Questionnaires were completed by 5044 12-year-old pupils in Oxfordshire state schools and initially used to identify classes where the pupils were more positive and enthusiastic about their science lessons than the majority. The teachers of these classes were identified and the views of their pupils as to what happens in their science lessons…

This paper takes a brief look at external and internal demotivating factors among EFL young learners at Pozanti Regional Primary Boarding School (YIBO). In the search of the reasons of demotivation, a questionnaire consisting of 5-point Likert Scale, open-ended questions, observations and interviews were administered. Following the evaluation of…

This article presents the perspectives of Australian and English children on the broad terms worry, happy and change. Utilizing a qualitative methodology, the study engaged with pre-adolescent children ("tweens") on the issues affecting them in the modern world. Participants were drawn from a large regional secondary school in Eastern…

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association…

The Middle School Concept brings together good teaching practices with the unique needs of pre-adolescent students. Since the passing of the NCLB, more and more attention has been generated on the results of high stakes testing. The question of what happens to the middle school concept when it confronts the demands of this new age of testing is…

Three studies compared beliefs about natural and late blooming positive traits with those acquired through personal effort, extrinsic rewards or medicine. Young children (5-6 years), older children (8-13 years), and adults all showed a strong bias for natural and late blooming traits over acquired traits. All age groups, except 8- to 10-year-olds,…

We investigated ethnic group differences in the association between social support, perceived discrimination and mental health in one adolescent and one preadolescent sample of immigrant children in Norway. The study is based on self-report questionnaire data collected in 2000/2001 from 286 students in 10th grade with backgrounds from Turkey,…

This study investigated whether peer victimization and gender nonconformity are connected for both pre- and early adolescent boys and girls. 462 predominantly white, middle-class students from Grade 5-9 provided self-reports of victimization (physical, verbal, and relational) and gender nonconformity, as well as peer nominations of gender…

From April 2007 to June 2008, focus groups with 41 Washington, DC youth, ages 11 to 19, were conducted by Break the Cycle. One group consisted of eight self-identified sexual minority teens. Participants were asked questions exploring their opinions on the prevalence of dating violence among teens, dating violence dynamics, seeking or providing…

Introduction: In this cross-sectional, descriptive research we studied the relation between three psychological variables (anxiety, depression and attention) in order to analyze their possible association with and predictive power for academic achievement (as expressed in school grades) in a sample of secondary students. Method: For this purpose…

The current study investigated the gender differences of gifted adolescents' math/verbal self-concept and math/verbal ability by examining the Internal/External Frame of Reference Model (I/E model; Marsh, 1986). The sample consisted of 181 gifted adolescents, ranging in age from 12 to 16 years old. Gifted adolescents' math/verbal ability was…

The objective of this work was to highlight the conceptions of force held by students aged 10-17 years old, in situations where animate and inanimate objects interact. In the proposed experimental situations, we varied parameters such as the motion and position of an object and the agent's effort. We asked questions about both inanimate and…

In the inner-city of Washington, D.C., lives a generation of young people for whom violence, discrimination, and poverty are a daily reality. This article describes one youth organization that encourages these young people to voice their hopes and concerns for their community and work to create solutions. The out-of-school-time programming of…

The research reported in this article was carried out in four secondary schools, two with a peer support system (PS) and two without (NPS) and involved a total of 931 pupils, (49.5 per cent males, and 50.5 per cent females). Participants were aged between 11 and 15 years of age, mean age 12.8 years. The aim was to compare the perceptions of safety…

This article is based on a small study undertaken in 2001, which examined the experiences of and responses to sexual harassment and bullying adopted by different professionals (teachers, education social workers, youth workers and a school nurse) and by young people (12 to 25-year-olds). It draws together some of the literature relating to young…