This paper offers readings of three examples from a photo-essay project undertaken in 2022 by a group of Year 7 pupils in Berlin. Many of the photo-essays centred on locations like schools, parks and shops, but also included places of worship, the graves of ancestors and evidence of family ties in other cities. Mirroring the practices of the…

This article seeks to explore the theoretical contributions of Axel Honneth, particularly in his works, "The Struggle for Recognition and Reification," aiming at diving deep into the debate on the contemporary ideological expressions and their incidence in the process of subjective constitution in teenage years. This particular interest…

The present study examines the relative role of three distinct types of peer relationships (reciprocated friendships, frequent interactions, and shared group membership) in within-year changes in academic self-concept and engagement before and after the transition to middle school (fifth and seventh grade). In a series of linear regression…

A sociocultural investigation with Year 8 secondary-school students experiencing marginalization and displaying signs of social and emotional difficulties in engaging fully with school life who participated in a mediated outdoor education programme was undertaken for this study. The findings indicate that there was a very statistically significant…

The relation between academic race stereotype endorsement and academic self-concept was examined in two studies of seventh- and eighth-grade African Americans. Based on expectancy-value theory, the authors hypothesized that academic race stereotype endorsement would be negatively related to self-perceptions. Furthermore, it was anticipated that…

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of gifted adolescents toward being labeled as gifted and talented, to evaluate how gifted students perceive that others view their giftedness, and to determine whether these attitudes and perceptions vary depending on the child's level of giftedness. Sixty-six sixth- through eighth-grade…

This study examined middle school students' motivation to read using an adapted version of the Motivation to Read Profile (MRP) Survey. The MRP is comprised of items assessing students' self-concepts as readers and their value of reading. In total, 1080 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students responded. Descriptive and inferential statistics…

The purpose of this study was to explore both the short-term and long-term value of a summer literacy program on the literacy learning of at-risk seventh- and eighth-grade students. The students who participated in the study were all slotted for grade-level retention. The program brought them from an isolated and impoverished area to a university…

Background: Students' academic self-concepts are known to be domain specific. Researchers have also identified two related components of self-concept:cognitive (how competent students feel about a subject domain) and affective (their interest in the subject). This paper examines whether both components are domain specific. Research has also shown…

This study illuminates the meaning making world of 5th, 6th, and 7th grade African American boys in a community based after-school program. Employing participant observation, questionnaire and interviews, the work captures the manifestations of their definitions of gender and racial constructions, including maleness, masculinity, "Blackness," as…

This study tested whether an individual's beliefs about the importance of appearance in their life is a mediator of sociocultural influences on body dissatisfaction in young girls. Participants were 265 girls in Grades 4 to 7 (M age = 10.71 years) from 5 private primary schools in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia. Girls completed…

It has been widely proposed that student voices should play a crucial role in designing and implementing curriculum and instruction that promote students' engagement in science learning. In this study we examined the voices of two seventh grade boys from a low-income urban community as they worked together in an after-school program to create a…

Does anticipated future racial discrimination undermine African-American adolescents' academic motivation and performance? Do face-to-face experiences with racial discrimination at school undermine African-American adolescents' academic functioning? Does African-American ethnic identity buffer these relations? This paper addresses these questions…

Reciprocal effects models of longitudinal data show that academic self-concept is both a cause and an effect of achievement. In this study this model was extended to juxtapose self-concept with academic interest. Based on longitudinal data from 2 nationally representative samples of German 7th-grade students (Study 1: N=5,649, M age13.4; Study 2:…

To understand whether difficulties in emotional functioning distinguish between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, a set of emotion regulation (i.e., negative emotion, emotional awareness, coping), demographic (i.e., age), and physical (i.e., BMI (Body Mass Index)) factors were assessed in 234 early adolescent girls, grades six to eight.…