Classroom behavior management interventions have been used successfully with drug prevention programs to prevent subsequent antisocial behavior and substance use among youth. This article presents results from implementation of the All Stars Challenge, a classroom-based behavior management component to a drug prevention program for fifth graders.…

Research indicates that early school success influences eventual life chances and that attentiveness in the classroom contributes to early school success. Using ethnographic fieldnotes, interviews, short surveys, and video footage collected over three school years, I investigate how teachers and young students experience "attentiveness" during…

This paper offers support that those students who felt they had stronger reasons for committing unethical academic behaviors are more likely to report committing academic dishonesty than those who felt they had weaker reasons for unethical academic behaviors. This relationship held for all four categories of academic dishonesty: cheating (on…

Adolescent risk-taking can be illuminated through an understanding of the development of the brain, of dual-processing theories, and of social norms and meanings. When adolescents take unjustified risks, it is often because of the weakness of their analytic systems, which provide an inadequate check on impulsive or ill-considered decisions. Social…

Misuse of technology is a behavioral pattern that continues to emerge in our society. Television and newspapers continue to list and report technology misuse. A recent study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project has indicated approximately one third of teen are victims of online harassment (Lenhart, 2009). Other prominent problems with…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teachers' classroom discipline techniques and students' individual and communal responsibility in Australian, Chinese, and Israeli classrooms. The sample comprised 5521 students in grades 7-12 and 748 teachers. The participating Australian, Chinese, and Israeli schools included both…

Background: Schools use a number of measures to reduce harmful tobacco, alcohol, and drug use by students. One important component is the school's drug policy, which serves to set normative values and expectations for student behavior as well as to document procedures for dealing with drug-related incidents. There is little empirical evidence of…

"Catalyst" is a publication of the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention. This issue contains the following articles: (1) The National Study of Student Hazing Initial Findings; (2) The Social Norms Marketing Research Project--An Update; (3) Message From William…

This study investigated the effects of the peer social context and child characteristics on the growth of authority-acceptance behavior problems across first, second, and third grades, using data from the normative sample of the Fast Track Project. Three hundred sixty-eight European American and African American boys and girls (51% male; 46%…

With K-12 students seeming to, at all times, have one foot in the real world and one in the virtual, school districts are starting to acknowledge a new collective responsibility: to teach kids what it means to be a good digital citizen and how to go about being one. The movement to address and characterize digital citizenship originated in the UK,…

American classrooms are experiencing the largest influx of immigrant students since the beginning of the 20th century (National Collaborative on Diversity in America's Teaching Force, 2004). The U.S. Department of Education says that of the more than 50 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools this year, one in every five has…

Prior research has shown that parental social cognitions are associated with child outcomes such as aggression. The goal of this study was to examine mothers' cognitions about relational aggression, and to explore linkages between mothers' attributions and normative beliefs about aggression and children's competence with peers. Participants…

A number of colleges in the US are adopting conduct codes for their athletes, which set both expectations for behavior and punishments for specific infractions and give athletics directors, rather than coaches, the power to bench players who break the rules. Some athletic officials call such codes too rigid, though the proponents feel the…

Although any new undertaking is exciting because of the opportunities it may bring, the transition to college life also brings new pressures and uncertainties. From the shelter of home, young people emerge into a new culture, with a new environment for success. Here they are their own masters, often far from the vigilance of parents and the…

A multilevel design was used to test a model in which teachers' attitudes (beliefs) about bullying (e.g., it is normative; assertive children do not get bullied; children wouldn't be bullied if they avoided mean kids) were hypothesized to influence if and how they intervene in bullying interactions. In turn, it was hypothesized that teachers'…