Nine high-risk youth ages 12-17 in an Appalachian town met weekly to learn about local culture and history. They developed a theater piece performed in historic costumes and presented puppet plays illustrating family support, self-worth, and other concepts. The program developed self-esteem, responsibility, teamwork, and community participation…

Investigates differences between expressed attributions that adolescents and young adults offer for academic success and failure when interacting with peers. Explores the perceptions adolescents and young adults associate with such interactions. Finds that young adults had a significantly larger repertoire of attributional expressions at their…

Investigates female friends' influence on achievement-related choices using the Thematic Apperception Test. Study tests two hypotheses: (1) achievement-related stimuli will elicit stories with more unfavorable outcomes than will affiliation stimuli; (2) thematic representation of achievement will be more homogeneous in more highly cohesive peer…

Little is known about the delinquency and social relations of adolescents who lack close friendships. This study compares the delinquency of "loners" and "nonloners," explores group differences within the larger social context of peers, family, and school, and assesses the efficacy of loner status as a distinct dimension of peer relationships. The…

Attachment theory proposes that experiences with the primary caregivers are an important basis for the development of close social relationships outside the parent-child relationship. This study examined the association between representations of attachment, as assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), representations of friendship and…

Although both research and practice have generally supported the use of peer feedback activities in ESL and L2 writing classes, many teachers (and most students) are less than convinced of its usefulness in their own particular situation. The objective of this article is to briefly summarize some of the main arguments in favor and against peer…

This article addresses the question of whether higher education music courses adequately prepare young musicians for the critical transition from music undergraduate to professional. Thematic analyses of interviews with 27 undergraduate and portfolio career musicians representing four musical genres were compared. The evidence suggests that the…

Until now, much of the research on heritage language (HL) education has focused on the use of oral language or traditional print-based texts by HL speakers who are born and raised in the U.S. In addition, many of the available studies concentrate on beginning-level HL students because few second generation immigrants reach advanced levels of…

Little research has examined how low-income Asian American children are supported to achieve well in school. The authors used the notion of social capital to study higher versus lower achieving Chinese adolescents from low-income backgrounds. They found that families of higher-achieving adolescents built and used more effectively three kinds of…

The authors examine how peer relationships influence students' academic success. After defining peer groups, the article considers the ways in which students' peer networks facilitate or inhibit access to academic resources. The authors argue that the composition and purpose of a peer group influences academic achievement and students' likelihood…

A new approach to the measurement of mentalizing is introduced. Instead of measuring the presence or absence of mentalizing capacity, the current study aimed at developing a mentalizing task that focuses on investigating biases in mentalizing through the use of ambiguous peer-related social scenarios. The response consistency of 659 children was…

This research examines the effects of school racial and ethnic composition on students' academic achievement in the U.S. using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and hierarchical linear models. This analysis includes Hispanics, which stands apart from other research in this area that has traditionally focused on only Black and…

Social exclusion is a serious social problem. Not "fitting in" at school may be an experience that can scar children psychologically for life. This is unsurprising since being part of the "in crowd" (i.e. accepted in-group members) is extremely important to children and adolescents. Being rejected by one's peers can cause an increase in antisocial…

This study examined the effects of peer groups on changes in academic engagement in 11- to 13-year-old children. From the entire cohort of 366 sixth graders in a town, 87% participated at the beginning and end of the school year. Peer groups were assessed using socio-cognitive mapping; as an indicator of motivation, teachers reported on students'…

We examined the role of the teacher-child relationship quality (close, dependent, and conflictive) on preschoolers' (N=95) academic readiness for kindergarten, and we tested children's prosocial and aggressive behavior and peer group exclusion as mediators of this relation. A unique feature of this study is the ethnically and socio-economically…