Trauma-informed practices are gaining momentum in educational settings. This growth is in part due to the knowledge we are learning about childhood trauma and how it impacts children well into adulthood. The more we know about the impact of childhood trauma, the more crucial it is for schools to utilize trauma-informed practices. The purpose of…

To make teaching personal and social responsibility (TPSR) more effective, this study aimed to determine whether integrating moral disengagement (MD) minimization strategies into TPSR can enhance students' positive behaviors and reduce their misbehaviors in PE. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was conducted with an experimental group…

The AIM of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of the integration of character education and positive behavior reinforcement. This integration was the intervention itself, a school-wide program, used within this study. After the intervention was implemented, quantitative student discipline data were examined to determine if there was a…

Discrepancies in first- (M = 14.97 years, SD = 1.82) and second-born adolescents' (M = 12.20 years, SD = 1.90 years) and their parents' perceptions of parental authority legitimacy (PAL) were examined in a longitudinal sample of 145 predominantly White, middle-class, U.S. families. Utilizing a growth curve modeling approach, changes in the…

In recent years, teacher retention rates have decreased, and student behavioral concerns have increased. This article presents if teachers who have favorable beliefs about the effectiveness of Character Education programs also have a greater satisfaction with their career. Based on the responses of 159 school teachers, a positive correlation was…

This study examined 131 U.S. middle class early, middle, and late adolescents' (M[subscript age] = 12.74, 15.81, and 20.40 years, respectively) narratives regarding experiences of disclosure, concealment, and lying to parents and responses to direct probes about lessons learned about self and parents. The thematic content focused primarily on…

School health programs are united by their desire to promote health and health-related outcomes among youth. They are also united by the fact that their expected effects are contingent on successful program implementation, which is often impeded by a multitude of real-world barriers. Techniques used in management science may help optimize…

The study explored whether aspects of elementary students' writing about their personal values could predict if students were considered more at risk or more resilient. Essays from 176 fifth-grade students (79.54% African American, 20.46% Hispanic) from a low-income, urban district in New Jersey were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word…

School leaders at a middle school in a rural school district in Georgia were looking for ways to reduce poor student behavior, which has a negative impact on school climate. Judicious Discipline, a program based on Kohlberg's 6 stages of moral development, Bandura's social learning theory, and the 3 constitutional rights of freedom, justice, and…

Behavioral trajectories during middle childhood are predictive of consequential outcomes later in life (e.g., substance abuse, violence). Social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are designed to promote trajectories that reflect both growth in positive behaviors and inhibited development of negative behaviors. The current study used growth…

Values, or the guiding standards of adolescents' lives, influence which behaviors are considered more justified than others. The relationship between values and social behavior has been established across many studies including the relationship of values and aggression. But only a few studies have examined these relationships among youth.…

The effects of guilt, shame, and externalization of blame on aggressive behavior were investigated among a total of 307 Finnish fifth and sixth graders (M[subscript age] = 11.9 years). Self-reported proneness to feel guilt and shame was expected to reduce levels of peer-reported aggressive behavior, whereas self-reported externalization of blame…

This study investigated the relationships between three psychopathic dimensions (callousness/unemotionality, grandiosity/manipulation, and impulsivity/irresponsibility) and reactive and instrumental aggression in a community sample of early adolescents (N = 243, age M = 12.29, SD = 1.18). The moderating role of moral disengagement (MD) was also…

This study examined the relationship between risk, assets, and negative health behaviors among a large sample of Hispanic adolescents. Data were collected from over 1,000 Hispanic youth in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 attending school in a moderate size school district in Northwest Arkansas. Logistic regression models examined the variation in the odds…

In many middle schools, poor student lunchtime behaviour is an ongoing problem. Such behaviour can have a detrimental effect on a school's climate and culture, which can in turn degrade the quality of learning that occurs in the classroom. As a result, improving students' lunchtime behaviour should be a priority for staff. One solution is to make…