Defines the "peaceable classroom" concept, in which children are taught to deal more appropriately with feelings, to solve problems, and to make good decisions. Supplies instructions for classroom lessons to be used with five 12-year-old students. Claims that these lessons can help develop a peaceable classroom environment. (MKA)

Assessed contributions of internal resources, supportive family and peer relations, peer negative influences, and behavioral adjustment to positive expectations for the future for inner-city school children. Found that higher levels of positive expectation related to lower levels of problem behavior and to higher levels of school involvement,…

Discusses five Montessori insights about children's development as they relate to family and school life: independence and autonomy, community and socialization, interest in culture and morality, preadolescents' apprenticeship for adulthood, and adult acceptance of the evidence of change. Notes that underlying dynamics of home and school are alike…

Studied boys' dominance behavior as they made the transition from primary to middle school. Found that dominance decreased as boys made the transition to a new group; dominance had a significant aggressive dimension at the start of sixth grade; and both affiliative and aggressive dimensions of dominance predicted heterosexual relationships at the…

This study examined whether aspects of pubertal maturation in girls vary across race and ethnicity. Findings highlighted the importance of including socioeconomic factors in exploration of menarcheal differences across race/ethnicity. Perceptions of pubertal timing did not vary across racial/ethnic groups. (SD)

This study, with an 11-year-old male with severe mental retardation, investigated the effectiveness of selectively implementing punishment for only the most severe topographies of aggression and property destruction, whereas less extreme behaviors were ignored. Results indicated that severe behaviors were reduced to near-zero levels only when both…

In this study of 256 adolescents, it was expected that the group of adolescents referred for psychiatric treatment would have a narrower friendship network than the control group and that their friendship relations would be more conflictual and less rich in terms of attachment. The hypothesis was confirmed for the older referred adolescents. (TJQ)

Reviews four books that contextually examine definitions of childhood and adolescence: "Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity" (Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler); "Angels' Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday" (Ralph Cintron); "Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers"…

Middle-schoolers have always been selectively sullen, shamelessly self-absorbed, and hopelessly obsessed with winning the admiration of their peers. In some ways, the preadolescent brain can't keep up with the demands on it. The frontal lobes, where organization and judgment and reasoning reside, aren't as well developed as the emotional centers.…

A longitudinal study was used to examine age differences in the role of body mass index (BMI) and sociocultural pressures in predicting changes in body image and strategies to both lose weight and increase muscles among 443 children aged between 8 and 12 years (207 boys, 236 girls) over a 16-month period. The strongest predictors of body image and…

This paper describes the assessment and instructional strategies used in a migrant education programme that had positive academic outcomes for a group of 11 eight-to-12-year-old Spanish/English-speaking students of Mexican descent. Students attended this four-week summer programme, jointly sponsored by the University of Illinois and the local…

A self-report measure of conflict and aspects of warmth in the parent-child relationship was completed by 1,330 11-year-old twins, 1,176 of whom completed the inventory again 3 years later. On average, adolescents' perceptions of the quality of the parent-child relationship declined consistently and moderately between age 11 and age 14. Conflict…

In this prospective study, the authors predicted violence and homicide in 3 representative school samples (N = 1,517). Participants were part of a longitudinal, multiple cohort study on the development of delinquency in boys from late childhood to early adulthood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thirty-three participants were convicted of homicide,…

165 students, from the fifth, seventh and ninth grades were asked to solve written problems involving fractions. In the problems a reference quantity (RQ) was multiplied by a fraction (FR), yielding the value of a compared quantity (CQ). The fraction expressed either an part-whole ratio (PW), or a part-part ratio (PP). Six type of problems were…

This study demonstrated how the tenets of positive behavior support could be used to teach an educational activity. Emphasis was placed on the implementation of practical strategies to minimize errors during instruction and maximize positive outcomes. A 9-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome served as the participant, and the skill targeted for…