Coping with school failure and self-regulated learning

The aim of the study was to explore whether students can be classified in groups according to their coping strategies in dealing with school failure and to assess relationships between coping strategies and various components of self regulated learning. The sample consisted of 470 high school students (15 to 18 years old). The students responded to two self-report questionnaires: The School Failure Coping Scale and The Components of Self-Regulated Learning.     

COPING IN BASKETBALL: DIFFERENCES ACCORDING TO ABILITY AND GENDER

The strategies used to cope with performance problems were investigated in 206 basketball players. A total of 127 males and 79 female players, recruited from teams representing different levels of basketball ability, were administered the Ways of Coping with Sport questionnaire (Madden, 1987; Kirkby & McDonald, 1989). A 2x2 muUivariate analysis of variance showed that players of higher ability could be differentiated from those of lower abiltiy by their use of four scales of the questionnaire: General Problem‐focused Coping; Emphasizing the Positive; Detachment; Increased Effort and Resolve. Females could be differentiated from males by their increased tendency to use Seeking Social Support. Separate analysis by ANOVA revealed a gender x ability interaction in the use of General Emotionality coping processes. The findings indicated that the relationship between ability, gender, and coping is more complex than previously thought.     

Exploring school stress in middle childhood: interpretations,experiences, and coping

With increased academic and social challenges at school, middle childhood can be a particularly stressful time. The present study explored how a sample of children from a supportive learning environment interpreted, experienced and reported coping with everyday stress at school. Using a phenomenological approach, third graders attending an elementary school in the United States participated in semi-structured interviews in which they could discuss the nature of stress, stressful moments at school, and their responses to different situations. Despite nearly optimal learning conditions, child reports included a range of school stressors. Children’s interpretations of ‘stress’ seemed inextricably linked to their learning and social obstacles at school; those daily experiences were further linked to coping strategies. The discussion section emphasises the importance of understanding how children interpret and report stress and coping, and how pastoral care can support young students.     

Global Social Responsibility: Developing a Scale for Senior High School Students in Japan

This research was conducted with the aim of clarifying a concept of “global social responsibility.” A total sample of 395 senior high school students in Japan responded to a pool of items mostly adapted from a scale developed by Starrett (1996) and provided additional data concerning their social experiences. The data were used in the development of a Japanese version of the Global Social Responsibility (GSR) scale. It was found that “global altruism,” “active involvement with society,” and “understanding of interdependence” constituted a construct of global social responsibility. It was also found that females, those who discussed social problems with their family, those who revealed a high awareness of responsibility and those who had multiple experiences of volunteer activities for community service showed high GSR scores. The scale provides both an awareness of the concept and a measure for determining levels of global social responsibility. Counseling professionals are encouraged to consider their roles from a global and social perspective, with the notion of responsibility being seen as central to the concepts of freedom and personal development.     

Goal orientations, coping with school failure and school achievement

The present study examined the relationship between goal orientation, coping with school failure and school achievement. Two questionnaires, Goal Orientation (Niemivirta, 1996a) and The School Failure Coping Scale (Rijavec & Brdar, 1997), were administered to 1057 high school students (aged from 15 to 17 years). The first goal of this study was to explore whether students can be classified in groups according to their goal orientation. The results identified four clusters of students with different achievement profiles: learning oriented, work-avoidance oriented, both performance and learning oriented and both performance and work-avoidance oriented group. Learning oriented group used emotion-focused coping the least frequently while students with combined performance and work avoidanc orientation used this kind of coping the most frequently.     

The relationship between perceptions of the classroom goal structure and early adolescents' affect in school: The mediating role of coping strategies

This study investigates the relations among students' perceptions of the goal structure in the classroom, the self-report of coping strategies, and affect in school. We hypothesized that perceptions of a task goal structure would be associated with positive coping strategies, and in turn with positive affect; and that perceptions of an ability goal structure would be associated with projective coping, denial coping, and noncoping, and in turn with negative affect. In addition, the study takes note of hypothesized reciprocal relations among all these variables. Using a longitudinal design, surveys were administered to 880 students from 4 ethnically and economically diverse school districts in the fall and spring of the 5th grade in elementary school, and in the fall and spring of the 6th grade in middle school. The findings support the hypothesized relations as well as some reciprocal relations among these variables. The findings also indicate that perceptions of the classroom goal structure were more stable within an environment than across environments, thus supporting the role of environmental characteristics in these perceptions.     

Learning strategies and their relationships to academic performance of high school students in Hong Kong

The present study examines the dynamic relationship between academic performance of high school students and their respective learning and study strategies. Two hundred thirty-six high school students were recruited to participate in this study by completing a Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory - LASSI, to probe into the relationship. Results found that (1) there were clear differences to the learning and study strategies used by high school students with high academic performance, and those with low academic performance; (2) all the three components (Will; Self-regulation and Skill) were equally important to differentiate high academic achieving high school students from low academic achieving high school students within the strategic model of learning; and (3) a numbers of learning and study strategies were effectively predicting the academic performance of the high school students. All of these result patterns confirm that learning and study strategies used by high academic achievers and low academic achievers as well as the components used to predict students’ academic performance in the high school setting are quite different from the patterns revealed in the tertiary education sector.     

贫困高中学生社会支持与心理健康调查研究

选用获学校贫困补助的学生57名为研究组，相对应的52名非贫困生为对照组，采用症状自评量表（SCL－90）、社会支持评定理表和自编教师评价问卷对贫困高中学生心理健康状况和社会支持状况进行调查，为高中贫困学生心理卫生工作提供科学依据。结果：1）贫困生SCL－90量表测量的总分、躯体化水平、强迫症状、人际敏感、抑郁、偏执、精神病性、其他各因子分显高于非贫困生；2）社会支持评定量表的主观支持和支持利用度评分贫困生普遍得分低于非贫困生；3）贫困生社会支持量表评分与SCL－90各因子负相关。结论：1）高中贫困学生心理健康问题值得学校心理卫生工作关注；2）应提高贫困学生对社会支持的感受性和对支持源的利用。     

What makes a successful transition to school? Views of Australian parents and teachers

This paper reports a survey of 355 parents and 166 teachers of young children starting school in New South Wales, Australia. Parents and teachers were asked to rate a list of 20 items in answer to the question 'How important are the following for deciding whether a child has had a successful first two terms of school?' The results are presented in relation to individual items as well as broad categories, with comparisons between the perceptions of teachers and parents. Overall, teachers placed most emphasis on the areas of children's adjustment to the school context and their dispositions or feelings about being at school. Less emphasis was attributed to areas such as knowledge. Parents were more likely than teachers to focus on knowledge, as well as children's dispositions. Implications are drawn for collaborative interaction between parents and teachers as children start school.     

Relationships Between Ability and Coping in Competitive Female Gymnasts

Differences in the strategies used by gymnasts of different abilities to cope with performance difficulties were investigated using the Ways of Coping with Sport questionnaire. The sample of 83 adolescent females represented gymnasts at two levels of ability: those who had competed at international or national championships and those who had competed at only state or club championships. The coping processes reported most frequently by the total sample of gymnasts were Increased Effort and Resolve, Seeking Social Support, Wishful Thinking, and Problem‐Focused Coping. It was noteworthy that these were also the preferred coping strategies of female basketball players. Analysis of the data by discriminant function indicated that the gymnasts of higher ability were older, had been involved in gymnastics for a longer period and were more likely to use Detachment to cope with performance problems. Age and experience were more important predictors of ability than was coping style.     

Assessing elementary school support for inquiry

Increasingly in elementary schools, there has been a focus on the influence of school-level factors on students’ learning. The way in which the learning environment is organised in schools and classrooms is likely to influence students’ opportunities to carry out inquiry. Most studies have focused on the effects of the amount of schooling, rather than effects attributable to support for inquiry in the school context. This study clarifies aspects of school contexts that support inquiry at the school level and describes the development of an inventory to assess school contexts. The Primary School Characteristics Inventory has three components named Motivation for Student Inquiry, Organisational Structures to Support Inquiry and Structures to Support Inquiry Strategies in School. The instrument was effective for identifying schools with varying levels of support for inquiry, suggesting that some schools might need to modify the school context if students are to carry out inquiry in a self-directed way.     

An ecological examination of teachers' emotions in the school context

This qualitative case study discusses teachers' emotions, in particular two elementary teachers in a school serving a high-poverty, high-minority population. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological system framework, we examined how these teachers' internal psychological characteristics transact with external environments to produce emotions. Both teachers experienced unpleasant emotions such as disappointment and frustration in their daily work. However, instead of dwelling on the unpleasant emotions, they shifted their thinking to consider ways they could achieve more favorable outcomes. Our findings showed that these coping strategies were deeply connected to their individual psychological biographies, specifically their pedagogical beliefs and well-developed professional identity.     

Academisation,school collaboration and the primary school sector in England: a story of six school leaders

This paper presents data from a study of five English primary schools. It examines some of the challenges associated with school autonomy and collaboration for state primary schools amid the uncertainty and complexity of governance in the present English education context. The paper features the voices of six leaders gathered from interviews that explored their thoughts about the academies movement. It highlights their fears that academisation, and particularly the imperative to join a large academy chain, will undermine their autonomy as individual schools. Accepting of the inevitability of academisation and the forms of network governance this reform offers, it highlights the head teachers’ moves to ensure their autonomy in terms of determining the timing and type of conversion. In relation to these moves, the paper reiterates the significance within effective collaboratives of member schools experiencing a sense of ownership, a common purpose, shared responsibility for students and their learning and relations of trust. The paper considers some of the tensions arising in this space in relation to competition, collaboration and school vulnerability.     

Why does parents’ involvement in youth’s learning vary across elementary,middle, and high school?

This research examined why parents’ involvement in youth’s learning varies as youth progress through school. 3074 Chinese youths (M age = 13.89 years) in elementary, middle, and high school and their parents reported on parents’ homework assistance and academic socialization. Youth and parents also reported on potential mechanisms underlying variation in these two types of involvement over the school years. Parents’ homework assistance and academic socialization were both higher in elementary than middle school in which they were higher than high school. Youth’s invitations for involvement, along with parents’ involvement role beliefs, involvement self-efficacy, and perceived involvement norms contributed to the tendency for the two types of involvement to be higher in elementary than middle school. Only youth’s invitations and parents’ perceived norms contributed to the tendency for the two to be higher in middle than high school.     

WHITE COMPLICITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION: CAN ONE BE CULPABLE WITHOUT BEING LIABLE?

A bstract .  In part of an ongoing study of white complicity, moral responsibility, and moral agency in social justice education, Barbara Applebaum asks in this essay what model or models of moral responsibility can help white students recognize their white complicity and which models of moral responsibility obscure such acknowledgment. To address this question, she explores the concept of white complicity and its relation to racism and raises some compelling conceptual and pedagogical questions. Then she reviews a recent analysis of the concept of "complicity" and shows it to be inadequate as a foundation for white complicity. Finally, Applebaum describes Iris Marion Young's conception of a Social Connection Model of Responsibility and shows it to be capable not only of elucidating white complicity but also, when incorporated in social justice pedagogy, of diminishing denials of white complicity by white students.     

自我肯定与高职学生生命质量：领悟社会支持和应对方式的中介作用

目的:探讨领悟社会支持和应对方式在自我肯定与生命质量之间的作用机制。方法:采用一般健康问卷、领悟社会支持量表、特质应对方式问卷、TDL生命质量测定表对319名高职学生进行调查。结论:高职学生的自我肯定、领悟社会支持和积极应对与生命质量显著正相关,消极应对与生命质量显著负相关;领悟社会支持和积极应对、消极应对在自我肯定与生命质量之间起链式中介作用。     

UNDERSTANDING STUDENT STRESS AND COPING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: A MIXED‐METHOD,LONGITUDINAL STUDY

This mixed‐method, longitudinal study examined daily school stress and coping strategies of elementary schoolchildren in the United States. Students (n = 65) between the ages of 7 and 11 years reported daily school stress measures for 8 weeks and completed individual stress and coping interviews. Results highlight critical relations between students’ exposure to daily stress at school, their stress appraisals and future expectations, and usage of coping strategies. Students reported limited preparedness in their ability to cope with daily stress in socially appropriate, effective ways; their accounts may have valuable implications for academic success and personal well‐being. Recommendations for educational practice and future research are discussed.     

Social Work Intervention with White Collared Employees and Their Families

This investigation presents a framework for understanding and also to test the efficacy of Social Work intervention on the well being of the white collared employee (industrial employee) and his/her family. A comprehensive and intensive personal- family exploration was done to uncover the relatedness of seemingly disparate areas of the clients lives. A total of 80 executives (industrial employees) served as subjects. A baseline assessment was done using structured, standardized interview-schedules/questionnaires. The results of the study can be enumerated as follows: After the Social Work intervention, the executives in occupational profile, there were significant changes in Role perception, overload, role conflict, low status and poor peer relations. In coping strategies there was significant improvement in sub-scales like problem solving and unproductive coping. Significant reduction was noticed in their proneness to heart disease, depression, inadequate mental mastery, and perceived ill health. There was significant improvement in their family group support, and in their expressiveness, achievement, orientation, active-recreational and organizational characteristics.     

The Teacher''s Role in Facilitating Memory and Study Strategy Development in the Elementary School Classroom

The efforts of 69 elementary school teachers to instruct children in cognitive processing activities were observed. Although the teaching of such activities was relatively infrequent, it varied by grade (occurring more often in grades 2-3 than in higher or lower grades) and by the content of instruction. Teachers of grade 4 and above more often provided rationales for the use of cognitive strategies than did teachers of younger children. In a second study, children of three achievement levels were selected from classrooms in which teachers varied in their use of suggestions regarding cognitive processes. Subsequent to training in the use of a memory strategy, children's performance on a maintenance trial was evaluated: Among average and low achievers, those whose teachers were relatively high in strategy suggestions showed better maintenance and more deliberate use of the trained strategy than did children whose teachers rarely made strategy suggestions. The role of school experience in the development of children's memory skills is discussed.