Research into the school experiences of autistic adolescents tends to utilise predominantly male samples, effectively neglecting the views of autistic girls. This study explores the perspectives of three autistic girls attending a mainstream secondary school recognised for its good autism practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with…

Poor social-emotional reciprocity (SER) has been identified as one of the defining traits of autism. It is a key criterion in recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders editions, DSM-IV and DSM-V (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994, 2013). Yet this difficulty related to socially engaging and interacting with others is…

Drawing on data from a project exploring children's and adults' friendships across social class and ethnic difference, this paper focuses on the enactment of national and institutional policy around children's friendships as realized in three primary schools in diverse urban areas in London. Through a focus on the way in which social and emotional…

Background: Peer relationships improve for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in clinic-based social skills groups but rarely generalize to real world contexts. This study compares child outcomes of two social skills interventions conducted in schools with children in Kindergarten through fifth grade. Method: Children with ASD were…

Participation in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs reduces aggressive and antisocial behavior (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Theoretically, SEL programs foster social and emotionally intelligent youth through improving children's social and emotional skills, defined in the present study as the ability to…

We investigated whether social relationships protect children against the effects of victimization on internalizing problems. We used data from the Zurich Project on the Social Development of Children and Youths. Victimization at age 8 years was associated with internalizing problems at age 9 years. Victims who had siblings, warm parents, and a…

The aim of this study was to investigate the unique and combined role of friendship quality and friends' aggression in regard to the persistence of young children's physical aggression from kindergarten to grade 2. The sample included 1555 children (808 girls) assessed annually using teacher ratings. Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the social…

Preschool teachers' beliefs relating to the importance of social-emotional competence and teacher practices that support children's competence were investigated through surveys and focus groups. Survey results indicated that Head Start and public school pre-K teachers placed higher importance on social-emotional behaviours and skills than on early…

Early childhood programs serve increasing numbers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their families. While many programs have made significant progress in providing educational services responsive to the needs of children with ASD, concerns persist about whether early education programs can meet the educational needs of such…

Adult support of 12 specific friendship dyads involving 3- to 5-year-old children with and without developmental delays was investigated through semi-structured interviews with the children's parents and teachers. Most respondents described these friendships as harmonious and important for the emotional benefits that these relationships provided…

The early developmental antecedents of individual differences in children's social functioning with peers in third grade were examined using longitudinal data from the large-scale National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) study of early child care. In a sample of 1,364 children, with family and child factors controlled, the…

The unique contributions of peer acceptance, friendship, and victimization to adjustment were examined. How these relational systems moderate the influence of one another to influence adjustment was also investigated. Friendship quality, a unique aspect of friendship, was expected to be especially important for adjustment when other relational…

Examined academic and behavioral problems as a function of two dimensions by which rejection may vary over time: chronicity and temporal proximity. Suggests that all levels of rejection were associated with greater absenteeism from school, and more chronic and proximal experiences of rejection were associated with elevated externalizing behavior…

The central theme of the booklet is that integration does not just occur naturally as a result of merely placing students of different race or ethnic groups in the same school setting. It occurs by the special efforts of classroom teachers who encourage student friendship formations. The booklet contains a variety of teaching strategies which…