This qualitative phenomenological study aimed to capture experiences of spiritual identity development in a purposive sample of South African adolescents, using semi-structured interviews and reflective writing exercises. Participants confirmed the prominence of religiosity and spirituality, as intertwined concepts central to their sense of…

A common perception of home education is that despite potential beneficial educational outcomes, children who are home educated lack social experiences and therefore show poor social development. However, previous research in this area suggests that home educated children demonstrate a range of age-appropriate social skills. This research has…

Drawing on critical childhood studies, Michael J. Dumas and Joseph Derrick Nelson argue that Black boyhood is socially unimagined and unimaginable, largely due to the devalued position and limited consideration of Black girls and boys within the broader social conception of childhood. In addition, the "crisis" focus of the public…

This article describes a class in which media literacy was used as a means for student inquiry into cultural constructedness of adolescents. Students read and critiqued media portrayals of teenagers, then used digital video to re-construct their own complex re-presentations of their adolescent selves.

The present study examined whether repeated exposure to daily surveys about negative social experiences predicts changes in adolescents' daily and general maladjustment, and whether question content moderates these changes. Across a 2-week period, 6th-grade students (N = 215; mode age = 11) completed 5 daily reports tapping experienced or…

An upward extension of the Revised Social Experience Questionnaire (Paquette & Underwood, 1999) was tested in a sample of adolescents followed longitudinally from 7th through 10th grade. We hypothesized that a 2-factor model with overt and social victimization factors would fit the data better than would a unidimensional model (a single…

For centuries past, children with a hearing loss were educated separately from their hearing peers. With the advent and passing of several legislative and Congressional mandates such as "The Rehabilitation Act," "The Education for all Handicapped Children Act" and "No Child Left Behind," children with a hearing loss…

Adolescent pregnancy continues to be a major concern for policy-makers, programme developers, helping professionals and society generally in the USA, especially in light of the US federal government's legislative emphasis on abstinence-only sex education until recently. Studies have found that abstinence-only programmes do not succeed in…

Conventional cognitive-behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder, which is closely based on the treatment for depression, has been shown to be effective in numerous randomized placebo-controlled trials. Although this intervention is more effective than waitlist control group and placebo conditions, a considerable number of clients do not…

Many societies and cultures have become increasingly diverse and heterogeneous over the past decade. This diversity has a direct bearing on social justice in children's and adolescents' social development. Increased diversity can have positive consequences, such as the possibility for increased empathy, tolerance, perspective taking, and the…

The purpose of this study is to examine the social and self-perceptions of twice-exceptional "students", those students who meet criteria for being identified as both gifted and learning disabled. In particular, we focus on how twice-exceptional students are similar to, or different from, students with only a learning disability or who…

Much of the research on adolescent friendships and school achievement has focused on in-school friends, ignoring the potential effects of having out-of-school friendships. The goal of this study was to examine the relation between having relatively more in-school friends and school achievement among a sample of over 600 12th grade students from…

Social interactions can be a source of social stress for adolescents. Little is known about how adolescents with developmental difficulties, such as specific language impairment (SLI), feel when interacting socially. Participants included 28 adolescents with SLI and 28 adolescents with typical language abilities (TL). Self-report measures of…

Despite the prevalence of dating violence, incidences often go unreported due to a lack of awareness among students as to appropriate dating behaviors. This phenomenology investigated how adolescents conceptualize and experience dating relationships. We explored adolescent females' definitions of healthy and abusive relationships, experiences with…

Social psychologists have amassed a large body of work demonstrating that overweight African American adolescent girls have generally positive self-images, particularly when compared with overweight females from other racial and ethnic groups. Some scholars have proposed that elements of African American social experience may contribute to the…