Past meta-analyses show that both child-mother and child-father attachment insecurity are independently and jointly associated with more externalizing behaviors in children. Little is known, however, on the ways that different types of insecure attachment independently and jointly predict the development of externalizing behaviors over time.…

Interest in social emotional learning (SEL) is higher than ever, as parents, educators, and policymakers recognize that children need more than cognitive skills for later life success. However, most SEL research has been conducted in formal education settings. This article describes results from an empirical study of 4-5 years old SEL in two…

Immigrant and refugee children and adolescents form a growing socially, culturally, and economically diverse group with the potential for wide-ranging adaptation outcomes. The goal of the study was to examine whether developmental competencies (social-emotional and academic) and sociodemographic disparities (e.g., SES and migration class)…

Guided by the school climate and social-emotional learning literature, this study explored math self-concept in relation to student-teacher relationships and students' sense of school belonging while accounting for sex differences. Participants included two random subsamples (Ns = 532; 558) of 15-year-old Canadian students who participated in the…

Black teachers in Canada, Kenya, and the United States share how they have supported minoritized students, even as they themselves experienced marginalizing societal forces, and delineate three guiding principles for affirming the social-emotional and mental health needs of all learners.

Mental health promotion programming in schools and community settings is an important part of a comprehensive mental health strategy. The goal of this study was to identify and explore meaningful classes of youth based on their pre- and post-intervention depression symptoms scores with 722 youth involved in a 15-week healthy relationships and…

The goals of the present study were (a) to explore different aspects of children's participation in structured performing arts activities (e.g., dance and music); and (b) to examine links between participation in performing arts and indices of socioemotional functioning. Participants were N = 166 children (75 boys and 91 girls) in Grade 1 (n = 70,…

A current trend in kindness research is to assess the effect of being kind on participants' well-being. To do this, participants are asked to complete a series of kind acts and the corresponding impact on their well-being is measured. As participation in school-based interventions can vary, the aim of the current study was to assess the extent of…

A multisite cluster-randomized trial (by school) was conducted to examine the effects of a combined mental health literacy and dialectical behavior therapy skills program implemented by teachers on three protective factors related to social and emotional well-being. The sample of eight schools that were randomly assigned to intervention included…

This study explored the relationship between electronic media use, sleep and behaviour in preschool-aged children between the ages of three and five years. The primary hypothesis of this study was that excessive electronic media use (>2 hours a day) would positively correlate with sleep patterns (in particular, disturbances) and negative…

Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of…

Given existing gendered stereotypic assumptions regarding shyness and children's school competencies, this study explored relations among socioemotional competencies, self-perceptions, and receptive vocabulary in shy children. Ninety-one Canadian children (52 girls, 39 boys; 5-8 years) were classified as shy (n = 26) based on teachers' behavioural…

This study examined the link between victimization and sexual orientation and how this link contributes to social-emotional health, extending to school-related outcomes among adolescents. Of additional interest was whether having caring adult support was a protective factor in reducing the risk for high levels of distress or enhancing positive…

This study investigated the potential of using a computer-simulated animal in a handheld virtual pet videogame to improve children's empathy and humane attitudes. Also investigated was whether sex differences existed in children's development of empathy and humane attitudes resulting from play, as well as their feelings for a virtual pet. The…

This study investigates the relations between children's perceptions of self and play in 89 school-aged children (52 girls, 37 boys, ages 5 to 8) in two Canadian schools. The study involves standardized measures, interviews, and drawings to assess children's perceptions of play and self. Teacher ratings of emotional competencies were also…