Given the increasing societal concerns about youth's mental health problems in the context of rapid sociocultural changes in urban China, studying the links of appraisals and coping to Chinese children's adjustment can inform cultural adaptations of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions for this population. In a school-based sample of…

The aim of this study is to develop a multidimensional measure for assessing children's personal agency to handle parental conflict through their coping self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1997). Coping self-efficacy beliefs are individuals' perceived ability to motivate themselves, access cognitive resources, and perform the actions required to take…

How children and youth deal with academic challenges and setbacks can make a material difference to their learning and school success. Hence, it is important to investigate the factors that allow students to cope constructively. A process model focused on students' motivational resources was used to frame a study examining whether engagement in…

This study examined physiological and coping responses to peer-evaluative challenges in early adolescence as predictors of academic outcomes. The sample included 123 young adolescents (X-bar[subscript age]) = 12.03 years) who participated in the summer before (T1) and the spring after (T2) the transition to middle school. At T1, respiratory sinus…

A study was designed to examine a multidimensional measure of children's coping in the academic domain as part of a larger model of motivational resilience. Using items tapping multiple ways of dealing with academic problems, including five adaptive ways (strategizing, help-seeking, comfort-seeking, self-encouragement, and commitment) and six…

Dwayne is a Grade 6 student who came to Canada from Jamaica at the age of seven. Upon arrival in a new school Dwayne had to adapt to a new culture. In addition, Dwayne was identified as having severe behavioural problems and learning difficulties, and it was recommended within the first month of school that the boy be medicated in order for him to…

Prior research has identified ways in which parents and teachers contribute to learned helpless responses to failure, but little is known about the role that interactions with peers might play. In this study, the conversations of fourth- through sixth- grade children and their friends were observed after children experienced an achievement-related…

Judgments about the quality of students' experience of school generally focus on their academic performance and indeed this is an important indicator but closer attention needs to be paid to equally important, more broadly based outcomes that include social/emotional adjustment as they also are shown to impact on students' lives at, and beyond…