Dinkes, Cataldi, and Lin-Kelly (2007) claims that 78% of public schools reported one or more violent incidents during the 2005/2006 school year. School shootings are a rare but real threat on school campuses. Shootings at private schools are even less frequent with only a few recorded examples in the United States. This case study examines how a…

Situated learning theory understands learning to be a sociocultural activity, and individuals experience identity development as they participate in communities of practice. The purpose of this study was to understand how Korean older adults' computer learning in a classroom is a situated activity and how this learning influences older adults'…

Background: A limited amount of research has been conducted on children and adolescents who are low achievers. In Hong Kong, educators describe low achieving students in terms of academic performance, they seldom focus on socio-emotional aspects, such as self-esteem, peer affiliation, and inter-personal relationships. However, low achieving…

A total of 7488 7th-12th grade African-American students completed a survey assessing factors associated with recent alcohol use. Results indicated that 13.6% used alcohol in the past month. A series of odds ratios revealed that making good grades, participating in school activities, attending church, and having parents/teachers talk about the…

The authors carried out an assessment of social support networks with a sample of 884 Spanish adolescents aged 12 to 17. The main goal was to analyze the development of the figures of parents and peers as providers of social support in the two basic dimensions of emotional and instrumental support. In peers, they distinguished between the contexts…

Music teachers may feel most comfortable teaching the music they know, in the way that they were taught and in the way that they were taught to teach it. Music and the teaching of music is a strong part of their professional musical identity. Adolescents have a passionate attachment to music but insist that this must be on their terms, which may…

Friendship factors have been implicated in adolescent suicidality, but this relationship has not been verified across ethnicities. This study examined suicidality and friendship problems (i.e., social isolation, poor friendship quality, friends' school disconnection, and friends' delinquency) among Mexican American adolescents, an understudied,…

Background: Testing, refining, and tailoring theoretical approaches that are hypothesized to reduce sexual risk behaviors among adolescent subpopulations is an important task. Relatively little is known about the relationship between components of the information-motivation-behavior (IMB) model and sexual behaviors among underage minority youth.…

Children with emotional and behavior disorders often have difficulties understanding social cues, responding appropriately in social situations, and initiating age-appropriate interactions with peers and adults. A real-life social activity that is often neglected in social skills training is dining. Dining involves dining etiquette, personal…

The use of peer groups to respond to student papers is a long-established practice in the composition classroom, so well entrenched, that they may sometimes employ peer response without thoroughly evaluating underlying assumptions and beliefs about how such groups operate. As a central tenet of the writing process movement, peer response was…

This study tested a social-ecological model of adolescent substance use. Multilevel modeling was used to investigate how systems, such as parents, peers, schools, and communities, directly influence and interact together to influence adolescent substance use. Participants included 14,548 (50.3% female) middle school students who were 78.6% White,…

This study examined the relationships of adolescents' perceptions of parental and peer behaviors with cigarette and alcohol use in different neighborhood contexts. The sample included 924 adolescents (49% boys, 51% girls) 12-14 years of age whose addresses were matched with 1990 census block groups. Six neighborhood types were identified through a…

Drawing on social identity theory, this study explored the impact of the peer group on childhood bullying. Participants were 351 students, aged 8 to 13 years. Involvement in bullying, friendship group membership, norms of particular groups, and intra-group positions (prototypical vs. peripheral) were determined using peer reports. Results revealed…

Objectives: To develop and refine a scale of motivational factors related to healthy weight achievement and maintenance and to examine differences by gender and weight status. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 300 university students aged 18-24 years. Results: Factor analysis yielded 6 factors--Intrinsic (Cronbach's alpha = 0.73): affective…

The purpose of the current study was to examine adolescents' perceptions of negative and positive peer influence (i.e., indirect peer association and direct peer pressure) as they related to adolescent behavior. Regression analyses were conducted using a sample of African American, European American, and Hispanic adolescents (N=1659, M age=16.06,…