The authors calculated binary indicators of seven positive and 23 negative behaviours for 22,898 8th and 15,828 11th grade students who participated in the Oregon Healthy Teens Survey across two school years. Relationships among these variables, using both the Jaccard measure of co-occurrence and the relative risk for each member of each variable…

This study investigated how discrete social information processing (SIP) steps may combine with one another to create distinct groups of youth who are characterized by particular patterns of SIP. SIP assessments were conducted on a community sample of 576 children in kindergarten, with follow-up assessments in grades 3, 8, and 11. At each age,…

This study describes 5th, 8th, and 11th-grade students', teachers', and medical professionals' conceptions of flu and microbial illness. Participants constructed a concept map on "flu" and participated in a semi-structured interview. The results showed that these groups of students, teachers and medical professionals held and structured their…

The present study examines the correlates of indirect and verbal victimization by peers at school. The research is based on a nationally representative sample of 16,604 students in grades 7 through 11 in 324 schools across Israel. Self-administrated anonymous questionnaires were completed during class. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to…

The present study examines how exposure to relational aggression at school is associated with adolescents' perceptions of, and participation in, a hostile school environment. Participants were 1,335 African American and European American adolescents in grades 7 through 12 (52% female, 49% African American). Results indicate that exposure to…

This study examined the reasons that four high school students who had previously refused to attend school willingly attended an alternative K-12 school for students with special needs. The two research questions that framed this study were (a) why do students who refused to attend their regular schools willingly attend Brookfield Park? and (b) in…

It has been almost 30 years since the last systematic look at writing instruction in middle schools and high schools in the United States (Applebee, Writing). Since that report, there have been a number of significant changes in the contexts in which teachers teach and in which their students learn to write. Stretching back to the 1969-70 school…

A social developmental framework was applied to test for the socialization of homophobic attitudes and behavior within adolescent peer groups (Grades 7-11; aged 12-17 years). Substantial similarity within and differences across groups were documented. Multilevel models identified a group socializing contextual effect, predicting homophobic…

In this study, the authors conducted a mixed analysis of student perceptions of their best high school teachers. The sample of 257 preservice teachers from a College of Education in California described their best high school teacher. From their descriptions, qualitative analysis through the method of constant comparison yielded eight themes:…

Background: Research suggests significant health differences between rural dwelling youth and their urban counterparts with relation to cardiovascular risk factors. This study was conducted to (1) determine relationships between physical activity and markers of metabolic syndrome, and (2) to explore factors relating to physical activity in a…

The present study examined age-group differences in students' self-reports of metacognitive activity in physical education settings. Five hundred and ten students of public elementary, junior and senior high school provided self-reports concerning the metacognitive processes they use during physical education lessons, their goal orientations and…

School administrators in a small suburban school district in Southeastern Pennsylvania were concerned about grade inflation at the elementary and secondary levels. Specifically, they wanted to know if students in grades 5, 8, and 11 who scored at the basic or below basic performance level on the 2003-2004 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment…

The annual event dropout rate describes the proportion of students who leave school each year without completing a high school program. The event dropout rates for the school year 2005-2006 of 1.99% for grades 7 through 12th and 2.85% for grades 9 through 12th are consistent with the dropout rates for the past four years. The event completion rate…

This general achievement trends profile includes information that the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) obtained from states from fall 2008 through April 2009. Included herein are: (1) Bullet points summarizing key findings about achievement trends in that state at three performance…

Emerging from a human constructivist view of learning and a punctuated model of conceptual change, these studies explored differences in the structural complexity and content validity of knowledge about prehistoric life depicted in concept maps by learners ranging in age from approximately 10 to 20 years. Study 1 (cross-age) explored the…