Every educator has a handful of students who perpetually push his or her buttons. The challenge of creating a strong, nurturing classroom community is especially difficult if you are an urban school teacher. Not because children in an urban area are inherently more wild or difficult to teach. Rather, there is a mythology about how to best…

This chapter discusses wagering on college athletics and sports wagering by college students and student athletes. Programs implemented by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and other organizations to minimize such behavior are also discussed, and recommendations for practice and research are shared.

Classroom incivility is influenced by many factors. This chapter identifies three that are commonly thought of as influencing the degree to which students will engage in inappropriate behaviors in the classroom.

Proposals to improve teacher quality often focus on hiring teachers with the right combination of personality, values, and knowledge and skills. The author suggests that although these elements of teacher quality are important, schools also need to pay attention to the conditions of classroom life that can determine teaching quality. She…

A teacher's attitude--whether good or bad--trickles down to the students. According to Tom Carroll, who serves in the capacity of president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, there is no teacher shortage but a horrendous turnover and attrition problem. Teachers who are leaving are constantly being replaced. The conditions…

School safety is a concern of administrators, teachers, parents and students. Federal legislation has been enacted to address school safety, including the discipline of students with disabilities. One option available to school districts is to place potentially dangerous or disruptive students in an interim alternative educational setting (IAES).…

Schools play a vital role in decreasing the occurrence of bullying among children. Victims of bullying behavior need guidance in developing the skills and strategies needed to effectively respond to bullying. Through small group work, the school counselor can help students develop the knowledge, attitude, and skills that will enable them to deal…

An ongoing challenge that both classroom and physical education teachers face on a daily basis is how to organize and manage large groups of students. This is particularly true in many urban settings where classrooms and gymnasiums are typically understaffed and/or under equipped. Educators in these settings often struggle with how to minimize…

In an analog study, 122 continuing education and preservice teachers rated potential sources of one of two students' classroom problems. One student's behavior, described in a cumulative folder and a videotaped teacher/school psychologist conference, matched the symptoms of epilepsy, the other matched the symptoms of type 1 diabetes mellitus.…

Research has consistently demonstrated the importance of providing an appropriate level of challenge, called the instructional level, within curricular material. Although the instructional level is a generally well-defined and researched construct, much less data exist on the acquisition rate (AR) component of an appropriate level of challenge.…

The authors examined relations among different measures of acculturation, and between acculturation and sexual behavior, in a sample of female Cuban American college students (n = 61, M age = 18.4 years) who completed self-report surveys. In the first set of analyses, weak to moderate associations emerged among 4 measures of acculturation…

In this study, the authors evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of a binge drinking prevention intervention for college students delivered via the Internet versus a parallel print-based intervention delivered via postal mail. A total of 116 college students completed the baseline survey. The authors then randomized the students into the Web or…

Many schools are using evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs to prevent certain student behaviors such as bullying and harassment, drug and alcohol abuse and violence. The changing of students' social and emotional behavior requires more than skill lessons, as it requires attention to the environment in which students learn.

Relations between multiple dimensions of family involvement in early childhood education and classroom outcomes were examined. Participants included 144 urban, Head Start children. Parental report of family involvement was gathered in late fall using a multidimensional assessment. Relations between family involvement dimensions and end of the year…

This study introduces a social context model within which peer acceptances of prosocial-leadership, aggression, and social withdrawal were examined as functions of the contextual norms of these behaviors. The major postulate of the model is that the extent to which a behavior permeates a social context facilitates peer acceptance of the behavior.…