The purpose of this study was to examine how the members of children's peer groups resemble each other in terms of behavioural and emotional strengths, academic achievement and behaviour at school. The participants were 739 9- to 10-year-old children (354 boys, 385 girls) from 30 Finnish elementary schools. 431 children (241 girls, 190 boys) were…

The purpose of this article is to investigate the efficacy of Sandplay Therapy (SPT) in reducing children's kindergarten entrance anxiety in an effort to provide front-line preschool teachers with insights and strategies for addressing the emotional distress of children in their first days of nursery school. As a case study, the application of SPT…

Positive social relationships have been variously linked to mental well-being, and it is therefore important to more fully understand the factors that may impede positive relationship development. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between elementary school-age children's emotion regulation, relationship problems, adaptive…

Deficits in language skills are a risk factor for later aggressive behaviour. However, previous research has mainly addressed clinical or high-risk samples and relations between language and aggressive behaviour in preschoolers and children in primary school. Based on a German longitudinal project with N = 547 typically developing children, the…

Children's behaviours during bullying episodes are associated with both interpersonal-situational variables (e.g., social status indices) and personal-dispositional variables (e.g., emotional competence). The aim of the present study was to investigate -- in a group of 202 kindergarteners (age range: 3-6 years) -- the relationships between…

Children with externalizing behavior problems are likely to show poor school achievements, problems in social interactions with teachers and peers and an elevated school-related stress. Though class climate is a meaningful variable to explain school achievements and aspects of emotional well-being, there are hardly any studies that consider class…

Background: Childhood antisocial behaviour has been associated with poorer teacher-student relationship (TSR) quality. It is also well-established that youth with antisocial behaviour have a range of emotion-related deficits, yet the impact of these students' emotion-related abilities on the TSR is not understood. Furthermore, the addition of the…

In Hong Kong, play-based learning has been highlighted in the latest curriculum guide in 2017. While adopting 'child-centredness' as the core value of kindergarten education can enrich children's play experiences. However, little emphasis has been placed on how young children perceive play-based learning in the classroom. The aim of this…

Mistakes are at the crux of daily classroom learning. This is the case even in the earliest grades. While the instructional value of mistakes is wellknown among educators, little research documents how young children experience mistakes in real-world school settings. In the present study, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 Kindergarten…

The playground may be an important context to examine the social functioning of children with autism spectrum disorder. Previous literature on playground peer engagement has used quantitative methods, but there is limited research using qualitative observations to understand the nuances of playground behavior. Using a mixed-methods approach, 55…

The current study examines the extent to which associations between internalizing problems, body mass index (BMI), and language skills from early (36 months) to late childhood (fifth grade) are due to relatively stable between-child differences, time-specific correlations, or cross-lagged paths. Data from the NICHD study, Early Child Care and…

This correlational study investigates the relationship between mobile phone use among elementary school students in Iran during the COVID-19 epidemic, and its effect on emotional-behavioural functioning and academic and social competencies. A researcher-devised questionnaire, and the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL)-parental version, was…

Tenets of the Boivin et al. (1995) social process model were reexamined with two longitudinal samples using both the original and contemporary analytic strategies. Study goals included reconstructing (e.g., quasireplicating) Boivin et al.'s (1995) original findings and evaluating hypothesized relations across both comparable and longer…

Many behavioural and emotional characteristics are associated with children's peer relationships. The purpose of this study is to examine behavioural and emotional strengths of sociometrically popular, rejected, controversial, neglected, and average children. 773 third-grade children (51% girls) are assessed with a sociometric questionnaire and…

This study examined the relationship of teachers' ratings of students' 21st century skills (i.e., persistence, curiosity, externalizing and internalizing affect, and cognition) via the Human Behavior Rating Scale: Brief (HBRS: Brief; Eaves & Woods-Groves, 2011) with student performance. Midwestern K-11 teachers (n = 96) rated students (n =…