Stories provide an effective medium for children to learn and practice reading skills, but the role of literature is much broader than an educational tool. Literature provides an aesthetic experience with one of the arts. Children experience the power of story that has existed across cultures and across centuries, giving evidence of the power of…

Although recent evidence implicates the importance of the family for understanding depressive disorders during adolescence, we still lack a coherent framework for understanding the way in which the myriad of developmental changes occurring within early adolescents and their family environments actually operate to increase adolescents'…

The authors sought to understand the types of parent involvement that teachers, parents, and students believe affect the academic achievement of adolescent learners at the junior high school level. Research that included focus groups, interviews, and surveys indicated that teachers and students believed that parent involvement at school was…

The Duke Endowment launched its Child Abuse Prevention Initiative in 2002 by funding two program sites, the Durham Family Initiative in Durham, North Carolina, and Strong Communities in Greenville, South Carolina. Both sites aimed to reduce rates of child abuse, improve parenting practices and behaviors, strengthen community service systems, and…

Objective: To develop a child victimization survey among a diverse group of child protection experts and examine the performance of the instrument through a set of international pilot studies. Methods: The initial draft of the instrument was developed after input from scientists and practitioners representing 40 countries. Volunteers from the…

Chaotic home systems have been linked with children's adverse psychological and academic outcomes. But, as they represent a departure from the suburban ideal of space, order, and family cohesiveness and stability, they should also be linked with low support for survival values. Using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)…

This article examined general trends in teacher-reported conflict and closeness among 878 children from kindergarten through sixth grade, and examined early childhood characteristics that predict differences in initial levels and growth of conflict and closeness over time. Results indicated modest stability of teacher-perceived conflict and…

Objective: To determine prevalence and correlates of overweight among adolescents attending alternative high schools (AHS). Methods: AHS students (n=145) from 6 schools completed surveys and anthropometric measures. Cross-sectional associations were assessed using mixed model multivariate logistic regression. Results: Among students, 42% were…

Background: Relationships within families are interdependent and related to distal environmental factors. Low socioeconomic status (SES) and high household chaos (distal factors) have been linked to less positive marital and parent-child relationships, but have not yet been examined with regard to young children's sibling relationships. The…

Distinguished historian and policy analyst Maris Vinovskis examines federal K-12 education policies, beginning with the publication of "A Nation at Risk" and focusing on the National Education Goals, America 2000, Goals 2000, and No Child Left Behind. In addition to discussing key policy debates, he also addresses the practical aspects…

Many studies find that children in "high-risk neighborhoods" are less likely to participate in out-of-school time programs and are more likely to have poor outcomes than are their peers from more advantaged neighborhoods. These poorer outcomes may result from the lower levels of resources, social cohesion, and trust present in high-risk…

The purpose of this article is to introduce the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K) database to school social work practitioners and researchers. This database not only serves as a viable source for evidence-based practice pertaining to the influences of families and schools on the academic achievement of children beginning at…

This short-term longitudinal study examined the relations among family and school characteristics, family-level processes (youth perceptions of parent-adolescent interactions), school-level processes (youth perceptions of school belonging, school climate), adolescents' school engagement, and later academic performance. Participants were an…

We used adopted and biological children from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households to study the links between parents' marital conflict, divorce and children's behavior problems. The standard family environment model assumes that marital conflict and divorce increase the risk of children's behavior problems. The passive…

This project investigated the impacts of family religious involvement and family religious affiliations on parenting practices and academic performance. This study utilized data from the base-year and first follow-up of the Education Longitudinal Study: 2002/2004 (ELS). A series of statistical techniques were incorporated to examine the nature of…