The December 2008 release of China's new "Guidelines for health education in primary and secondary schools" by the Ministry of Education addressed many of the concerns arising from the academic and popular discourse on Chinese adolescent sexuality and sexuality education. The focus of this reform, common with similar reforms elsewhere in…

This research extends a continuing line of inquiry investigating how multimedia resources might be joined with other support structures to effectively implement problem-based inquiry (PBI) activities in secondary history classrooms. Two history teachers with experience in PBI implemented a technology-supported problem-based civil rights unit in…

Informal reasoning fallacies are violations of critical discussion norms. As epistemological understanding of knowledge justification appears to underlie the informal reasoning skills of argument construction and evaluation, it was hypothesized that adolescents with greater epistemological sophistication would be more able to identify informal…

Background: Great efforts are made to develop and implement contact activities for groups in conflict, yet studies of effects of planned contact interventions yielded mixed results. Previous attempts to explain why contact interventions do not fulfill their promise focused on the contact itself. However, the main focus of the present study was the…

Research investigating patterns of intergenerational risk taking has produced evidence of increased risk taking of female adolescents compared with their mother's generation and a reduction in the traditional gap between levels of teenage male and female risk taking. The research is part of a larger, multistage project on factors affecting…

The state of mathematics and science education in South Africa is a cause for concern. This situation can be attributed, in part, to many mathematics and science teachers' limited content knowledge, ineffective teaching approaches, and unprofessional attitudes. To address these three problem areas simultaneously, a holistic model for the…

To understand the co-occurrence of multiple types of violence, the authors developed a behavioral typology based on self-reports of suicidal behaviors, physical violence, and psychological abuse. Using a sample of dating adolescents from a high-risk school district, they identified five clusters of behaviors among the 1,653 students who reported…

Because of the recent resurgence of interest in citizenship education caused by events of September 11th and the war with Iraq, the authors conducted a study to determine the perceptions of eight and eleventh grade students regarding citizenship. We wanted to find out what students believed are the attributes of a good citizen. What activities do…

This report describes the results of two studies designed to evaluate the impact of self-reported mathematics course-taking on performance on SAT mathematics questions measuring new content (Algebra II). A supplemental table and figure are appended.

In this article the authors resort to a qualitative analysis of the plot of science fiction stories about a group of scientists, written by two 11th-grade Earth and Life Science students (aged 17), and to semi-structured interviews, with the double purpose of diagnosing their conceptions of the nature of science (namely, as regards scientists'…

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…

We examined the co-occurrence of and risk factors for adolescent boys' and girls' self-reported use of psychologically, physically, and sexually abusive behaviours in their dating relationships. The participants were 324 boys and 309 girls in grades 7, 9, or 11 who completed surveys at school. Descriptive analyses showed that 19% of boys and 26%…

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…

Background: Research has shown that motivation is a key factor in the learning process as well as in school achievement. In essence, a number of researchers have highlighted the close link between motivation and achievement-related behaviours such as effort. Aims: The present study aims to acquire more specific information concerning the relations…