Rather than mitigating behavioral issues, exclusionary school disciplinary practices can actually increase student misbehavior and school dropout. However, the impact these sanctions have on students may vary based on school climate, particularly whether the environment is inclusive or punitive. Relying on a sample of over 2,000 students within 26…

Sam and his classmates despise "nerds": they say working hard in school makes a student unpopular, and that they purposefully do only the minimum to pass. Research suggests that such "oppositional" attitudes are prevalent among working class students and/or ethnoracial minorities. Like most of his classmates, however, Sam is…

This narrative account describes approaches to sanctions in primary school settings that also provide nurture groups, and the ways in which different approaches may be viewed as helpful or harmful to children's behaviour and to nurture group provision. It draws from research conducted as part of a larger comparative nurture group study examining…

This article reviewed the case of indecent dressing among the youth of today especially on the universities campuses, which has forced the authorities of those institutions to enact dress codes to stem the tide and restore high moral standards, integrity and decency. Whether this bid was successful or not was another thing which was a function of…

Each September in Wisconsin students return to school, football games draw enthusiastic crowds, and homecoming week is celebrated. Trees lose their leaves only to be re-adorned in white in that generation bridging tradition known as toilet papering. Community residents have differing opinions on "tp"ing, in large part determined by whether they…

A retributive perspective, in which punishment must be the response to a misdeed regardless of the misdeed's consequences, provides a more substantive approach to the disruptive student than does the presently accepted rehabilitation-utilitarian perspective, which only advocates the punishment of misdeeds that do not promote institutional goals.…

The problem of adolescent substance use has been examined extensively. Beyond simple prevalence estimates, however, little research has been conducted on substance use in the school context. The present investigation was an in-depth study of students' attitudes and behaviors regarding alcohol and marijuana use during the school day. Based on a…

The Internet has had a profound effect on education and social interaction patterns. Educators struggle to stay abreast of technological advances and navigate the maze of positive and negative aspects of students using the Internet. A new use for the Internet is the relatively recent phenomenon called blogging. Blogging is a widely used means of…

In an effort to increase schools' capacity to adequately address anti-social behaviors, school districts around the country are implementing zero tolerance policies and strengthening sanctions for rule violations. Although often well intentioned, these reactive responses are largely ineffective and ultimately displace the problem. The purpose of…

Although homosexuality was considered to be a crime in nineteenth-century England, the subculture of the school system promoted it. For example, in the early nineteenth century schoolboys of all ages were locked up in dormitories at 8:00 p.m. and no master entered the building until the next morning. No-one supervised the boys' activities during…