This paper reports on findings derived as part of a two-year project funded by the European Union's Daphne III scheme, involving collaboration between seven partner organisations across six European countries. The project involved an evaluation, using questionnaires and focus groups, of domestic abuse prevention education programmes delivered in…

Background: Prenatal stress has been shown to predict persistent behavioural abnormalities in offspring. Unknown is whether prenatal stress makes children more vulnerable to peer victimisation. Methods: The current study is based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective community-based study. Family adversity, maternal…

This article outlines the findings of a new study that explores the portrayal of disability within a sample of the primary-age children's literature most readily available to UK schools. The kind of literature to which children are exposed is likely to influence their general perceptions of social life. How disability is handled by authors is…

In his comment on our literature review of data on the performance of sub-Saharan Africans on Raven's Progressive Matrices, Lynn (this issue) criticized our selection of samples of primary and secondary school students. On the basis of the samples he deemed representative, Lynn concluded that the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans stands at 67…

Identifying the types of mathematics content knowledge that are most predictive of students' long-term learning is essential for improving both theories of mathematical development and mathematics education. To identify these types of knowledge, we examined long-term predictors of high school students' knowledge of algebra and overall mathematics…

Background: Treatment trials that enquire into parents' and teachers' views on speech-language interventions and outcomes for primary school-age children are relatively rare. The current study sought perceptions of the process of intervention and value placed on outcomes resulting from a trial of intervention, the Social Communication Intervention…

Is language governed by formal rules or by analogy to stored exemplars? The acquisition of the English past tense has long played a central role in this debate. In the present study, children rated the acceptability of a regular and an irregular past-tense form of each of 40 novel verbs (e.g., "fleeped", "flept") using a…

This article discusses how the author has developed and managed a collection of exciting resources that aim to aid transition from primary to secondary school by tackling science topics through historical contexts. Working with teachers at both primary and secondary level, the Double Crossed project has designed two exciting cross-curricular…

This article aims to explore the issues that face primary school teachers when responding to children's drawings. Assessment in art and design is an ongoing concern for teachers with limited experience and confidence in the area and, although children's drawings continue to be a focus of much research, the question of what it is that teachers say…

Attitudes towards environmental issues are influenced by many factors, including what is learned in formal educational settings such as schools and more informally, through such sources as the media, interaction with family and friends and our everyday lived experiences. This study investigated children's ideas about the environment and their…

This account follows on from the research report "Visual impairment and its impact on self-esteem" (Bowen, 2010) published in this journal. The original article reported the results of an investigation of self-esteem levels amongst a sample group of 60 children with visual impairment. Four children, whose self-esteem was measured as…

This article draws on data from research with six ten-year-old children investigating the role of film and media in developing understandings of narrative. I present an account of one of the children, Connor (his chosen pseudonym), whose experiences represent a telling case of the dissonance found between children's knowledge and experience of…

Research concerning children is often presented with only a brief comment on the research methods adopted. This paper takes a "behind the scenes" view and I discuss my adoption of a non-hierarchical "least adult role" adapted from Mandell's work in 1991 to undertake qualitative research in the sensitive area of children's…

Schools in areas of concentrated disadvantage tend to have below-average attainment, but there is no consensus on why. Mental and behavioural disorders in children are correlated with socio-economic disadvantage. This paper puts forward the hypothesis that the first phenomenon can at least partly be accounted for by the second phenomenon through…

The Self-Efficacy for Musical Learning questionnaire was adapted and tested with 404 primary school children, producing a robust Cronbach alpha (0.87) and confirming a single underlying factor through exploratory factor analysis. Test-retest scores showed the measure's stability over a 9-month period. Data were collected on children's prior music…