Schools are increasingly being asked to identify and monitor youth who may be susceptible to recruitment toward radical groups. Rather than asking teachers to identify at-risk behaviors, Dianne Gereluk argues here that a whole-school approach may help to foster belonging and connection among youth that is not additive, but a central component of…

Peer influence is a twofold process that entails a behavior by an agent of influence that elicits conformity from the target of influence. Susceptibility describes the likelihood that conformity will occur. This review focuses on factors that shape susceptibility to peer influence. We argue that conformity has two distinct sources. In some…

Child marriage is the practice of marrying an individual below 18 years. The drivers of this practice include poverty, gender inequality, cultural and religious norms among others. While Ghana is one of many countries worldwide in which child marriage is practised, the literature on cultural underpinnings and implications of the practice in Ghana…

This paper aims to examine the academic significance of the concept of "ibasho" (a place or community one feels at home), which emerged from the problem of truancy in Japanese society in the 1980s. Free schools were created as "places ibasho" for truant children. In the field of youth work, group-work-based youth organizations…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

Substance use and abuse are problematic in the lives of adolescents, including interpersonal problems and scholastic problems. Risk for substance use has commonly been assessed at the individual level. This paper examines risk of adolescent substance abuse as a variable impacted by environmental or contextual factors surrounding the individual.…

Across national contexts, in the attempt to develop and buttress "knowledge economies", increasing pressure is placed on the need for flexible lifelong learners capable of constant knowledge and skills renewal. In this paper, I explore the impact of this broader sociopolitical context on the policy approach to poverty and, in particular,…

Increasingly, the importance of reflexivity has been acknowledged in higher education research. In this paper, I reflect on my experience of researching lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) university students in Hong Kong. The focus is not on the findings that emerge from the in-depth interviews conducted per se, but on the…

The involvement of students with disabilities within the bullying dynamic has been recognized as a pressing issue within the nation's schools. Unfortunately, few studies have examined the psychosocial outcomes related to the bullying involvement of students with disabilities. However, involvement in bullying has been linked to negative short-…

This article brings together a range of research and scholarship from various disciplines which have investigated and theorized social and cultural aspects of infants' bodies within the context of contemporary western societies. It begins with a theoretical overview of dominant concepts of infants' bodies, including discussion of the concepts of…

Focusing on the drag king performances of Christie Whisman, who lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio, USA, from 1999 to 2001, this essay argues that rhetorical bodily performances have the capacity not only to subvert normalised notions of identity categories, but that such performances can also create alternate pedagogical sites that persuasively…

Existing research on bullying and peer victimization among school-age youth focuses on identifying risk and protective factors, developing interventions, and assessing outcomes to address this pervasive problem. This article reviews research on bullying and victimization of Latino and Asian youth. The review suggests that risk and protective…

For many people, names have symbolic power that extends to their timing of death. This study examined the relationship between the symbolic significance of the first letters in the names of professional athletes (baseball, football, hockey, and basketball) and their longevity. A similar analysis was performed for doctors (radiologists,…

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In this paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children's early literacy development, and…

This article examines major risk factors for suicide among sexual minority youth using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. Although suicidal behavior among sexual minority youth is a major public concern in the United States, understanding of this phenomenon has been limited since the majority of empirical research studies have addressed…