popular and academic circles. This article reports on a project that gathered the opinions from focus groups of seventh- and eighth-grade girls, organized to understand the perspectives of young adolescent girls in middle school on girl fighting. Both individual and contextual themes arose in the findings: the impact of the middle school structure, which differed from the more protected elementary school; the social structure that defined how girls interacted; the loyalty expressed toward members of the peer group and the betrayal felt when the bonds were not respected; the sensitivity that all girls felt toward racial stereotyping and teasing behaviors; the impact of teasing and the emotional reactivity that girls experienced when they felt hurt or betrayed; the differences in coping between seventh-grade and eighth-grade girls; and the school factors that supported or challenged girls' coping. Recommendations for universal schoolwide interventions as well as interventions targeted more specifically toward girls in distress are provided.<p />
LA  - 
SN  - 1532-8759
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -