Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the onset of mental disorders and risk behaviours. Whole-school interventions hold vast potential in improving mental health and preventing risk behaviours in this developmentally-sensitive cohort. Modelled on the World Health Organisation's Health-Promoting Schools Framework, whole-school interventions…

The more recent discussion in Ireland around post-primary teachers being responsible for assessing their own students' work continues. The new junior cycle reform (covering the first three years of post-primary education) is concerned with making fundamental changes in approaches to learning, teaching, curriculum and assessment, with school-based…

Purpose: Following an explanation of the current policy context the paper addresses three particularly pressing challenges: the curriculum focus for physical education as part of health and wellbeing; the major implications for subject knowledge; and how translating curriculum change into professional learning and practice might feasibly occur. In…

Either action research by teachers uses the approach as a methodology to examine pedagogical change in a single intervention or it is used as means of understanding a journey of change. In contrast, this paper examines the significant impact of using action research in a second cycle of learning in the same context and with the same participants.…

This article describes an attempt to bring disciplinary historical inquiry into the social studies classroom. This work emerges from a five-school 6-month intervention in San Francisco, "Reading like a Historian", which found main effects for student learning across four quantitative measures: historical thinking, factual knowledge,…

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, about 60% of students cannot read proficiently at their current grade level. Findings from the National Reading Panel (NRP) indicate that there is not sufficient research on the topic of struggling middle school readers. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the impact…

A comprehensive intervention model for learning disabled (LD) students is described in terms of curriculum aspects (tutorial approach, basic skills remediation approach, compensatory approach, and strategies approach), communication to coordinate all the individuals interacting with LD students, transition, and evaluation. (CL)

The paper focuses on the role of decision making to develop social skills in adolescents with learning or behavior problems and describes a project to implement such a decision making model. The paper begins by tracing some of the crucial issues of adolescence and then describes the Adolescent Issues Project which has produced a curriculum…

The National Institute of Mental Health reported in 1998 that suicide in the United States is the third leading cause of death among young people, and that they are the only age group whose mortality rate has increased due to suicide during the last 20 years. The United States Territory of Guam has also experienced an increase in adolescent…

Explains how the instrumental enrichment program helps adolescents and adults develop higher order thinking and problem-solving abilities. (Author/MLF)

The paper describes a pilot project in which 17 hearing impaired adolescents are participating in a program to improve thinking skills via the Instrumental Enrichment (IE) approach. IE focuses on concepts by suggesting alternative strategies by which the learner can arrive at the objective, thus allowing for opportunities to reflect on one's own…

The article provides a format for a workshop in which three issues which must be resolved by educators of secondary aged students with behavior disorders are discussed. The three issues to be addressed are: (1) determination of appropriate curriculum emphasis, (2) parent training/involvement in intervention strategies, and (3) criteria for…

This article reviews techniques such as bibliotherapy, positive self-talk, and self-concept activities useful in suicide prevention curricula for gifted students. A guidance program designed for the social and emotional needs of the gifted student is proposed, covering such issues as perfectionism, societal expectations, and premature or…

Designed by a leading public health administrator, the Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents tries to raise teens' violence threshold by creating a nonviolent classroom ethos and extending students' repertoire of responses to anger. An ideal schoolwide program teaches social skills and features peer-mentoring and conflict resolution…

Increasing global flows of students, information and ideas, the realities of globalisation, and an increasingly interdependent world have meant that many educators at the secondary school level are currently grappling with the issue of how to internationalise the curriculum and increase inter-cultural understanding among students. In addition,…