Asserts that because many teachers embrace the use of literature in their classrooms and use many avenues for responding to books, social action can be an important addition to the repertoire of response strategies. Examines support for activism from both the social studies and literacy education communities, and offers guidelines and resources…

Volatile crisis situations, if carefully managed, can improve relationships between adults and youth. Article describes instances of serious rule violations that presented opportunities for teaching prosocial skills to youth. (Author/JDM)

Restorative justice promotes greater accountability, competency, and public safety through community care of juvenile offenders. The Prosocial Communities Solution builds an infrastructure around information sharing, coordinated supervision, and immersion in prosocial activities. Communities horizontally align parents with professional caregivers…

This article presents an overview of a strengths-based school discipline initiative that was developed in response to the high suspension and expulsion rates of African American and Latino male students at a racially diverse, urban high school in California. A school task force made up of adult and youth stakeholders devised a series of…

Adolescence is a developmental period during which youth are at increased risk for using substances. An empirical focus on core competencies illustrates that youth are less likely to use substances when they have a positive future orientation, a belief in the ability to resist substances, emotional and behavioral control, sound decision-making…

The authors investigated the contemporaneous and longitudinal relations of children's (M age = 6.4 years) prosocial behavior to sympathy and moral motivation. Mothers and kindergarten teachers rated children's prosocial behavior. The authors measured sympathy via self- and adult reports. Moral motivation was assessed by children's attribution of…

The present study was designed to investigate stability and changes in prosocial behavior and the parent and peer correlates of prosocial behavior in rural adolescents. Participants were from a rural, low SES community in the Eastern United States. The participants were in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades at Time 1 and 10th, 11th, and 12th grades at Time…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a buddy skills package on the social interactions between a preschooler with autism and her peers. Following baseline, the children participated in 8 sessions of training that focused on the strategies of Play, Stay, and Talk. An intervention consisting of teacher feedback, praise, and picture…

The school shootings of October 2006 arrested the world's attention. The contrast of innocence and violence, the mystery of the shooters' motivations, the fact that there were five school shooting in six weeks--all of these were factors, but none can compare to the strength of the families who chose to forgive and their witness under fire. Through…

Over the past decade researchers have identified intervention strategies and program models that reduce delinquency and promote pro-social development. Preventing delinquency, says Peter Greenwood, not only saves young lives from being wasted, but also prevents the onset of adult criminal careers and thus reduces the burden of crime on its victims…

This booklet presents the statement of the United States Catholic Conference on the topic of violence in society and how as a nation and as individuals people must work to ensure a more peaceful world. The booklet addresses the need for a moral revolution and a renewed ethic of justice, responsibility, and community. Several examples of renewal…

Peace studies explores organized non-violence and violence; their relationships to society, behavior, and consciousness; and ways of working toward a just and harmonious world community. Noting a fairly rapid growth in peace studies courses on college and university campuses during the last half of the 20th century, this report provides a…

This study presents findings of longitudinal research that studied the predictive utility of five temperament constructs measured in preschool children and their subsequent behavioral adjustment 5 years later in elementary school. Adjustment as measured by composites of the Behavior Assessment System for children was predicted by parent ratings of…

Although considerable research exists on the behavioral characteristics of low-accepted children, few studies have examined gender differences in the types of behavior which distinguish between low-accepted children and their better-accepted classmates. This study examined the relative power, for each gender, of different behavioral…

Friendships between individuals can be found throughout lifespans. This study examined an interaction between adolescents who consider themselves close friends. Inspection of friends' interaction when working on a joint task may allow the classification of close friendships in adolescence. In addition friends were asked about their joint daily…