The racial and ethnic makeup of the United States is in constant flux and is expected to experience substantial increases in racial and ethnic diversity over the next four decades. The problem the American educational system faces is attempting to problematize race/racism in its educational system and creating a system to counteract educational…

Parents play an important role in influencing adolescent health behaviors and parenting practices may be an important pathway through which social disadvantage influences adolescent health behaviors that can persist into adulthood. This analysis uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how parenting practices mediate…

Schools are institutions in which students' course taking creates series of linked learning opportunities continually shaped by not only curricular structures but demographic and academic backgrounds. In contrast to a seven-step normative course sequence reflecting the conventional hierarchical structure of mathematics, analysis of more than…

Bullying in schools has received increasing attention since its implication in a number of school-based shooting incidents. A number of protective factors have been identified as reducing risk behaviors such as substance abuse among adolescents. This framework, however, has not been examined with respect to bullying victims. The results of a…

One important goal of Swedish educational policies is to integrate all pupils within regular education, irrespective of disability or difficulties in school, and to adjust education to individual needs. The aim of this paper was to explore how schools "socially construct", i.e. identify and support, pupils with special educational needs.…

In this paper, we describe two central epistemological norms related to the importance of making investigations and to scientific language and its logic. These norms have been identified in empirical material consisting of 200 video-recorded lessons in three different science classes. With regard to the learning of science and socialization, we…

Australia's continuing participation in international science studies such as TIMSS provides a useful lens through which to monitor achievement in science over time. Gender differences in science were not evident in the early years of TIMSS but appear to be growing. This article examines gender differences in science achievement in early secondary…

The full 2010 survey results are reported in "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975;2010: Volume I, Secondary School Students". That monograph contains a description of MTF's design and purposes, as well as extended reporting on substance use of all kinds, licit and illicit, and a number of related factors such as…

This paper examines a high school drug education text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to discern its underlying ideological commitments and political dispositions. I begin with an overview of CDA and why it is a suitable methodology for my work, and then provide a brief history of drug education in North America. Next, I consider some of…

Virtual environments are able to extend the space of interaction beyond the classroom. In order to analyze how distributed cognition functions in such an extended space, we suggest focusing on the architecture of intersubjectivity. The Euroland project--a virtual land created and populated by seven classrooms supported by a team of…

Monitoring the Future (MTF), which is now in its 36th year, is a research program conducted at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research under a series of investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study is comprised of several ongoing series of annual surveys of nationally representative…

Adolescence is a time where individuals face a myriad of physical, cognitive, psychological, and social changes, presenting a time of stress and ambiguity. Experiencing stressful life events during this time introduces yet another challenge for the adolescent to address. The present study tested a reciprocal causation hypothesis. From this…

Many states and school districts are implementing test-based requirements for promotion at key transitional points in students' schooling careers, thus ending the practice of "social promotion"--promoting students who have failed to meet academic standards and requirements for that grade. In 2003-2004, the New York City Department of…

The use of licit and illicit drugs by American young people has been a source of major policy and public health concerns for the United States since the mid-1960s. The use of these substances is a leading cause of eventual disease and death in the population, but it also contributes in important ways to mortality and morbidity during adolescence. …