Schools

Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is an emerging psychiatric disorder, assimilable to impulse control problems and related to maladaptive use of new networks and social and virtual technologies. Our study aims to analyze the presence of IAD among adolescents and to study the correlation with social interaction anxiousness. We investigated also the possibility that the Social Network (SN) represent a source of risk for the development of IAD. The test group was composed of 250 subjects, aged between 14 and 18 years. They were administered: Young's IAT; IAS (Interaction Anxiousness Scale), AAS (Audience Anxiousness Scale) and SISST (Social Interaction Self-Statement Test) to analyze the dimension of social interaction anxiousness. We found a rate of 2% of the IAD. The SN are the most common use of the Net in our sample, but not the most clicked sites by subjects with IAD. It should be noted, finally, a correlation between social interaction anxiety and IAD, but not a significant d...

Calls to gear up schools for the 21st century are ubiquitous today. International educational discourse hails the potential of ‘the youth dividend’ and digital technology for enhancing growth. Some Asian education systems are held up as models for an innovation-led utopian future. But across much of Asia, neither the reality of schooling nor the patterns of development with which it is associated give cause for blithe optimism. Since its inception, UNESCO has championed a humanistic vision of education – a vision today encapsulated in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, Target 7 (SDG 4.7). These ideals need to be strongly restated and defended in an era when educational debate worldwide has come to be framed by a narrowly economistic and instrumentalist agenda. Launched at the 39th session of the General Conference is UNESCO MGIEP’s "Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century: The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia". Building on the content analysis of 172 official documents in 18 languages based on a common coding scheme and extensive literature review on Asian schooling, this report seeks to assess how far the aims and values encapsulated in SDG 4.7 have been incorporated into the educational policies and officially-mandated curricula of 22 Asian countries. By analysing current policies, curricular frameworks, subject syllabi and textbooks, it aims to create a baseline against which further progress towards SDG 4.7 can be monitored. At the same time, it sets out to change the way we talk about and act upon SDG 4.7, and argues that a broader vision of education’s nature and social role is essential to our chances of achieving a peaceful and sustainable future for Asia and the world.

Research on factors that may promote engagement is hampered by the absence of a measure of classroom-level engagement. Literature has suggested that engagement may have 3 dimensions--affective, behavioral, and cognitive. No existing engagement scales measure all 3 dimensions at the classroom level. The Classroom Engagement Inventory (CEI) was developed to fill this gap. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on data from 3,481 students from the 4th to 12th grade. The results suggested a 4-factor model of the CEI. Using these results, in Study 2 several items were revised and data were collected 1 year later from 4th to 12th grade students in the same school district as Study 1. Analyses were conducted on data from 3,560 students after data cleaning. A series of potential models was tested. The final results suggest a 5-factor 24-item CEI: (1) Affective Engagement, (2) Behavioral Engagement-Compliance, (3) Behavioral Engagement-Effortful Class Partici...

This article begins by examining current crises facing historically marginalized youth, which necessitate more critical approaches to youth development and empirical investigations into the challenges that young people face. This requires not only listening to their voices, but actively engaging them in investigations of and interventions into social problems that affect their lives. Researching with youth raises particular dilemmas, however. The authors discuss strategies, within three guiding principles, that they found effective in conducting participatory action research with marginalized youth for the purposes of social and educational transformation.

I began my journey into the exploration of school climate about 20 years ago with the goal of helping schools improve. Where it led my colleagues and I was to a deeper insight into what makes a school an effective and even "transformative" place. As we examined the essential nature of school effectiveness, a roadmap emerged that helped explain the relationships among what each school intended, did in practice and the results it produced. Those schools that we could characterize as "transformative" all embodied a transformative vision, committed to transformative practices and reflected upon their outcomes as a means of growth-and as we would represent it-actualized movement up the effectiveness roadmap pathway. In this chapter, I will share my personal journey of discovery into what makes for a transformative school by way of building the pieces of the school effectiveness roadmap that we use as a conceptual framework in our work. Albert Jones, Clint Taylor and I met 20 years ago and began a collaboration into school research. As a starting point, we asked ourselves what defined the kind of work that we could embrace and get excited about. As generalist, what eventually emerged was the idea of a broad focus that we would call "school climate." We then embarked on our collaborative journey to explore this area deeply as the Alliance for the Study of School Climate (ASSC). At the time there were relatively few school climate assessment inventories, and there was a lull in the research being done in this area. This would change over the next 20 years. Today there are dozens more inventories and many more groups studying school climate and culture. One of our first tasks was to create an inventory to assess this thing we were calling climate. Some of the inspiration for our first version came from the work I had done previously in the area of the "psychology of success." When I examined the last 50 years of research into what most influenced students' successful in schools three general themes emerged. First students were more successful in life and school when they had more of an internal vs. external locus of control. Today we often use the term agency to explain this orientation, but throughout the literature were studies of how students who felt empowered and responsible for their lives did better. Second, there were countless studies related to student sense of acceptance and belonging as individuals and within collectives. The effects of a sense of belonging were wide ranging and included both achievement and social-emotional wellbeing related outcomes. Third, a dimension related to efficacy emerged that we now call growth-orientation and owes much to the work of Carol Dweck. We chose an analytic design for the survey items to better capture a) what was perceived to be happening at the school/what did they do? And b) how much of the three psychology of success principles were being evidenced, promoted or undermined. We began administering and revising our School Climate Assessment Instrument (SCAI) with the goal of providing a mirror to school for self-examination of what their test scores could not tell them.

h i g h l i g h t s Illuminates the key elements of a strong school culture that have been linked with school improvement. Theorizes the key elements of a strong school culture. Attempts to measure the key elements of a strong school culture. Explores how those cultural elements are associated with sustainable school improvement. a b s t r a c t This article illuminates the key elements of a strong school culture that have been linked with sustainable school improvement. Policy literature and conversations highlight the importance of school culture as the softer strategy in school improvement. Within this context, this article reviews existing research literature to theorize the key elements of a "strong school culture." Based on this, the article attempts to measure the key elements of a strong school culture and explores how those cultural elements are associated with sustainable school improvement, drawing from large survey data in the U.S. Implications for policy and research are discussed in depth.

Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is an emerging psychiatric disorder, assimilable to impulse control problems and related to maladaptive use of new networks and social and virtual technologies. Our study aims to analyze the presence of IAD among adolescents and to study the correlation with social interaction anxiousness. We investigated also the possibility that the Social Network (SN) represent a source of risk for the development of IAD. The test group was composed of 250 subjects, aged between 14 and 18 years. They were administered: Young's IAT; IAS (Interaction Anxiousness Scale), AAS (Audience Anxiousness Scale) and SISST (Social Interaction Self-Statement Test) to analyze the dimension of social interaction anxiousness. We found a rate of 2% of the IAD. The SN are the most common use of the Net in our sample, but not the most clicked sites by subjects with IAD. It should be noted, finally, a correlation between social interaction anxiety and IAD, but not a significant d...

This study examined gender stereotypes in peer ratings of femininity and masculinity for adolescent participants in three sports. Following a preliminary study of gender stereotyping of several sports, high school students rated unfamiliar cohorts each of whom was described in a single paragraph as either a male or female dedicated participant in one of three sports. A total of 12 different descriptive paragraphs were used in a 2 (race) x 2 (sex) x 3 (sport) design. Each of these paragraphs, although short, ascribed a variety of traits that could be seen by raters as the independent variables: name (initials only), age, race, gender, hours of practice per week, number of competitions/performances per year, sport, and self-confidence. For this reason, raters were highly unlikely to surmise that sex and sport were the primary independent variables in the study. As predicted, there was a consistent decrease in rated femininity and increase in masculinity for both male and female adoles...

Poor balance has been associated with increased injury risk among athletes. Neuromuscular-training programs have been advocated as a means of injury prevention, but little is known about the benefits of these programs on balance in high school athletes. To determine whether there are balance gains after participation in a neuromuscular-training program in high school athletes. Nonrandomized controlled trial. All data were collected at each participating high school before and after a 6-wk intervention or control period. 62 female high school basketball players recruited from the local high school community and assigned to a training (n = 37) or control (n = 25) group. Training-group subjects participated in a 6-wk neuromuscular-training program that included plyometric, functional-strengthening, balance, and stability-ball exercises. Data were collected for the Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) and Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) before and after the 6-wk intervention or contro...

An intervention was developed to promote parent involvement with ethnic minority families of children attending Head Start preschool programs. Two hundred eighty-eight predominantly African American families from a small southern city were included in this study. Parent satisfaction with the program was high, yet engagement was less than optimal. Some effects were found for the program, despite low levels of participation. Ethnic minority parents who received the intervention increased the frequency of reading to their child as compared with parents in a comparison group who did not receive the program. The quality of the parent-teacher relationship was significantly correlated with parental participation in the intervention. Program participation and the parent-teacher relationship were correlated with higher levels of children's school readiness abilities. Children in the intervention condition showed stronger end-of-year receptive vocabulary and parent-rated social competence...

This study explored the current psychological characteristics and criminal behavior history of individuals who retrospectively reported being bullies, bully-victims, victims, or controls (i.e. neither victims nor bullies) during their last 2 years of high school. College students (n = 960) completed measures of criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and criminal behavior online. We predicted bullies and bully-victims would demonstrate the highest scores for criminal thinking, proactive aggression, psychopathy, and have the most criminal infractions. Bullies and bully-victims had significantly higher scores on criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and criminal behaviors than victims or controls. Additionally, men were significantly higher in criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and had more criminal acts than women. There were no gender by bully group interactions. Logistic regression analyses differentiated bully-victims from bullies. Bully-victims tended to be mal...