This dissertation investigates the relationship between stigma, knowledge, and help-seeking attitudes among high school students in two New York City Jewish day schools: a Modern Orthodox all-boys high school and a Sephardic Orthodox Jewish all-girls high school. The primary focus is on understanding how these factors: stigma about mental illness…

Against the backdrop of the century-long stigma associated with film in America's English classroom, which persists despite its codification in the English Language Arts (ELA) standards, this study investigated the question: How do American high-school English teachers make sense of and instruct with film? Employing semi-structured interviews with…

Approximately 15% of all students aged 3-21 receive special education services within their public schools (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES, 2022). For all individuals with disabilities, discrimination based on their disability status, known as ableism, is common and is often experienced through indirect actions rooted in stigma and…

This paper draws attention to how markers of adulthood linked to education and employment form an influential social narrative and argues that these help to construct teenage motherhood as problematic. Social policies, informed by this narrative, reinforce the idea of a "correct" path through education and into employment from which…

Eighteen students, who self-identified as Latinx, from a rural, Midwestern community participated in this study. The participants were enrolled in their high school's "Risk Academy," a program designed for students labeled "at risk." Data shared in this article stem from a larger study where we applied photovoice, a critical,…

Substance use disorders among adolescents can have detrimental and long-term impacts on their educational goals. As such, high school students in recovery who wish to pursue a college education can face unique challenges, ranging from a potential history with the criminal justice system and inequitable evaluative metrics poorly influencing the…

Background: Although school climate is linked with youth educational, socioemotional, behavioral, and health outcomes, there has been limited research on the association between school climate and mental health education efforts. This study explored whether school climate was associated with students' depression literacy and mental health stigma…

Lauren Seymour recounts her experience as a first year teacher dealing with a senior who could not pass the math California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) through no fault of her own. Math so overwhelmed the student that she shuddered every time her math teacher approached her. Team interventions for this student in both basic operations and…

Background: Although school climate is linked with youth educational, socioemotional, behavioral, and health outcomes, there has been limited research on the association between school climate and mental health education efforts. We explored whether school climate was associated with students' depression literacy and mental health stigma beliefs.…

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages…

The aim of this study was to examine whether attitudes about gay-related name-calling, social norms concerning gay-related name-calling among co-students, teacher intervention, and school-related support would predict whether secondary school pupils had called another pupil a gay-related name during the last month. A total of 921 ninth-grade…

The aim of this work was to study attitudes toward people with disabilities from the viewpoint of the integrated threat theory of prejudice. This theory postulates that threat may cause negative attitudes toward a group and posits that such threat may come from different sources. To test this model, a study was carried out with high school…

In response to a literature that has paid limited attention to the complex representations of Cambodian students, this article investigated the ways in which Cambodian male youth were problematized in school through Discourses that presented them as apathetic students and/or gang members at one California high school. In this study, the ways in…

This qualitative case study examined the ways in which one rural Midwestern high school and its surrounding community responded to increased diversity. The purpose of the study was to explore how teachers, administrators, school staff, and community members in the district understood the character of the community's demographic changes and the…

Poorer outcomes for youth labeled with learning disabilities (LDs) are often attributed to the student's own deficiencies or cumulative disadvantage; but the more troubling possibility is that special education placement limits rather than expands these students' opportunities. Labeling theory partially attributes the poorer outcomes of…