Drawing from social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), an experiment was carried out to determine the extent to which children's attitudes towards bullying could be moderated by in-group norms and perceived threat to group distinctiveness. The study investigated the responses of 120 male primary school students aged 10-13 years from five…

The study of theory is often a daunting and uninviting, if not terrifying, introduction to sociology courses. Most students do not see theory as helpful intellectual hardware that can facilitate understanding, interpretation and construction of social knowledge. This is true not only in theory courses, but also in many sociology courses including…

Typically, online conversations within a university course or a community of professionals tend to take the form of a dialogue or discussion focusing on a given theme. The two different cases presented here are quite different, despite being goal-related. Cronje and Rauscher explored the affective domain of email messages sent during an online…

This paper is an investigation of group supervision of the Master of Education thesis at the University of Bergen, Norway. Four recorded group supervision sessions are analysed. The group participants are five students and three supervisors. The sessions are analysed from a qualitative, phenomenological perspective. The results show that group…

The "comadre" approach to group counseling with immigrant Mexican women creates an environment of sisterhood, trust, support, and education. This article describes a wellness-based, comadre pilot group designed to support monolingual Spanish-speaking, Mexican-born women who recently immigrated to the United States. The need for the group…

Government policy stresses partnership as a critical organizational form of the future to support the development of schooling. This article uses intergroup conflict and gaming theory to analyse data from one partnership. The views of young people and staff are explored to establish the nature and extent of conflict and its impact on the…

The article discusses a vast river of data or information and creating a context in which the information makes sense and can be understood. As technologists, they have this kind of awkward responsibility to deal with social context. In order to provide value to their organizations, they need to understand the messy activity of groups of people…

The aim of this research was to improve understanding of the attitudes, experiences and dynamics of interaction of students working in online groups. This was achieved through a case study of postgraduate Information Studies students using the WebCT discussion board at City University in the academic year 2004-2005. Qualitative and quantitative…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the transdisciplinary case study (TCS) as a learning framework based on what we call functional socio-cultural constructivism and project-based learning (PBL). In doing so, the paper attempts to illustrate the applicability of TCS to learn competencies and skills necessary to research problems of…

This study examines the timing of juvenile delinquent behavior by crime type. A study of 513 youths participating in after-school programs indicates that crimes against persons are elevated during the after-school hours but not as much as during school. Property crime and drug use are not particularly elevated during the after-school hours.…

Although the decade of the 1990s witnessed a decline in adult crime and violence rates in California and the United States in general, juvenile crime and violence remained a significant problem. In California, juvenile assault arrests remained at 12.5 per one hundred thousand between 1994 and 1999; adult arrest rates for the same crime declined…

Achieving student participation, it has been argued, is one of the most important challenges in distance education. This explorative study examines whether a synchronous communication medium, instant messaging (IM), may enable students to participate more actively in online group work. When comparing two groups that adopted IM with two groups that…

Many studies show students benefit from working cooperatively. Rarely published in STEM literature are guidelines to help educators effectively incorporate research teams in the classroom. We explain how to create a positive learning experience by explaining group dynamics, and by using group contracts and team-building activities. We also share…

The consequences of gender social and learning interactions in the classroom are of interest to parents, policy makers, and researchers. However, little is known about gender peer effects in schools and their operational channels. In this paper, we estimate the effects of classroom gender composition on scholastic achievements of boys and girls in…

What do leaders mean when they talk about networks and whether leadership networks have the power to transform the profession? When it comes to educational leadership networks, there certainly are more than seven important questions. This article focuses on seven key questions about networking in the superintendent ranks by the coordinator of one…