Earlier work often referred to as the "hole in the wall" experiments has shown that groups of children can learn to use public computers on their own. This paper presents the method and results of an experiment conducted to investigate whether such unsupervised group learning in shared public spaces can improve children's performance in…

Research on delinquency has shown consistent results across Western industrialized countries. Few studies have been done in non-Western cultures. This study reports on the results of a birth cohort study in China, which was started by Marvin Wolfgang but never completed. The cohort, born in 1973, was traced through official and community files.…

School counselors can use groups as an effective and efficient means of helping students. Psychoeducational groups provide information and build skills to help prepare students for developmental tasks. As students complete elementary school, these preadolescents face the challenging tasks of moving to middle school and beginning puberty. School…

In this article, the author describes the Comic Book Project, which encourages students to address social issues in their lives and schools with art and creativity. The project, founded and directed by Dr. Michael Bitz of Columbia University's Teachers' College in New York, aims primarily to promote literacy. It also gives children an empowering…

The effect of friendship reciprocation and friend aggression on the stability of aggression across a 6-month period following the transition to secondary school was studied in a sample of 298 Grade 6 children from a predominately white, middle-class, Midwestern American community. The stability of aggression was generally high but it varied as a…

In this study, the portrayal of tanned skin and sun protection in magazines, television programs, and movies popular with Australian adolescents were analyzed. Images of models in magazines (n = 1,791), regular/supporting characters in television programs (n = 867), and regular/supporting characters in cinema movies (n = 2,836) for the 12-month…

Objectives: To examine how older smoking peers at school and the smoking behavior of friends and family members are related to youth smoking. Methods: The School Smoking Profile was used to collect data on tobacco use and determinants of tobacco use from 22,091 students from 29 secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. Correlates of occasional and…

The current paper reviews four research perspectives that have been used to investigate the development of risk-taking. Cognitive developmental research has investigated the development of decision-making capacities that potentially underlie risk-taking development, including sensitivity to risk, probability estimation, and perceptions of…

The study investigated the relationships between substance use, body image, and peer influence among Finnish adolescents. The participants (N = 488, 240 boys and 248 girls), were eighth-grade high school students. The data were gathered using a questionnaire. In addition to background information, the study covered risk behaviors frequency, body…

Cultural differences have been found in body image perceptions among Black and White adolescents, however little is known about the factors associated with perceptions of an ideal body size (IBS). This study examined differences in correlates of IBS among 265 Black (116 girls and 62 boys) and White (63 girls and 24 boys) adolescents. IBS for White…

Smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the United States. Most adult smokers began smoking during adolescence, making youth tobacco prevention an especially important public health goal. Guided by an extension of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study examined the role of psychosocial factors in accounting for adolescents'…

This article explores the empirical validity of the Social Interactionist (SI) perspective as an explanation of violent victimization. An additional goal is to explain why early puberty among adolescents is connected to violent victimization. Using SI, we theorize that early puberty creates unusually high levels of distress for adolescents (more…

This chapter sets out to explore the six significant findings of this study by relating the interview content to the sociological risk literature. It examines thinking behind loss zones and gain zones and then moves on to look at individual versus collective risk and perceptions of risk. A child and youth care understanding is noted within the…

Using secondary analysis of a large database from a Statewide Systemic Initiative, we examined the effects of several types of environments on student outcomes. Over 3 years, nearly 7,000 students in 392 classes in 200 different schools responded to a questionnaire that assesses class, home, and peer environments as well as student attitudes.…

In this study of an Indonesian language class in Australia, I propose that students are agentive in adopting, rejecting and deploying discursive positions within the classroom. There are a range of identities made available in the classroom, only some of which are taken up and privileged within specific moments in the classroom. I apply the…