The technique known as facilitated communication training involves a disabled person being physically assisted to point to letters or words in order to communicate a message. Use of the technique is controversial in that it is difficult to determine if the person providing the physical assistance is also influencing the message. The literature reports little empirical evaluation of the validity of communication using the technique. The current paper outlines a methodology which can be used to investigate whether the messages relayed using the facilitated communication technique actually are generated by the disabled person. The methodology invoves both quantitative and qualitative procedures.

The validity of standardised ossessment instruments and their normative data is a significant issue in school psychology. Consequently, this study of 515 coeducational Queensland Year 5 students investigated the generalisability and robustness of the norms of two contemporary self-concept instruments, the Self-Description Questionnaire-I (SDQ-I; Marsh, 1988) and the Perception of Ability Scale for Students (PASS; Boersma & Chapman, 1992). Both tests have received praise for their theoretical construct but have been criticised for the regionalisation of their norming populations.The results of this study demonstrated that the Queensland students had higher mean PASS self-concept scores than the North American students used in the norming of all the PASS scales. For the SDQ- I, a similar distribution pattern was shown for Queensland students and SDQ-I norming sample, with the exception of small variability with Reading and Mothematics self-concepts scales. Issues associated with interpreting and reporting of assessment results and with the assessment responsibilities of educational psychologists and counsellors are discussed.

An examination of recent education policy and research demonstrates that the development of personal and emotional competence amongst Australian school students is a national priority (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005; Lewis & Frydenberg, 2002; Reid, 2006). In an attempt to determine whether high-schools are indeed supporting the personal and emotional development of young people, the present study investigated personal responsibility, emotional intelligence and self-esteem among a sample of year 11 public (n = 274) and private (n = 124) school students. The study found that all participants demonstrated high levels of personal responsibility and emotional intelligence, with no significant differences between the public and private school. Public and private school participants significantly differed on self-esteem, with private school participants reporting high levels of self-esteem (M = 30.36) and public school participants (M = 26.92) reporting moderate levels of self-esteem. It is sometimes assumed that private schools facilitate better developmental outcomes among students than public schools. Whilst findings are limited to results obtained from one public and one private school, the current study did not find evidence to support that the personal and emotional development of students is hindered in a public school environment.

While the role of non-ability intrapersonal variables including personality traits and motivational dynamic factors has been well documented in numerous studies, the relationship of transient states to cognitive performance has been relatively neglected. Boyle (1983b, 1986) demonstrated that emotional states powerfully influence cognitive learning outcomes under conditions of stressful activation. However, under neutral, non-emotive conditions, it remained unclear what role if any was played by mood states in cognitive learning. The failure to employ change measures in these studies may have obscured the likely influence of emotions on cognitive performance in the neutral situation. This study re-examines the relationship of moods with cognitive learning performance using state-change scores rather than single-occasion mood-state scores as the basis for predicting cognitive learning outcomes.

The aim of this article is to describe the development of a short version of the Coping Scale for Children (CSC) for situations in which use of the full form is precluded by time constraints or the demands of other measures. Utilizing data from prior studies (e.g., jones & Frydenberg, 2004; Larkins & Frydenberg, 2004) a short form was constructed and the psychometric properties investigated with schoolchildren (N = 379) drawn from primary schools in Metropolitan Melbourne. Using Principal Components Analysis with Varimax rotation, two dimensions of coping (Adaptive Coping and Maladaptive Coping) were found to be both robust ond suitable for investigating styles of coping with stress in preadolescent children aged 10- to 12- years. In addition, this poper analysed associations between the resulting factors and self-esteem, as assessed by the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (Weinberger, Feldman, & Ford, 1989). The CSCSF appears to have promising applications as a short measure of critical dimensions of coping in preadolescent children, with good psychometric properties.

The Ministerial Review of Educational Services for the Disabled came out strongly in support of the right of disabled children to pursue their education in the ordinary classrooms of regular schools.

Adolescents experiencing excessive anxiety are often under-identified in the school context, and consequently under-referred for in-school counselling or other mental health support. This is despite anxiety being the most prevalent mental health condition currently experienced by adolescents. The purpose of this study was to explore secondary teachers’ ability to recognise the need to refer adolescents with excessive anxiety symptoms. One hundred and fourteen secondary school teachers completed a questionnaire with five vignettes describing students experiencing various degrees of anxiety. Statistical analysis of the data involved use of the one-sample Wilcoxon test and Spearman’s rank non-parametric correlation coefficients. Results indicated that teachers recognised the need to refer adolescents with very severe anxiety symptoms. However, they were less likely to correctly identify and refer students with severe, moderate or mild anxiety symptoms. There was no statistically significant difference between male and female teachers’ decision to refer students for school counselling. These findings are an important step forward in understanding how teachers decide whether or not to refer anxious children for support, and in identifying areas for further training and professional development. Implications are discussed for future professional development for secondary school teachers.

Educational psychologists can play a number of roles within education settings. They are often called upon to assist with the assessment and treatment of disability issues, student behaviour and mental health problems, parent and teacher liaison, and counselling, to name a few. Less frequently pursued is an active role in establishing and evaluating both general classroom and remedial literacy instruction. A lack of success in the literacy domain can have far-reaching effects on students’ educational and social and emotional development. Further, it has been noted in national and international reports that the accumulated evidence for effective literacy instruction has not had the impact on policy that it deserves. Educational psychologists are well placed to assist schools to develop an evidence-based perspective that can provide a marked improvement in the literacy development of students. One such model with a long research history is Direct Instruction. This article will describe the model, and consider how it might be profitably employed in schools.

Supported playgroups are a common form of intervention offered in Australian early childhood education. This study used interviews and quantitative measures to examine whether attending supported playgroups benefits culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) parents’ or carers’ social support, connectedness, and parental self-efficacy (PSE). Thirty-five playgroup attendees completed three validated measures assessing social support, isolation, and PSE. Seven mothers, two carers, and two playgroup staff participated in semistructured interviews. The quantitative and qualitative data indicated that CALD parents and carers show high levels of isolation and low social support. The qualitative data indicated that most parents or carers felt more supported and connected as a result of attending the playgroup, and just over half stated that the playgroup had improved their confidence. This study highlights the need to consider the social resources of CALD families when planning and delivering services, and calls for future longitudinal studies of the benefits of playgroups.

Existing Australian measures of racist attitudes focus on single groups or have not been validated across the lifespan. To redress this, the present research aimed to develop and validate a measure of racial, ethnic, cultural and religious acceptance — the Australian Racism, Acceptance, and Cultural-Ethnocentrism Scale (RACES) — for use with children, adolescents and adults. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with 30 adolescents in Victoria, Australia, to develop the instrument, which was pilot tested with eight children. The novel 34-item scale consists of three subscales (Accepting Attitudes — 12 items; Racist Attitudes — 8 items; Ethnocentric Attitudes — 4 items) and a 10-item measure of social desirability. The instrument was tested with 296 Victorian school children, 182 adolescents and 120 adults from the Australian community, with data modelled and analysed utilising classical test theory and item response theory. Estimates of internal consistency reliability and factorial, construct, convergent and discriminant validity support the measure. The instrument is the first general attitudinal measure of racial, ethnic, cultural and religious acceptance to be designed and scientifically validated within the Australian context. RACES can be utilised across the lifespan to evaluate attitudes towards all racial, ethnic, cultural and religious groups. RACES has potential to be widely utilised to evaluate anti-racism and pro-diversity interventions implemented within schools and throughout the community, enabling the development of a strong evidence base for initiatives to reduce community levels of racism. However, future research is needed to confirm the psychometric properties and establish the temporal stability of the scale prior to dissemination throughout Australia.

The present study examined the effects of repetition on the social/emotional adjustment of students in grades one to five. Subjects (n = 122) were all selected by their schools for repetition at the end of the school year. Of these, 74 repeated the grade and the remaining 48 proceeded to the next grade because these students' parents rejected the schools' recommendations to repeat their children. All children were pre- and post-tested on a range of educational, behavioural and attitudinal measures from multiple perspectives (i.e. teachers, parents and students) to determine the social/emotional effects of repetition on students.

Although the repeated group showed a significant improvement in place in grade, analysis of variance yielded very few differences between repeated and promoted students on the academic measures. However, on the social/emotional measures, repeated students were judged by teachers to have better fine and gross motor control, to be achieving better, to be more socially adjusted and more emotionally mature than promoted students. Parents of repeaters rated achievement and attitude towards school as showing more positive change than parents of promoted students. It was concluded that, while repetition is of limited benefit in enhancing academic performance, the gains were sufficient to allow favourable comparisons of repeated students with their new peer groups, and to enhance repeated students' sense of competence and mastery which, in turn, positively influenced ratings on other aspects of social/emotional adjustment.

Year 9 students from a Melbourne metropolitan secondary school (N = 176) completed the specific version of the Adolescent Coping Scale and a Resources Questionnaire on 10 resources valued by young people. Having and valuing of the 10 resources was associated with productive coping by adolescents. Having fewer resources and greater resource loss was related to use of nonproductive coping. Girls and boys managed their resources differently as part of their coping efforts. Investing in and gaining resources was reported by girls who coped productively and focused on solving their problems, but not by productively coping boys, nonproductively coping girls, or girls who reported avoiding negative emotional states when dealing with problems. The indications are that in counseling and in designing interventions aimed to improve resilience in young people, gender may have an impact on particular resources of value to the person, and the approach taken to developing resources may similarly vary.

This research explored how psychologists working in the Victorian secondary state school system construct meaning around ethical practice. The specific aims of the research were to examine psychologists understanding of ethics in practice within schools and to explore challenges they faced regarding professional ethics when working in the education system. A qualitative design was adopted to explore the topic. Five psychologists working in the Victorian state education system were interviewed, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis. Two themes presented from the transcripts: legalities and ethics and varied peer support. The psychologists reported having to confront often and repeated ethical challenges, but despite this, positioned themselves as ethical practitioners. Ethical practice was portrayed as a complex construct that is always socially and politically embedded. Subsequently, discussion on the topic should extend beyond the sole practitioner. The research provides future direction for policy development and workplace procedures, including access to professional supervision.

This article provides information about some of the key concepts and principles that define society’s approach to juvenile offenders. These are explicated as models of juvenile justice. The causes of juvenile offending are also elaborated through considering various theories of juvenile delinquency. Next, the prevalence of juvenile crime is addressed followed by an overview of preventative and responsive interventions to reduce juvenile offending. The article makes the case for a systematic approach to assessing risk factors, needs, and strengths. This approach fits well with major threads in the juvenile justice arena. It is also necessary in order to make sound and useful decisions about young offenders.

Although a relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile offending has been documented, little is known about the way in which maltreatment affects the timing and frequency of juvenile offending. Recent work on antisocial behaviour and offending in adolescents suggests that young people exposed to negative childhood experiences are more likely to offend earlier in life and more frequently than those who have not been exposed to such risk factors. The purpose of this study is to explore how one childhood risk factor, being maltreatment, influences the age of onset and frequency of juvenile offending. This study used the records of an Australian birth cohort who are now 18 and who came to the attention of the Department of Families (Queensland) about a child maltreatment matter, a juvenile justice matter, or both. Children who were maltreated were more likely to offend than children without official maltreatment records and were also more likely to offend earlier and more frequently that children who had not been maltreated. This research has important implications for understanding the onset of criminal careers and for the allocation of resources into crime prevention interventions and effective responses to maltreatment.

The quality of the sibling relationship has an important role in the development of psychosocial skills throughout childhood. While the literature suggests that the significance of sibling relationships is heightened when one sibling has a disability, empirical findings about the quality of these relationships are few and inconsistent. The present study aimed to address this gap, by investigating mothers' perspectives about the impact of disability on the quality of the childhood sibling relationship. Forty-one mothers with a child with disability, and 48 with no children with disability completed an online questionnaire that assessed the amount of perceived warmth/closeness and conflict in their children's sibling relationship. It was found that while there were no differences in reported conflict between the two groups, mothers with a child with disability reported significantly lower warmth/closeness in their children's sibling relationship than mothers without a child with disability. Demographic variables such as number of children, gender grouping, target gender, target age and age order did not moderate this result. Mothers overall reported significantly more warmth/closeness for younger rather than older children, and more conflict when the sibling was younger than the target child as opposed to older than them. Clinical implications for intervention are discussed.

Different studies indicate that emotions can interfere with the efficacy of inhibitory control. However, understanding this impact requires considering that inhibition is not a unitary construct. Cognitive inhibition is the process responsible for attenuating and resisting the interference of thoughts, representations, and memories that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Due to the relevance of emotional stimuli for survival, different studies have indicated that the performance of cognitive inhibition can vary depending on the context, that is, whether in neutral or emotionally salient contexts. During the interval between 8 and 12 years old, the importance of this skill is rooted in the need for controlling reactions and stimuli that could be disruptive for learning. In this study, 395 children aged 8–12 years performed a 1-back visual task with emotional and neutral stimuli in order to assess cognitive inhibition in contexts with high and low emotional salience. The results support the validity of the task for the evaluation of cognitive inhibition. However, no significant differences were found, depending on the context, as expected. It is emphasised that these results constitute an approach to the problem of emotional content interference in children that considers the multidimensional approach of inhibition.

Families with neurodevelopmental disorders engage in varied types of therapies to address behavioural, communication and cognitive challenges. Research suggests that consistent therapy adherence predicts positive therapy outcomes. The present study examined therapy adherence in 55 parent-child dyads where all children had been diagnosed with ASD, ADHD, and/or ID. Parents completed questionnaires assessing demographics, therapy type, adherence to child treatment, parental stress, and challenging child behaviour. The researchers proposed a new scale, the Child Therapy Adherence Scale (CTAS), which initial testing supported as a reliable measure of therapy adherence. Significant relationships were found between parental stress, annual household income and therapy adherence, with parental stress being a notably strong predictor of therapy adherence. No significant relationships were observed between child challenging behaviour, single parent status and therapy adherence. These findings have implications for practitioners, in that parent levels of stress and demographic influences may impact capacity to adhere to recommended home practice and interventions for children with neurodevelopmental disorders.