Promoting positive relationships with peers is an important support for children who exhibit social withdrawal. Children who show extreme shyness or are identified as self-isolating are at risk for developing internalizing conditions, which can also lead to poor social and academic outcomes. These children may benefit from targeted support to…

Anti-bullying programs can create more positive classroom environments by fostering the development of positive leaders who establish constructive norms. The social identity theory of leadership addresses stability and change within different leader profiles and identifies leader group prototypicality: the extent to which leaders are perceived to…

Anti-bullying interventions often assume that knowing how it feels to be bullied increases empathy for victims. However, longitudinal research on actual experiences of bullying and empathy is lacking. This study investigated whether within-person changes in victimization predicted changes in empathy over 1 year using random-intercept cross-lagged…

The purpose of the study is to explore various facets of engagement in courses with Learning Assistant (LA) support. LA programmes frequently demonstrate positive effects on student learning and persistence, yet less is known about the nuances of the impact on student engagement. Data collected from students and LAs via online questionnaires are…

Efforts to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have remained at the forefront of initiatives across the United States (U.S.) and elsewhere. The importance of creating a STEM workforce that is reflective of the cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity of the overall population has been recognized. Peer…

Peer support has been an undeveloped pathway for filling the service gap and to generate employment opportunities for autistic individuals. Peer supports have been deployed widely in mental health and among veterans and understanding the utility of this service modality among autistic individuals illuminates opportunities for research, policy, and…

Gender dysphoria (GD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) co-occur relatively often, but there is no evidence-based treatment for this specific group. Therefore, we examined the effects of a group intervention for adolescents with ASD and GD in a pilot study with a pre-post-test design. The adolescents completed questionnaires on quality of life,…

Acknowledging the pivotal role of noticing in teachers' professional work, it is noteworthy that its application in dialogic activities remains an area that has yet to be studied. In this study, we examine mathematics teachers' noticing of dialogue among peers working together on problem-solving tasks and investigate the impact of a professional…

In the current investigation, we used a single case alternating treatments design to evaluate the effects of a robot prompter on the social interaction of three pairs of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Findings suggest that three participants produced more utterances and conversational turns when a robot prompter was present, and two…

Close peer relationships are critical to children's and adolescents' healthy development and well-being, yet youth sometimes struggle to make friends. The present work tested whether an online version of the Fast Friends procedure could engender closeness among 9- to 13-year-old youth. Participant dyads (N = 131), matched in age and gender, were…

Children with autism often display differences in functional and symbolic play and may experience barriers to social inclusion with peers in preschool settings. Therefore, interventions supporting social play between children with autism and their peers that can be feasibly implemented by teachers in inclusive settings are needed. A…

The present nonexperimental study explores the role of the school social context in shaping students' schooling experiences and personal well-being. A dynamic school system provides a rich environment that encompasses various processes, factors, and outcomes, one of the most significant being the provision of quality social support. In particular,…

Understanding the factors contributing to adolescent antisocial behavior is crucial for effective interventions. Protracted development of cognitive control systems supporting inhibitory control may be linked to increases in adolescent antisocial behavior, suggesting the promotion of inhibitory control as a potential preventative strategy.…

This research aimed to determine whether the Making Friends (MF) program is effective on social acceptance levels of typically developing children in preschool toward their peers with special needs. The research had an experimental design with a control group, pretest, posttest, and follow-up test. The study included 130 typically developing…

The purpose of this study was to use a Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology to understand the learning experiences of trainers who completed a professional development trainer certification. Specifically, this study explored how trainers described their learning experiences, the catalysts trainers identified as instrumental to their…