Despite some progress towards gender equality in Western societies, traditional gender norms still shape career choices, perpetuating a gender gap where girls are more likely to pursue traditionally feminine fields like healthcare, elementary education, and domestic roles (HEED), while boys are drawn to masculine domains such as science,…

Little is known about the implications of cannabis legalization on adolescent health behaviors. This study sought to examine the relationship between recreational cannabis legalization and adolescent sexual risk behaviors. Data on 371,487 respondents who have ever had sexual intercourse from 41 states in the 2005 to 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey…

In this co/autoethnographic account of a school-based cyber-bullying incident, the authors discuss the challenges of current anti-bullying approaches in schools. In the incident, male-identifying students were alleged to have engaged in online gender-based abuse of female-­identifying students. The authors identify three key themes toward…

Background: As adolescents prioritize friendship in developing their norms and values, it is important that we understand how peer influences drive positive and negative outcomes, particularly academic achievement. For example, adolescents develop perceived norms based on how they believe their peers value school, socializing, working, and…

During times of uncertainty, educators must listen so they can understand and create spaces for their students to imagine their dreams and possibilities. This paper examines and celebrates the resilience of two young African American men in high school who learned to claim agency during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Living in a culture that…

Social influence from society holds the key to social norms that influence students and their future aspirations. Gender bias is considered one of the influencing factors that affects the decisions of female high school students on participating in STEM education. This descriptive study describes the key factors that STEM educators perceived as…

The prevalence of student mental health concerns has increased the need for universal mental health screening to promote access to services. Some screeners determine risk status by comparing student scores to norming samples based on age (i.e., combined-gender) or on age and gender (i.e., separate-gender). This study examined scores on the…

In this article, we draw on findings from two critical ethnographic studies across three high schools in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. While the critical ethnographies canvased a range of topics, this article draws on the empirical findings specific to exploring how relationships and sexuality education as a key learning area within Health…

This exploratory study aims to broaden students' models of cyber-aggression behavior, with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by including additional constructs, namely cyber health, to predict youth cyber-aggression actions. The self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 291 students intentionally, aged 15 to 21 at secondary…

This paper explores the joyful subjectivity of LGBTQ+ youth. The study analyzes It Gets Better videos for their evolving narratives of queer lives. Using feminist theories, I find complex manners in which the videos script and surveil queer subjects, articulate the transitions associated with coming out, and embrace joyous refusals of victim…

The purpose of this pilot study was to expand understanding of the experience of menstruation for girls in the United States and its impact in the school setting. A qualitative approach was used to gather data from focus group interviews. Descriptive content analysis was used to categorize the range and types of menstruation experiences described…

In US school settings and materials, climate change is often framed as an uncertain phenomenon. However, the effect of such denialist representations on youth's perceptions of climate change has not been empirically tested. To address this gap in the literature, this article reports on a survey-based experiment testing two framings of uncertainty…

"Rules of the game" are the social expectations one must enact for success in a specific environment. From veteran public high school educators in Washington, D.C., this study found: (1) "Rules of the game" for high school success are most consistently communicated through interventions after students have not met academic,…

The divide between those who do and those who do not excel in mathematics is patterned in problematic ways. Women and people of color are typically underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and other quantitative fields (ex. Finance) where mathematics plays gatekeeper. However, mathematics is not a subject these groups…

This study aims to identify the gaps in the Theory of Planned Behavior literature and to determine the general trends in studies in the field of educational sciences within the context of the Theory of Planned Behavior, to generate recommendations on improving the educational processes by revealing the effect this theory has on educational…