Minnie Howard School, just outside Washington, D.C., caters exclusively to 14-year olds. Started seven years ago to relieve enrollment pressures, the school protects its 747 9th graders from typical high-school pressures and has reduced suspension and truancy, enrolled more kids in honors classes, and enticed privately educated students back to…

Ninth-grade girls (n=157) rated their own experience of menarche and answered 4 open-ended questions. Responses suggested several ways that early preparation could be revised, and supported a conceptualization of menstrual education as a long-term, continuous process, beginning well before menarche and continuing long after. (JPS)

Data from 245 male and 257 female adolescents who reported occupational aspirations and expectations in grades 8, 9, and 10 indicated that those who had significant aspiration-expectation discrepancies in one grade made significant changes in aspiration the following year. To the extent the changes were toward more realistic or accessible…

Focused on subjective meanings of maturity in younger (6th grade) and older (9th grade) adolescents. Qualitative analysis revealed five images of maturity portrayed by adolescents: balanced maturity; privileges; responsibility; power and status; and physical development. There were some gender and age differences in frequencies of these images.…

The author, a ninth-grade high school student, offers a chilling description of the conditions of a boot camp in her home state of South Dakota and discusses abuses in the juvenile justice system. (Author)

The association of adolescents' ethnic identification with their academic attitudes and achievement was examined among a sample of 589 ninth-grade students from Mexican, Chinese, and European backgrounds. Adolescents from all backgrounds chose a variety of ethnic labels to describe themselves, with those from Mexican, Chinese, and immigrant…

This article is based upon two studies applying a life history approach, letting 15- to 16-year-olds reconstruct their own childhood in preschool and school, to see what meaning and importance children's experiences have in forming their self-concepts and philosophy of life. A combination of methods was used: written life stories, round tours in…

In an intervention aimed at showing students the amount of responsibility involved in caring for an infant, 353 predominantly ninth-grade and Latino students carried the Baby Think It Over simulation doll in an intervention and completed matched pre- and posttest measures. Statistically significant gains were found on the total score and the…

While research shows that low levels of social acceptance and elevated body dissatisfaction increase risks for depressive symptoms among both girls and boys, little is known about protective factors that can mediate these risks. We test the hypothesis that positive team sports involvement mediates the effects of these risks on depression in a…

This paper reports on research on the attitudes of a differentiated sample of students to Catholic schools in general and religious education in particular. Core Catholic youth are described, following Fulton "et al." (2000: "Young Catholics at the New Millennium", Dublin, University College Press), as individuals who have an…

The current study investigated whether a 5-month, adult mentoring intervention delivered by school personnel could enhance the school engagement of ninth grade urban minority adolescents. Compared to 20 at-risk students who did not receive an intervention, 20 at-risk students who were randomly assigned to mentoring exhibited significantly less…

Validity data are presented for a new measure of threat appraisals in response to community violence. Adolescents (N = 358; 45% male; 91% African American, M = 12.10 years, SD = 1.63) and their maternal caregivers participated in two waves of a longitudinal interview study focused on the consequences of exposure to community violence. Structural…

Data on 2,546 Finish adolescents were analyzed to determine the role of gender in the subjects' occupational and educational plans. Focus was on sex-atypical aspirations of students in Grades 9 and 12. Gender played a significant role in aspirations. Other influential factors included school performance, family background, and personality. (TJH)