The present research examined the effectiveness of an 8-week online strengths-based intervention in promoting subjective and psychological well-being of first year university students. The intervention was composed of five modules pertaining to (a) finding and cultivating on character strengths, (b) regulation of emotions and increasing positive…

Recent years have witnessed a surge in evidence on preschoolers' emotional development as crucial for both concurrent and later well-being and mental health, and for learning and academic success. Given the importance of building such strengths, assessing emotional competence skills is important to aid early childhood educators in focusing…

This study explores the potential of drumming to enhance emotional and social functioning of children in residential care. Fifteen children (aged 7-12) from a child and youth care centre in South Africa attended four months of weekly drumming sessions. Gestalt theory principles informed the workshops' theoretical foundation and interpretation of…

School-based mental health professionals receive extensive training in assessment and treatment techniques with children. However, most of this training is based on research with white, middle-class populations, whose experiences are hardly universal. In the next decade, ethnic minority students are projected to become the numerical majority in…

Background: Both education policies and curriculum documents identify the personal development of students as a key objective of modern education. Physical education (PE) in particular has been cited as a subject that can promote students' life skills development and psychological well-being. However, little research has investigated the processes…

There is evidence that children of incarcerated parents are at risk of poor developmental and educational outcomes. However, much of this evidence is limited by biased samples, as studies must rely on opt-in recruitment. Administrative data present an opportunity to overcome this challenge, as they capture information on all incarcerated…

In an increasingly fast-changing, complex and diverse world, social and emotional skills are becoming ever more important. In this paper we present an overview of literature on social and emotional skills, describing the nature and structure of these skills, their development, malleability and factors that influence them, their cross-cultural…

Despite numerous education reform efforts, national academic achievement data continues to reflect a marked disparity between culturally and linguistically diverse students and their white counterparts. Currently, 50% of K-12 public school students are students of color, and this percentage is projected to increase as the cultural composition of…

Many studies and much research have been done verifying the significance and importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace in dealing with individuals or teams. This article looks at the importance of emotional and social intelligence in the workplace and how important it is to include emotional intelligence as part of the comprehensive…

In this monograph, the authors advanced a set of interrelated arguments: The abilities of individuals do matter, particularly their abilities in specific talent domains; different talent domains have different developmental trajectories that vary as to when they start, peak, and end; and opportunities provided by society are crucial at every point…

In this article we argue that efforts to eradicate school violence should include an understanding of the complex social, cultural, and historical contexts in which violence is perpetrated. Specifically, we assert that the production and perpetuation of hegemonic/dominant masculinity plays a pivotal role in various forms of aggression and violence…

Not all children and youth will respond the same way to scripted interventions. Children and youth require intervention strategies that are designed to meet their wide-ranging needs in order to be successful during and after school years. Yet, educators and counselors apply behavior strategies to promote prosocial behavior without exploring…

Whether an individual lives in a rural or urban setting may have direct impact on a wide variety of psychological patterns adopted by students. In this study, the effects of positive and negative social behaviors on the relationship between social and emotional learning needs and skills gaps of students who reside in both rural and urban areas…

The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the effects of 2 professional development approaches on teachers' implementation of the "Pyramid" model, a classroom-wide approach for fostering social-emotional development and addressing challenging behavior. The study had 2 goals: (a) to examine the differential effects of workshop…

This study examined emotion understanding and reconciliation in 47 (24 girls) 4-6-year-old preschool children. Participants first completed emotion recognition tasks and then answered questions regarding reconciliation tendencies and affective perspective-taking in a series of overt and relational aggressive conflict scenarios. Children's teachers…