Interpersonal relationships are the recent focus of research identifying protective factors in adolescent psychological health. Using an attachment theory perspective, this study examines the relationship of normative attachment strength and individual differences in attachment expectancies on self-reports of depression and stress in 511 Australian high school students. Attachment reorganisation was demonstrated, but only father attachment uniquely predicted self-reported stress. Age moderated the relationships between peers and depression and stress among romantically involved adolescents. Individual differences in attachment styles, particularly anxious attachment, were most predictive of adolescent psychological health. These findings highlight the complexity of adolescent attachment relationships and suggest that interventions target both normative and individual factors in adolescent development to enhance adolescent psychological health.

The present research describes the preliminary evaluation of Mindfields, a self-regulatory intervention designed to enhance the development of life skills and self-set goals among school-aged adolescent offenders. Differences between intervention and control participants pre- and post-treatment were assessed using the Mindfields Assessment Battery (MAB). Twenty-four adolescents from a youth correctional facility, youth justice service centres, and alternative education schools (Mage = 14.79, SD = 1.47) were assigned to either an intervention group (n = 18) or a wait-list control group (n = 6). At pre-intervention, there were no significant differences between intervention and control participants. Post-intervention analysis between the two groups revealed that intervention participants reported significant reductions in self-reported delinquency and impulsivity compared to the control group. Moreover, while the pre- to post- intervention scores for the control participants remained relatively stable, the pre- to post-scores for intervention participants indicated significant reductions for pro-delinquency and improvements in self-satisfaction. Preliminary findings are promising and provide evidence for the effectiveness of this new self-regulatory intervention for school-aged adolescents.

This paper reports on three studies, which collectively demonstrate the benefits of a coping skills program, first for young people at risk for depression, then those with learning problems likely to suffer failure at school. In particular, the first study deals with the usefulness of the Best of Coping (BOC) program in a regular school setting for students at different levels of risk of developing depression. Studies two and three report the benefits of an adapted version of the BOC program (BOCM) for students who experience learning difficulties. Successful intervention with the BOCM was found to help low achieving students and students with learning difficulties develop productive coping skills, but also increased positive attitudes towards seeking help from others and decreasing dependence on Non-Productive coping strategies.

Relationships between teachers and students vary and the way these relationships are perceived by their members also differs. Seventy Australian adolescent boys described their relationship with a key teacher using the My English Class questionnaire. The teachers described the same relationships using the Teacher Student Relationship Inventory. Student–teacher relationships generally were seen positively. Cluster analysis identified two distinct profiles of student–teacher relationship for both student and teacher perceptions. In 44% of cases, perceptions of boys and teachers did not match. The boys considered positive feedback and a caring, helpful attitude towards themselves important elements of a strong relationship whereas teachers considered help-seeking important.

Teacher adaptability is a key disposition for teachers that has been linked to outcomes of interests to schools. The aim of this study was to examine how the broader disposition of teacher adaptability might be observable as classroom-based adaptive practices using an argument-based approach to validation. The findings from the initial phase of the validation study indicate that there is sufficient warrant to further develop a teacher observation instrument based on the construct of teacher adaptive practices. The study is of import to educational researchers and school leaders who are interested in the development and use of a valid and reliable teacher observation instrument designed for the purpose of promoting adaptive teacher practices.

Child and youth anxiety are the most common problem experienced during the school years. We know that we can effectively treat and prevent childhood anxiety by using individual, group, and community-based interventions that involve parents, peers, and educators. Recent research has shown that children who experience anxiety often develop depression in adolescence. Therefore, it is important to disseminate anxiety Intervention strategies both for the prevention of anxiety and, in the longer term, of depression Problems. Australia is a leading country in the development, evaluation, and Implementation ofsuch strategies. This paper describes, in detail, a community-based Intervention program.

At the start of the 21st century, literacy teaching in state primary schools was conducted under a framework guided by a National Literacy Strategy, which recommended a model of reading called ‘The Searchlights Model’. Early on it became clear that rises in performance predicted from adoption of this strategy were not happening. This led to a review of the effective teaching of early reading under the chairmanship of Sir Jim Rose (Rose, 2006). Rose recommended that the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) be adopted as a framework. It also recommended that pupils be taught how to read words in the first instance through the adoption of programs of systematic synthetic phonics. A change in government reinforced this policy and added a national program of early assessment of grapheme-phoneme knowledge. These changes uncovered an important issue: namely that there was no national program for ensuring that teachers had the necessary professional subject knowledge to teach phonics effectively. Steps have been taken to mitigate this. The most recent data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS) 2016 study suggests that England is now beginning to close the achievement gap, with the pupils in the lowest percentiles making the most improvement.

This study examines the factors influencing friendship quality during emergent adulthood. Data were collected on a sample of 393 college students (age range 18–22, M = 20.01). Nine multi-item measures were used as indicators in this study. Seven scales were drawn from the Battery of Adolescent Measures (Benson & Faas, 2014). The other two were the pragmatic (social) language and the aloof scales, which provided sensitised assessment of interpersonal deficits (Hurley, Losh, Parlier, Reznick, & Piven, 2007). The article hypothesises that family warmth predicts friendship quality during emergent adulthood. It also hypothesises that this relationship is mediated by emergent adults’ self-perceptions and by their social competence. Structural equation models supported the first hypothesis and also showed that self-perceptions and social competence partially mediate the main relationship. We also examined each mediator separately for evidence of partial mediation, but the full model remained a significantly better fit to the data compared to both single mediator models.

My journey in the field of stress and coping began in the mid 1980s when I was researching the rather new field of childhood depression. It was a relatively under-explored field, and as a clinical and educational psychologist it was becoming increasingly apparent that there were concerns of young people, with some of these reflected in their experiences of sadness and despair. However, as I researched and measured the depression construct, I became aware of despair as a growing phenomenon, with an increased focus and emphasis on stress, anxiety and depression. In time, the statistics would bear out the concerns, as one in four young people have identified as being or are likely to be depressed in their lifetime in some Western communities like Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom (WHO, 2018). Given the growing ‘ill health’ of our Western communities, something had to change. In the 1980s, young people were concerned about their future with the fear of nuclear war. As I was writing this invited retrospective in late 2019, there were widespread concerns about global warming, and in the first half of 2020 concerns arising from the pandemic of COVID-19 are dominating. Coping theory research and practice can make a significant contribution to how we cope with our world in general and the specifics of our lives in particular. This article reports a body of work in the field of coping to illustrate the value of the core constructs and their applications in diverse settings providing opportunities for helpful adaptation and development in the face of whatever circumstances arise.

The motor and language skills, emotional and behavioural problems of 245 children were measured at school entry. Fine motor scores were significantly predicted by hyperactivity, phonetic awareness, prosocial behaviour, and the presence of medical problems. Gross motor scores were significantly predicted by the presence of medical problems. The fine motor scores of Māori children were poorer than those of Pākekā or children of other ethnicities, and right-handed children had better fine motor scores than left-handed children. There was some evidence that left-handed boys performed particularly poorly on tasks requiring fine motor skills. Children with medical problems had poorer gross motor scores than children without medical problems. Implications for the identification of problems at school entry are discussed.

Thirty four high school students were assigned to one of six focus groups according to their self-reported drug status (i.e., user, ex-user, nonuser). Allgroups viewed the same two video vignettes, and a drug user was identified as the target character in the second vignette. At the completion of each vignette they answered a series of questions about the target character in each video. Results indicated that adolescents assign reputations to persons according to the activities in which they engage, and that this assignment is influenced by their own similar or dissimilar activities. An analysis of vocabulary revealed that meaning was context specific to the subculture. In many instances nonusers were unaware of the meaning of the vocabulary used by their drug using peers.

Patterns of communication are commonly referred to in the language and communication literature particularly with adult samples. In this research 50 female and 30 male adolescents and adults participated in in-depth, structured interviews about their patterns of communication. Research typically defines such patterns in reference to the dominant style of the individual or group. Implied in the attribution of a dominant style is the idea that dominance is associated with recurrence. The recurrent patterns of communication have not been investigated in relation to the focus of the communication and the sex of the respondent. In the present research respondents were interviewed about the iterative process involved in their communication with other adolescents and adults. It was expected that a recurrent, sequential pattern of the focus of communication factors would emerge. Six naturally emerging factors emerged from the data, the most frequent being on task, conceding and succeeding. These categories were used in an ordered manner at various times in the dialogues described. Findings also showed patterned similarities and differences in the communication of males and females when they were communicating with adolescents and adults. Importantly, the interview format of this research provided insight into the use of confusion as a strategy in communication.

This study explored factors that influence academic achievement and hence, future career prospects. The relationships between the factors, academic trait boredom, approach to learning and academic achievement were examined using data collected from university students at a small English university and from their student records. The initial statistical analysis revealed significant effects of gender on learning approach and two of the three academic trait boredom subscales. Female students proved to be less prone to academic trait boredom than their male counterparts. A model was then developed that showed how a student’s choice of learning approach was influenced by academic trait boredom and impinged on academic achievement. This modelling also confirmed that students who are more prone to academic trait boredom are also more likely to adopt a surface approach to learning rather than a deep or strategic one. The results of this investigation have implications for students, lecturers, course designers and learning support staff both here in this one location as well as elsewhere across the higher education sector.

Two studies investigated the influence of student behaviour and the gender of teacher and student respectively on teachers' decisions to refer children for specialist assistance. The first study examined the age, sex, and referral reason for 621 students referred to a major school support centre. The results indicated that twice as many boys were referred as girls, and that girls and boys were referred for different reasons. In the second study, 97 teachers were required to rank order the necessity for referral of four case studies presenting examples of either disruptive or non-disruptive behaviours. Boys' and girls' names were exchanged on alternate forms of the case studies. The findings indicated that neither the sex of the teacher nor the sex of the student in the case study hadany effect on teachers'rankings of the case studies. However, teachers viewed students displaying non-disruptive behaviour as significantly more in need of referral than students displaying disruptive behaviour. The implications of the findings of both studies are discussed in relation to the contrast between what teachers say about referrals and what they actually do, the access of girls to support services, and the need for further teacher education about criteria for referral.

High school students in the U.S. (N=1,078; 47% boys) responded to survey items on their self-esteem and interest in schoolwork, their personal expectancy of high school completion, and their perceived support from parents, teachers and peers for their expectancy. Their GPA and days absent from school were collected from school records. Personal expectancy, parent, teacher, and peer support all had significant positive impacts on students' self-esteem, interest in schoolwork, and GPA. The pattern of effects was consistent across the subsamples of Grades 5 to 6 (n=264), Grades 7 and 8 (n=226), and Grades 9 to 12 (n=319). Positive personal expectancy and teacher support also had significant negative effects on absence from school for Grades 7 and 8. Of all the significant others considered, support from teachers had the strongest impact on self-esteem, interest, and GPA in the high school subsamples. Teachers are probably the most influential agent in promoting self-esteem, interest, and academic performance in the school context.

The current study examined kinaesthetic acuity and Performance IQ in preprimary children (aged 4-5 years) at risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Individual assessment of 317 children over four sessions at their pre-primary centre identified 31 children at risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder. These children were matched with 31 control children on age, gender, and Verbal IQ. The two groups were assessed using three Performance IQ subtests of the WPPSI-R and the Kinaesthetic Acuity Test (KAT, Livesey & Parkes, 1995). The results indicate that kinaesthetic acuity and Performance IQ subtests significantly differentiate children at risk of DCD from control children. These results suggest a need to assess the efficacy of kinaesthetic training in young children at risk of DCD. Furthermore, psychologists may be able to assist in the early detection of children at-risk of DCD via the WPPSI-R assessment results routinely obtained for young children.

What do adolescents “do” in their spare time? What activities do they engage in when not at school or in employment? Questions such as these are continually of importance since planning and provision of facilities for the pursuit of leisure activities for individuals of all ages are required. Society must make available resources and expertise for leisure time pursuits for adolescents, ranging from sporting activities to discos, from educational programmes to providing places where teenagers can meet and talk away from home.

Firstly however, two brief definitions are needed – one of “interest” and one of “leisure”. Dusek, Kermis and Monge (1979) define interest as “(being) related to, and may be the end result of, attention toenvironmental events that stimulate curiosity which, in turn, leads to the application of already acquired skills” (p.44). Connell, Stroobant, Sinclair, Connell and Rogers (1975) claim that “an interesting person is, basically, an interested person” (p.167), implying that to have a wide education and a wide range of interests enhances one as a person. Clearly therefore, it would be to our (and society's) advantage to make provision for stimulating leisure pursuits and encouraging many different recreational interests in our adolescents. The breadth and depth of action and motivation established before adulthood must then be beneficial to society in the long term.

This study compared the degree to which social networking sites and structured extracurricular activities provided adolescents with positive developmental experiences. Given the relatively unique nature of social networking sites as a leisure context for adolescents, and the extremely fast rate at which this leisure activity has been adopted by the majority of youth in countries where the technology is easily accessible, it is important that research explores how this leisure context compares to more traditional extracurricular activities. Adolescents from eight high schools across the state of Western Australia were surveyed. The results showed that traditional structured leisure activities (e.g., sport, art) provided adolescents with more experiences of identity exploration and reflection and positive peer interactions than social networking site use. Further analysis compared differences within social networking site use and found that both the frequency with which an adolescent visited their social networking site, and the degree of investment they had in their social networking site, positively predicted greater experiences of identity exploration and reflection and positive peer interactions. Though social networking sites are a popular adolescent leisure activity, they do not provide the same level of positive developmental experiences that are afforded through adolescent participation in traditional structured extracurricular activities.

The conceptual basis for a model of professional learning in educational psychology is presented in this article. The approach is one aimed at an integration and application of theories of knowledge management with educational and organisational psychology in a pragmatic research methodology underpinning professional learning. The model focuses upon the idea of praxis and the working ideal of a ‘thinking practitioner’. This is in turn applied to the development of individual differences theory as part of a critical revision problematising theory associated with researching style differences in cognition, learning and management. A need for critical revisionism, new directions in researching style differences and professional education is identified as part of an example illustrating a way to establish valid epistemic change and paradigm shift necessary for this development. The argument underpinning this approach, finally, concludes that the future is very much part of the past, as a knowledge source for informing contemporary professional learning thereby ensuring practice is not stuck in the present.

Children with chronic illness often experience difficulties at school, yet little is known about the impact of the child's illness on siblings’ school experiences. This study investigated parents’ perceptions of siblings’ school experiences and school support. We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 27 parents of children with a chronic illness who had a sibling or siblings (4–25 years), representing the experiences of 31 siblings. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using content analysis. Parents believed that 14 of 31 (45.2%) siblings had school difficulties related to the ill child, such as increased anxiety or stress at school, lack of attention from teachers, and changes in behaviour as a result of increased carer responsibilities. Parents identified increased absenteeism due to the ill child's hospitalisation and the impact of parent absences on sibling school functioning. Parents described general and psychological support from the school, and the importance of monitoring the sibling at school and focusing on their unique needs. Overall, our findings suggest the need for a school-based sibling support model that combines psycho-education for siblings and school personnel, individualised sibling psychological support, and shared school and parent responsibility in normalising the sibling experience and providing consistent support.