Students in vocational programs have lower qualifications and more difficulties with successful entry into the labor market if they graduate without a diploma. The aim of this study was to describe the student - environment fit for high school students who are struggling with their studies in vocational programs, in terms of their perceived…

Background: Common definitions of bullying, employed in research and public policy alike, are generally based on adult-imposed categories. To account for students' needs in school, research should aim to include their voices more often. However, a major challenge for educational research in general, and bullying research in particular, is finding…

Relegated to the margins of the large body of research on ADHD and school is individuals' own retrospective accounts of schooling. Drawing on multiple narrative interviews with nine young adults with ADHD in Sweden, the present study explores their experiences and reflections concerning their years in compulsory school. Despite variations in the…

Background: School climate is crucial: its character can affect pupils' academic achievement, teachers' working conditions and the wellbeing of everyone at school. A major concern for teachers is how to prevent and manage disruptive behaviours. Against this backdrop, there is a need for thorough investigation of pupils' perspectives to better…

Although school attendance in Sweden is mandatory, there are numerous absentee students. Research studies have recognized that several of the absentee students have neuropsychiatric disabilities. However, few studies have focused on the voices of these specific students. Therefore, this study focused on their experiences of being out of school.…

In Sweden, as in many other European countries, poor neighborhoods with ethnically diverse inhabitants and high crime rates have grown up around big cities in the last decades. We hypothesized that, compared with adolescents in advantaged neighborhoods, adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods would perceive their schools as relatively safe, due…

Boys' underachievement and oppositional behavior in school has for a long time been the target of various public debates. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in two Swedish secondary schools, this article explores how the influential theory of boys' anti-school culture can be interpreted as a master narrative that is reproduced, but also…

School girls in Sweden are reported to develop psychological (ill)health in relation to their school behaviour and over-achievements. The methods offered as prevention and treatments are aimed at the individual girl's self-management of stress, health and psychological state, putting the responsibility on the girls themselves. This feminist…

This study explores the psychosocial working conditions of 7930 Swedish 9th grade students, distributed over 475 classes and 130 schools, in relation to their subjective health using multilevel modeling. At the individual level, students with "strained" working conditions in school (i.e. those experiencing a high level of demands in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and generate a grounded theory on how and why students behave as they do in school situations in which they witness another student in distress. Fieldwork and interviews were conducted in 2 Swedish elementary schools and guided by a grounded theory approach. The study resulted in a grounded theory of…

This article reports an overview of the findings from an ethnographic research project conducted in two Swedish primary schools with the aim of exploring values education that takes place in day-to-day interactions of teachers and students. Teachers' main concern in their practice of values education is to attempt to teach students to be nice and…

Reanalysis of past research on student outcomes and adjustment illustrates that school effects do exist. One of those influential school effects is school climate. A survey of teachers and students at eight Swedish junior high schools sought to measure the effects of teaching and social climate on student achievement, behavior, and social and…

The booklet, part of a series which examines actual and potential contributions of psychology toward solving problems of the world's schools, contains articles written by school psychologists from the United States, Europe, Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. The document was compiled in response to a need for international…