Purpose: The South African vocational education and training (VET) sector is required by legislation to redefine postsecondary education, advance industrialisation and expand the job market to address unemployment in the country. Yet, VET leaders' heterogenous educational and occupational backgrounds do not enable them to address the needs of the…

Despite the popularity of social skills groups, there remains a need for empirical investigation of treatment effects, especially when targeting pivotal aspects of social functioning such as initiations to peers. The goal of the present study was to conduct a randomized controlled trial of a 12-week social intervention (SUCCESS), which combined an…

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the contributions of social, academic, and psychological characteristics of peer groups to individual development in the same and different domains in Chinese children. Participants included 1,864 elementary school students (945 boys, M[subscript age] = 11 years) in China. One-year…

Social adjustment is critical to educational and occupational attainment. Yet little research has considered how the school's socioeconomic context is associated with social adjustment. In a longitudinal sample of Australian 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 9369; 51% boys) we tested the association between school average socioeconomic status and social…

Decades of research have illustrated the linguistic, social, and cognitive growth that occurs in the context of play (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1987; Lifter, Foster-Sanda, Arzamarski, Briesch, & McClure, 2011; Lillard et al., 2013; Ungerer & Sigman, 1984). Play also provides opportunities to practice and gain important social skills. During play…

Peer collaboration in small groups has increasingly been recognized as an instructional technique that promotes interactive skills, socialization, learning and achievement across a range of subjects and disciplines. The study aims to measure Saudi female EFL learners' attitudes toward the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) and its impact…

The integration of social and emotional learning into school curricula has been linked to a number of positive student outcomes, including increased academic achievement, the development of healthy relationships, and improved emotional self-regulation. Rarely, however, has research considered students' perspectives on which social and emotional…

Objective: College students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience elevated drop-out rates, peer difficulties, and mental health concerns compared to their neurotypical counterparts. Thus, the firsthand concerns of college students with ASD were examined, so that supports can be appropriately tailored. Methods: Responses of 31 college…

Adolescents experiencing social anxiety often engage in safety behaviors--covert avoidance strategies for managing distress (e.g., avoiding eye contact)--that factor into the development and maintenance of their concerns. Prior work supports the psychometric properties of the Subtle Avoidance Frequency Examination (SAFE), a self-report survey of…

Background: Borderline personality symptoms include emotional dysregulation, high levels of impulsivity leading to self-harm and suicidality, an unstable sense of self, fears of abandonment, extremely turbulent relationships, and psychic pain. They are considered to disrupt normative adolescent development however their unique contribution to…

As a test of the poor-get-poorer hypothesis, which shows that socially anxious teens are less likely to communicate online and in turn feel less closeness to friends, this study explored whether peer victimization is similarly related to social media involvement. High-school participants (n = 307, M[subscript age] = 15.91) reported about their…

The article examines issues related to peer interactions and group joining in upper secondary schools in Finland. The study elaborates on how young people describe students who are left out/excluded or who remain outside the social networks. The study also elucidates on how a student can join the group. The research is motivated by the current…

Social interactions at the playground have been represented as a rich learning opportunity to hone and master social skills at preschool years. Specifically, all forms of social play (fantasy, role, exercise or rough-and-tumble) have been related to children's social competence. The main goal of this study was to examine whether it is a certain…

Few effective school-based interventions that target social-communication skills are available for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The growing gap between interventions designed for use in research settings and the school environment is concerning for researchers and clinicians alike. Research methods that incorporate relevant…

This study used a randomized controlled trial to compare two distinct models of group social skills interventions with adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants had a confirmed diagnosis of ASD, had an IQ greater than or equal to 70, and were educated in the general education setting. Data from 62 adolescent participants who…