Developing a student-led school mental health strategy

Although there is increasing interest in promoting mental health and wellbeing within education, to date, the voices of young people appear to have been almost completely overlooked in the development of school-based mental health practices. This is despite increasing focus on young people’s participation; and the fact that young people may be best positioned to understand the pressures of contemporary society. This paper, co-authored by educational psychologists (EPs), school students and the school vice-principal, documents the development of a student-led mental health initiative within a high-achieving girls’ grammar school, led by students aged 12–18. Following EP input, the students devised a whole-school, student-friendly mental health strategy with the support of the EPs and senior school staff. As the project progressed, it became evident that applying even carefully selected adult mental health models to school contexts might not be appropriate; instead the students advocated for young person-friendly, innovative, contemporary and creative ways of communicating information about mental health, which avoided stigma. The students involved were well-placed to identify environmental stressors and to disseminate their strategy. The authors conclude that mental health planning in schools should encourage greater student participation, show caution over applying adult mental health models and promote greater use of technology or visual resources.     

Rugby,Modernity and Controversy: Le P'tit Parigot (1926) by René Le Somptier

The history of sports literature has enjoyed renewed interest over the last few years, with a noticeable increase in the number of Anglo-Saxon works and the revival of French research. Through fiction, it is possible to understand the processes whereby ideas spread and collective imaginaries are constructed. In this regard, this article revisits the history of rugby union through the prism of a cine-novel, Le P'tit Parigot (1926), which was presented in serialised form via the newspaper L'Intransigeant and as a six-episode film in cinemas. It depicts the misfortunes of Georges Grigny-Latour, also known as the ‘P'tit Parigot’, son of an academic and captain of the French rugby union football team. This sport serial is a historical source of precious and useful information enabling us to address the representations of rugby at the time. The article aims to characterise the ambiguous identity of the sport during the Roaring Twenties, an identity that was torn between a Parisian spirit cultivating the idea of rugby as the inheritance of Anglo-Saxon values, and a provincial vision using it as a means of territorial expression.     

Parental and planning influences on the formation of student college choice sets

This study examines a model of college choice by parents on behalf of their eighth-grade children. A sample of 931 Illinois parents nominated 154 identifiable institutions in a 1986 survey. Multivariate multiple regression is used to predict preferred institutional characteristics, including selectivity, highest degree offering, proximity, enrollment, and tuition. Results indicate that socioeconomic, familial, and college planning characteristics explain 35 percent of the variance in selectivity of colleges in the choice sets, with lesser (but significant) percentages of explained variance for the other institutional characteristics. These parental college nominations parallel previously reported matriculation behaviors.     

“Project Screen” — A Follow‐up Study of a Pre‐school Screening Battery

This study examines a pre‐school screening survey battery with an aim to validate it in terms of predicting school performance. Subjects participating in the screening were tested at the end of their first year at school. Analysis of the data, using a canonical correlation procedure, suggested elimination of a number of test items ‐‐ age, sex, age of walking, socio‐economic rating, Draw‐a‐Man Test, balance and posture, body image, perceptual motor match, height and weight. Measures of general ability, visual discrimination, visual reception, general development, receptive language, language concepts and positional concepts were the best predictors of school performance.