This paper reports on a participatory action research project that investigated how a resource called the Index for Inclusion was used by a secondary school community to improve school connectedness at a whole school level. The researchers worked with the Australian case study school over one year to engage in review, development, and change. This…

Rates of depression among adolescents are alarmingly high. School belonging is among the strongest predictors of adolescent depressive symptoms. Research in the adult literature indicates that context-specific belonging may contribute to an overarching sense of general belonging, which may be a stronger and more proximal predictor. This is the…

Tackling mental health difficulties in adolescents on the autism spectrum requires a comprehensive prevention approach. A 3-year multisite proof-of-concept longitudinal study implemented an evidence-based multilevel resilience intervention in schools to promote protective factors at the adolescent, parent, and school level. The intervention,…

School connectedness and classroom environment have both been strongly linked to depressive symptoms, but their interrelation is unclear. We tested whether school connectedness mediated the link between classroom environment and depressive symptoms. A sample of 504 Australian seventh-and eighth-grade students completed the Classroom Environment…

School connectedness has been shown to be an important protective factor in adolescent development, which is associated with reduced risk-taking behavior. Interventions to increase students' connectedness to school commonly incorporate aspects of teacher training. To date, however, research on connectedness has largely been based on student survey…

In the current study, we tested whether school connectedness mediates more distal deficits in social skills in influencing depressive symptoms in a sample of 127 sixth- and seventh-grade students. Results demonstrated that school connectedness and social skills accounted for 44% and 26% of variance in depressive symptoms respectively and 49% in a…

In this study, we tested whether school connectedness mediated or moderated the effect of parental attachment on adolescent depressive symptoms. A sample of 153 secondary school students ranging from 8th to 12th grade were assessed using measures of parental attachment, school connectedness, and depressive symptoms. Independently, parental…