For mathematics teachers who are continually looking for ways in which to engage their students in the learning process, the capabilities offered by technology answer the call. Whether the technology comprises computer based applications or graphics calculators, often boring aspects can be bypassed so that students can work on the "good bits" and build understanding. These tools, when used effectively, have been a great benefit to improving the cognitive development of many...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Adolescents, Teaching Methods, Mathematics Teachers, Mathematical Concepts, Graphing...
The Social coping Questionnaire (SCQ) measures strategies used by gifted adolescents to minimize the negative effect they believe their high ability has on their social interactions. Previous studies have supported the factor structure, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of the SCQ. The current study provides construct validity evidence for the SCQ by comparing it with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Upon entrance to a residential academy, 339 gifted adolescents completed...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Measures (Individuals), Interpersonal Relationship, Interaction, Adolescents, Gender...
This study examined the mental effort required to monitor landmarks and the effect of the type of route on mobility-route training. The results revealed that the features of landmarks and competence in travel were significantly related, indicating that some environmental factors related to height and width are more easily learned when people can travel independently. A similar result was found when types of travel were compared.
Topics: ERIC Archive, Visual Impairments, Visually Impaired Mobility, Orientation, Children, Early...
The effects of a multicomponent intervention involving self-regulated strategy development delivered via video self-modeling on the written language performance of 3 students with Asperger syndrome were examined. During intervention sessions, each student watched a video of himself performing strategies for increasing the number of words written and the number of functional essay elements. He then wrote a persuasive essay. The number of words written and number of functional essay elements...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Written Language, Intervention, Asperger Syndrome, Writing Skills, Writing...
The after-school City School Outreach youth program captured the attention of high school male students by offering them a physically and psychologically safe environment to talk about issues they faced. The students of color who attended the program used various forms of creative written expression (i.e., poetry, spoken word, and hip hop) to document and share their lived realities as African American and Latino youth. An analysis of their writings and subsequent interviews revealed a variety...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Youth Programs, Poetry, Urban Schools, Males, Coping, Adolescents, Minority Groups,...
In this observational case study, a 13-year old boy, Carlo, who was born completely blind, was invited to explore and identify, a set of raised-line pictures without receiving feedback about the accuracy of his identification. He was then asked to explain, verbally or by drawing, why he believed that the names he suggested accurately identified the depicted objects. The study found that Carlo identified 62% of the target pictures. Most of his verbalizations contained descriptions of salient...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Identification, Blindness, Assistive Technology, Visual Aids, Case Studies, Males,...
This pilot study compared the development of two groups of adolescents--those whose parents were blind and those whose parents were sighted. It found that there were no essential differences between the groups. Moreover, the friendship relationships, feelings toward parents, and some essential characteristics of the adolescents' emotional state were more positive among the adolescents whose parents were blind. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)
Topics: ERIC Archive, Social Life, Adolescents, Comparative Analysis, Emotional Development, Social...
Indoor tanning continues to grow in popularity even though empirical investigations denounce the behavior. Various reports have illustrated the detrimental health effects of ultraviolet (UV) exposure including increased risk for skin cancer. According to some physicians, the risk may be especially high for adolescents whose skin cells are dividing and changing rapidly. Persistent use of tanning facilities has become especially apparent within adolescent female populations. The purpose of this...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Investigations, Risk, Cancer, Etiology, Adolescents, Females, Health Behavior,...
Adolescents and young adults are likely to be sexually active and interested in sexual ethics. In order to tap into this interest and assist in their intellectual development, a sexual ethics continuum teaching strategy was developed during four semesters with six sections of two different college courses. A total of 52 behaviors of interest to students were identified and rated by students as ethically ideal, ethically allowed, or ethically forbidden. A combination of quantitative and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Educational Strategies, Adolescents, Young Adults, College...
Debate is not only manageable in the classroom, it is also an effective and enjoyable learning activity. Debate in the content area classroom serves a dual purpose: students are exposed to a process that facilitates critical thinking and analytical skills, and debate serves as a device for authenticating and deepening subject area knowledge. Debate for young adolescents is not only developmentally appropriate, but timely in another sense--this age group loves to argue! At a time when so many...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Early Adolescents, Child Care Centers, Persuasive Discourse, Middle School Students,...
The communication and collaborative interface known as a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), has existed since as early as the late 1970s. MUVEs refer to programs that have an animated character ("avatar") controlled by a user within a wider environment that can be explored--or built--at will. Second Life, a MUVE created by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, has generated a great deal of media attention in recent months. This attention has attracted hundreds of thousands of new users...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle Schools, Distance Education, Immigrants, Migrants, Middle School Teachers,...
Middle school teachers, like all educators around the nation, are encountering classrooms comprised of an unprecedented number of students from various cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Due to the influx of immigrants entering the U.S. educational system, the number of students who speak a native language other than English has grown dramatically and will account for about 40% of the school-age population by 2040. The reality of a multicultural, multilingual student population dictates...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Strategies, Student Needs, Middle School Students, Teacher Effectiveness,...
This study compares academically gifted students who engage in sports to academically gifted students who do not engage in sports on measures of the multidimensional self-concept. Participants include 264 gifted adolescents who had completed the 6th through 10th grade during the previous academic year. Sports participation was measured by asking participants whether or not they participated in organized sports. Multiple facets of self-concept were measured using the Self Description...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Academically Gifted, Adolescents, Athletics, Student Participation, Self Concept,...
This article examines how altered books can be used in art therapy with adolescents. An altered book is a published book that has been changed into a new work of visual art through various art processes such as painting, drawing, collage, writing, and embellishment. Books are discussed as an art canvas on which to provide stimulation, structure, portability, and increased opportunities for reflection. Altered book making is an option for art therapists who are looking for a means to provide...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Adolescents, Group Therapy, Art Therapy, Books, Counseling Techniques, Art Products,...
This article describes the clinical practice of two male art therapists and their work with male adolescent sex offenders in a residential treatment facility. The authors share experiences of working with clients who, in addition to being offenders, were diagnosed with a mental illness and were themselves victims of sexual abuse. The function of male art therapists, particularly in relation to male clients, is explored through case material. Finally, the value of the mentoring relationship...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Sexual Abuse, Mental Disorders, Mentors, Art Therapy, Males, Adolescents, Residential...
As a new reform in Australian education, middle schooling has been gaining momentum. The rationale behind middle schooling is to bridge the traditional primary-high school gap and provide a more developmentally appropriate educational experience for young adolescents. Middle schooling in the USA has gone through a "boom-to-bust" cycle and is currently undergoing a "reinvention" as research on practice and reporting of research on practice has, in the most part, been ad hoc...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Experience, Educational Change, Middle Schools, Foreign Countries,...
This paper explores various epistemological paradigms available to understand, interpret, and semiotically depict young people. These paradigms all draw upon a metadiscourse of developmental age and stage (e.g. Hall 1914) and then work from particular epistemological views of the world to cast young people in different lights. Using strategic essentialism (Spivak 1996), this paper offers four descriptions of existing paradigms, including biomedical (Erikson 1980), psychological (e.g. Piaget...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teacher Education, Young Adults, Adolescents, Epistemology, Developmental...
The middle years are a crucial stage of schooling where the range in student achievement widens and progress for some students slows significantly (Cairney, Buchanan, Sproats & Lowe 1998, Hill & Russell 1999). Despite moves towards middle school reform and improved literacy standards, there remains a gap in literacy provision for young adolescent learners, particularly those defined as "educationally disadvantaged" or "at risk" (DEETYA 1998, Masters & Forster...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Intervention, School Restructuring, Disadvantaged, Literacy,...
Honoring the net is a concept presented by Purkey in his discussion of the four-corner press. In a counseling setting this concept relates to the perceptions of the counselor and the client as they encounter one another in the counseling relationship, as well as the relationship itself. This manuscript attempts to examine the dynamic of the net and the process of honoring the net in these interactions.
Topics: ERIC Archive, Counseling, Counselor Client Relationship, Interpersonal Relationship, Listening...
In drawing on selected interviews with adolescent boys from both Australia and North America, we present an analysis of boys' own capacities for interrogating gender normalisation in their school lives. We set this analysis against a critique of the public media debates about boys' education, which continue to be fuelled by a moral panic about the status of boys as the new disadvantaged. Our aim is to raise questions about boys' existing capacities for problematizing social relations of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Masculinity, Males, Adolescents, Interviews, Educational...
In South Africa where there is a very high HIV infection rate among teenagers and young adults, it is surprising to find that students and teachers are very unwilling to talk about the possibility of being or becoming HIV positive. While AIDS messages dominate public discourse, there is a silence in schools about the personal in relation to AIDS. This article seeks to explain the reluctance of learners to test, talk about and disclose their HIV status, by examining silence within a broader...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Disease Control, Fuels, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Young Adults, Foreign...
In 2003, a study of two Canadian adult literacy programs included 37 learners who revealed a variety of reasons for having dropped out of school as teenagers and younger adults. Chief among these were the influences of parents, siblings, and peers both in and out of school. This article considers these research findings, in light of the educational literature, as a catalyst for recommending ways that high school administrators, counselors, and teachers can (1) make students' families and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Siblings, Adolescents, Adult Literacy, Parent Influence, Dropouts, Foreign Countries,...
In this article, we report on a study examining those factors which contribute to the mathematics performance of a sample of children aged between 8 and 13 years. The study was designed specifically to consider the potency of a number of mathematical affective factors, as well as background characteristics (viz., gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status), on children's mathematics performance. Data were collected by surveying the children and drawing on performance ratings from their...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Mathematics Achievement, Preadolescents, Early Adolescents, Children, Gender...
Looking for relevant material for the Adolescent Psychology course she teaches, the author's attention was drawn to a book by Thomas Cottle, "Mind Fields: Adolescent Consciousness in a Culture of Distraction" (2001). Robert Frost's quotation, "Grant me intention, purpose, and design--That's near enough for me to the Divine," in the frontispiece seemed so relevant to the topic she intended to develop in this article, and is stated with so much elegance, that she could not...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Gifted, Child Psychology, Academic Discourse, Attention, Child Development,...
Any girl who watches TV or listens to the radio is bombarded not only with negative stereotypes of females, but also with the message that the most important qualities to possess are physical and aesthetic. From where, then, are girls supposed to derive positive role models? The author began asking herself this question two years ago as an eighth grader at Tenafly Middle School in Tenafly, New Jersey, when she participated in R.O.G.A.T.E., or Resources Offered for Gifted and Talented Education....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Role Models, Sex Stereotypes, Females, Adolescents, Fiction, Mass Media, Student...
Every fall, approximately 300 gifted adolescents descend on the Ball State University campus to attend the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities (the Academy). The Academy is a state-funded residential school for academically gifted junior and senior high school aged students. It draws its students from across the state, creating a very diverse community of high-ability learners. The students come from over 120 high schools and the transition for the 160 juniors new to the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Counseling Services, Academically Gifted, Residential Schools, Emotional Development,...
The importance of arts education has long been recognized. Years ago, John Dewey (1934, vii) argued that, in arts education, "learning is controlled by two great principles: one that participation is something inherently worth while, or undertaken on its own account; the other is perception of the relation of means to consequences... A third consideration [focuses on] skill and technique." Today, the arts are taught in schools as disciplines providing unique cores of understandings,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Federal Legislation, Art Education, Adolescents, Secondary School Students, Art...
In this paper, we present findings from the second stage of a three year longitudinal study involving 3,570 students aged 13-18 in a London Borough looking at the impact of Widening Participation (WP) on the attitudes of students. We outline findings from a previous stage and then focus specifically on two cohorts of Year 10 students (aged 14-15) in two consecutive years. The students completed the specially designed Attitudes to Higher Education Questionnaire (AHEQ) and provided information on...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Postsecondary Education, School Attitudes, Academic Aspiration, Social Influences,...
This study examined reports of self-harm by early adolescents as well as associations between salient interpersonal stressors and self-harm. While attending health education centers located in Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, early adolescents (n = 737) responded to a questionnaire measuring stressors, coping, and self-harm. Approximately 19% of early adolescent students reported some type of self-harm. Those reporting parents as a source of stress more frequently reported...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Early Intervention, Health Education, Prevention, Early Adolescents, Adolescents,...
Since 1996, our research team has conducted 15 focus groups with 169 middle-school youth in small communities as formative research for campaigns against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and violence. Some key findings of a synthesis of focus-group results are that girls and boys perceive different risks to alcohol and tobacco use; peer relationships are important, but there is great potential for parents to increase influence; females and Hispanic youth are most concerned about serving as good role...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Role Models, Smoking, Narcotics, Focus Groups, Adolescents, Rural Areas, Drinking,...
Heritage languages (HL) are language spoken by the children of immigrants or by those who immigrated to a country when young. The purpose of this article is to briefly review what is known about heritage language development over time and to identify some gaps in people's knowledge. In this article, the authors consider three aspects: how much HL speakers use their HLs, how well they know them, and the attitudes they have toward their HLs, focusing here on older children, adolescents, and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Immigrants, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Heritage Education,...
The United States system of education is far removed from the historic system of education in many American Indian communities, yet most American Indian students attend state-run public schools, often with little or no input from tribal communities. Something is clearly not working because many American Indian students experience high levels of educational failure and many drop out of school. In this article, the authors present an alternative to the traditional state-run public school for one...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Public Schools, American Indians, Adolescents, White Students, Teaching Methods,...
In this article, we provide the results of our examination of the range of multiliteracy activities that engage boys' time and attention, and the types of literacy skills and understandings they learn through their engagement with alternative texts. We focus particularly on video game play and creation/composition as a learning activity that consumes a great deal of their out-of-school time. Our observations and conversations with adolescent boys suggest that significant, powerful learning is...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Video Games, Literacy, Males, Adolescents, Learning Activities, Student Interests,...
Middle school students are naturally curious about their expanding possibilities. This stage of their lives is a time of transition, of figuring out who they are and where they belong in the world. Many students also think that the world they look at through the classroom window is distant and unconnected to the world of chalkboards and pop quizzes they inhabit between the hours of eight and three. Models of middle school education have often included teacher and community expectations...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle School Students, Middle Schools, Adolescents, Interdisciplinary Approach,...
Many young women become disillusioned with physical education in their high-school years. Mounting evidence suggests that this disillusionment starts in early adolescence. This article discusses the experiences of female students in coeducational, middle-school, physical education classes. Focus group interviews, individual interviews, and questionnaires were used to collect data. The following themes emerged: personal competence, a moving body is a healthy body, choice and variety for a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Physical Education, Early Adolescents, Sex Fairness, Student Motivation, Females,...
This study examined condom use intentions among a large diverse group of African American adolescents and provides useful information to assist in the development of effective HIV prevention interventions. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), we explored which constructs are important in shaping intentions to use condoms for younger versus older, female versus male, and sexually experienced versus sexually inexperienced African American youth (n = 832). Youth were recruited from inner...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Gender Differences, Prevention, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Urban Areas,...
As researchers continue to analyze the role of parenting both in the development of childhood overweight and in obesity prevention, studies of child nutrition and growth are detailing the ways in which parents affect their children's development of food- and activity-related behaviors. Ana Lindsay, Katarina Sussner, Juhee Kim, and Steven Gortmaker argue that interventions aimed at preventing childhood overweight and obesity should involve parents as important forces for change in their...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Parent Role, Parent Influence, Prevention, Obesity, Child Health, Child Development,...
Researchers are only gradually becoming aware of the gravity of the risk that overweight and obesity pose for children's health. In this article Stephen Daniels documents the heavy toll that the obesity epidemic is taking on the health of the nation's children. He discusses both the immediate risks associated with childhood obesity and the longer-term risk that obese children and adolescents will become obese adults and suffer other health problems as a result. Daniels notes that many...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Obesity, Heart Disorders, Incidence, Hypertension, Public Health, Child Health, Human...
Media-related commercial marketing aimed at promoting the purchase of products and services by children, and by adults for children, is ubiquitous and has been associated with negative health consequences such as poor nutrition and physical inactivity. But, as Douglas Evans points out, not all marketing in the electronic media is confined to the sale of products. Increasingly savvy social marketers have begun to make extensive use of the same techniques and strategies used by commercial...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Physical Activities, Health Promotion, Research Methodology, Nutrition, Public...
Liliana Escobar-Chaves and Craig Anderson investigate two important trends among American youth and examine the extent to which the two trends might be related. First, the authors note that U.S. youth are spending increasing amounts of time using electronic media, with the average American youngster now spending one-third of each day with some form of electronic media. Second, the authors demonstrate that American adolescents are engaging in a number of unhealthful behaviors that impose huge...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Adolescents, Longitudinal Studies, Health Behavior, At Risk Persons, Obesity,...
Over the past decade, technology has become increasingly important in the lives of adolescents. As a group, adolescents are heavy users of newer electronic communication forms such as instant messaging, e-mail, and text messaging, as well as communication-oriented Internet sites such as blogs, social networking, and sites for sharing photos and videos. Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia Greenfield examine adolescents' relationships with friends, romantic partners, strangers, and their families in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Internet, Adolescents, Interpersonal Relationship, Anxiety, Time, Privacy, Computer...
Marie Evans Schmidt and Elizabeth Vandewater review research on links between various types of electronic media and the cognitive skills of school-aged children and adolescents. One central finding of studies to date, they say, is that the content delivered by electronic media is far more influential than the media themselves. Most studies, they point out, find a small negative link between the total hours a child spends viewing TV and that child's academic achievement. But when researchers...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Video Games, Academic Achievement, Hyperactivity, Transfer of Training, Attention...
American youth are awash in media. They have television sets in their bedrooms, personal computers in their family rooms, and digital music players and cell phones in their backpacks. They spend more time with media than any single activity other than sleeping, with the average American eight- to eighteen-year-old reporting more than six hours of daily media use. The growing phenomenon of "media multitasking"--using several media concurrently--multiplies that figure to eight and a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, Music, Video Games, Young Adults, Adolescents,...
Whether adolescents from immigrant and ethnic minority families will make a successful transition to adulthood hinges on their educational achievement, their acquisition of employable skills and abilities, and their physical and mental health. This article focuses on the extent to which diverse adolescents are prepared for adulthood according to these three critical developmental outcomes. It finds that, in general, adolescents from Latino and African American backgrounds appear to be less...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Physical Health, Health Insurance, Adolescents, Immigrants, Financial Support,...
To provide an array of perspectives on the future direction of foster care, five experts across various disciplines and backgrounds were asked to respond to this question: "How can the child welfare system be improved to better support families and promote the healthy development of children in foster care?" This article presents their responses to the above question. Susan H. Badeau argues that a conversation about improving the system should begin with a discussion of guiding...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Child Welfare, Foster Care, Adoption, Family Relationship, Adolescents, Children,...
A growing number of children over age 10 reside in and emancipate from foster care every year. Older children face many of the same challenges as younger children, but they also have unique developmental needs. This article discusses older children in the child welfare system and finds: (1) Approximately 47% of children in foster care are over age 11, and in 2001, 20% of children leaving foster care were over age 16; (2) Older children need permanency, stability, and a "forever...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Daily Living Skills, Substance Abuse, Homeless People, Educational Attainment, Child...
Reunifying children placed in foster care with their birth parents is a primary goal of the child welfare system. Yet, relatively little is known about the reunification process. This article analyzes new data on trends in family reunification and discovers: (1) Although most children still exit foster care through family reunification, exit patterns have changed over the last 8 years. Currently, reunification takes longer to happen, whereas adoptions happen earlier; (2) A child's age and race...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Racial Factors, Child Welfare, Foster Care, Well Being, Family Relationship, Parent...
Children and adolescents in the United States are increasingly overweight at younger ages. Many studies have investigated the issue from the perspective of professionals and other adults. This study assessed early adolescents' perceptions regarding the magnitude of, effects of, causes of, solutions for, and learning preferences related to overweight. Data were obtained from 1,168 students, grades four to eight, who visited nine health education centers. Data were collected anonymously via...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Obesity, Health Education, Children, Adolescents, Cognitive Style, Nutrition,...
This study sought variables associated with current smoking for young adult males and females in college compared with those not in college. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by a cohort of 1,270 young adults (ages 20-24) who have been followed from grade 6 for 10 years. Both bivariate and multivariable analyses of demographic characteristics, family and friends smoking and other drug use, psychosocial factors and attitude, and lifestyle factors were conducted. In the bivariate...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Smoking, Drug Use, Young Adults, Depression (Psychology), College Students,...
The Internet is increasingly used as an outlet for sexual activity. This literature review explores key definitions, perceived benefits, risks, and consequences of engaging in cybersex, as well as its influence on youth and young adults. The accessibility, affordability, and anonymity of the Internet make it highly appealing to users. Increasing time spent online for sexual activity may lead to cybersex abuse and compulsive cybersex behavior. This poses a threat to relationships, work, and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Substance Abuse, Marital Status, Health Education, Sexual Orientation, Young Adults,...