Although they make up a relatively small proportion of all children in the U.S. foster care system, foster youth approaching adulthood have over the years attracted considerable attention from policymakers. Three times in the past 25 years the Social Security Act has been amended to try to better support the transition to adulthood for foster…

The Early Years Evaluation (EYE) program is intended to help teachers to evaluate the skills of children from three to six years. This article discusses two new skills assessments of the EYE program: (1) the Early Years Evaluation-Direct Assessment (EYE-DA); and (2) the Early Years Evaluation-Teacher Assessment (EYE-TA). The EYE-DA evaluates…

In Germany, there exists a traditional gap between kindergarten and primary school. Transition research has led to a new understanding of the need for cooperation between different educational institutions and the family at this time. This article emphasises that educational transitions affect not only the child but also the parents, who actively…

In a digital era in which technology plays a role in most aspects of a child's life, having the competence and confidence to use computers might be a necessary step, but not a goal in itself. Developing character traits that will serve children to use technology in a safe way to communicate and connect with others, and providing opportunities for…

Four decades of research on resilience in young people provide compelling data and models for applications in the school context. Resilience theory and findings are highly congruent with Strengths-Based School Counseling (SBSC) as formulated by Galassi and Akos (2007). In this article, resilience is defined in relation to competence in…

In middle school, counselors should promote optimal development as students navigate the formative stage of puberty. A search for identity is an important developmental task in early adolescence, but school counselors often neglect racial identity development. Through an actual case of an 8th-grade student, both individual and systemic strategies…

The "tabula rasa" of this article's title is a Latin term meaning "clean slate." For centuries before January 6, 1907, and continuing more than 100 years since, teachers have walked into classrooms of young children convinced they know full well what is good for them, and what should be poured into their minds and by what means. But on that day,…

Children with autism exhibit a host of motor disorders including poor coordination, poor tool use and delayed learning of complex motor skills like riding a tricycle. Theory suggests that one of the crucial steps in motor learning is the ability to form internal models: to predict the sensory consequences of motor commands and learn from errors to…

In theory of mind research, there is a long standing dispute about whether children come to understand the subjectivity of both desires and beliefs at the same time (around age 4), or whether there is an asymmetry such that desires are understood earlier. To address this issue, 3-year olds' understanding of situations in which two persons have…

We investigated a test of strategic reasoning (the Windows task) that in different studies has yielded contrasting pictures of young children's executive abilities [Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). "The 'windows task' as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects." "British Journal of…

Adopting healthy and positive behaviors and avoiding risky ones are key developmental tasks of adolescence. Parents can play an important role in helping their adolescent children acquire or strengthen the behaviors, skills, attitudes, and motivation that promote physical and mental health and overall well-being. Recognizing this, a variety of…

Individuation in relation to father and mother is one of the key developmental tasks of adolescence, and has been conceptualized as gaining autonomy while maintaining relatedness to parents. Research on high-conflict, divorced and step-families suggests that specific stressors in these family types may compromise successful individuation by…

Experience of significant bereavement is reported by the majority of young people in contemporary western societies, but it receives little attention from mainstream services or academics, and this marginality is paralleled in young people's everyday bereavement experiences. Existing academic and professional work concerned with children and young…

The authors assessed the career maturity of students in accelerated versus traditional academic programs. Students in traditional programs were hypothesized to be more advanced regarding their career decision making and development when compared with students in accelerated programs. The Medical Career Development Inventory (see M. L. Savickas,…

The near-collapse of the American financial system has led to a search for its causes and ways to prevent it from happening again. Many political leaders blame at least some of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on mistakes caused by financially "illiterate" consumers and propose to solve that problem with mandatory classes in personal finance.…