<p> Relational aggression acted out through social media or cyber bullying is an ever-growing limitedly researched issue that is impacting students and parents alike. A mixed-method study was conducted using existing older and aspiring younger social workers and counselors to investigate attitudes (focus groups and text box comments) and relationships (surveys) between variables. The research questions asked how attitudes toward cyber bullying based on gender, type of social media, parent versus nonparent status, and involved parent versus not involved parent status. Hypotheses tested correlations between the same elements.</p><p> Participants were 75 existing social workers and counselors working at a Midwestern school district, and 137 aspiring social workers and counselors enrolled in a Midwestern university undergraduate social worker program and a graduate counselor program. The participant age varied&mdash;the youngest group was the undergraduate social worker students and graduate counseling students the oldest group was the existing social workers and counselors. Gender varied, but the majority of participants were female.</p><p> All participants were surveyed with an instrument designed to measure attitude that included three scenarios of relational aggression. Among those surveyed, some also participated in a video recorded focus group to measure attitude. Survey results were analyzed using <i>t</i> tests and <i> F</i> tests that found minimal significance between participant responses. Focus group results were first analyzed using axial coding for three key elements: parent involvement, relational aggression, and social media, and found that by far, the majority of responses aligned with the element, parent involvement. Next, open coding of just the parent involvement responses resulted in the following emerging themes: general parent involvement, parent monitoring, parent involvement as a resolution, parent involvement as a prevention, and parental advisement.</p><p> There was more female representation that took the survey than males. Lack of familiarity with social media websites made it difficult for honest responses and if they were used to cyber bully. Most respondents felt parent involvement is important in preventing cyber bullying despite parental status. Involved parental monitoring of their child&rsquo;s social media are aware of their online behavior. Cyber bullying is a prevalent topic that provided strong reactions from all data sets.</p>

The current program evaluation of school-wide positive behavior support (PBS) in an alternative education setting was conducted in three phases (Phase 1: initial evaluation; Phase 2: intervention; Phase 3: follow up evaluation). The purpose of the evaluation was to identify strengths and weaknesses of the PBS program and to implement changes to improve program effectiveness and positive outcomes for students. An exploratory case study design was used to achieve an in-depth understanding of the program through the use of quantitative and qualitative data collection. The evaluation was completed within one school year, between November 2007 and May 2008. The participants in this evaluation were the students and staff of the alternative school. Quantitative data included behavioral data on the students, inter-observer agreement data, and survey data; qualitative data included survey data and data from student and staff focus groups. Overall, the evaluation was successful in that the evaluators were able to identify strengths and weaknesses, and areas of concern to be addressed through interventions. The evaluators were able to implement a variety of interventions, and received feedback that the interventions were successful. Although student behaviors were not effectively changed as a result of this evaluation, the evaluators did develop a plan for ongoing evaluation, future trainings and program modifications, to be implemented over the course of the 2008-2009 school year.

Many restructured public middle schools assign their classroom teachers to interdisciplinary teams (math, English, etc.) with common planning time scheduled weekly. Students are then assigned to one team of teachers, and this team and their students stay together throughout the school year. As a result, teachers and students learn more about each other, and teachers can increase their emphasis on the social, emotional and physical needs of their students. One goal of this increased emphasis is a reduction in disruptive behaviors in the classrooms. However, many teachers from these teams have reported little or no reduction in these disruptive behaviors. This study framed middle-school restructuring as a beginning systemic intervention and hypothesized the following: If teachers learned about systemic ideas that underlie restructuring and applied systemic interventions in the classroom, the disruptive behaviors would decrease. A team of four public middle school teachers were introduced to systemic thinking and interventions during weekly meetings for ten consecutive weeks. They viewed classroom behavior from a systemic perspective and practiced systemic interventions in the classroom. They kept track of their efforts each week and reported any changes that occurred. Some of the students from the team talked about their classroom behavior as well as other events in their lives which they believed influenced their behavior in the classroom. The results show that one member of the team reported a significant decrease in disruptive behaviors and one reported some decrease. Two members who rarely experienced disruptive behaviors in their classrooms reported an increase in their confidence as a result of learning a theoretical basis for their past and present successes. The team as a whole reported feeling more cohesive and productive, and, as a result, more successful in accomplishing their goals. Almost all the student participants reported wanting their classroom teacher to know about the events in their lives outside of school. The students also reported that much of their disruptive classroom behaviors increased in amount and intensity if they could get no help or understanding with their out-of-school problems.

<p> Building on Dr. Tschannen-Moran &amp; Dr. Gareis&rsquo; research into principal self-efficacy, as well as Dr. Dweck&rsquo;s work regarding growth mindset, this study explores the relationship between principals&rsquo; performance on the Pennsylvania Framework for Leadership evaluation tool and their corresponding self-reported degree of self-efficacy and growth mindset. Principals in one Pennsylvania County were included in the sample and asked to complete an electronic survey comprised of: (a) demographic questions, (b) performance evaluation data, (c) mindset scales, and (d) principal self-efficacy scales. The data analysis consisted of both a linear regression of principal performance on principals&rsquo; mindset, moral leadership self-efficacy, and instructional self-efficacy scores. Additionally, correlation matrices were employed to identify the presence and direction of relationships between self-efficacy levels and the degree of growth mindset reported by principals. </p><p> Results demonstrated a positive association between principals&rsquo; instructional self-efficacy reports and their overall performance evaluation. Alternatively, both growth mindset and moral leadership self-efficacy evidenced a negative association. There was no association reflected between growth mindset and either the overall self-efficacy measure, nor the sub-scale self-efficacy measures. A secondary relationship revealed a negative association between school performance profile (SPP) and growth mindset. This relationship held true in subsequent regression analyses.</p>

<p> Studies have been conducted on the effects of teacher-student interaction and student achievement. However, there is a need to examine the teacher-student interactions concerning at-risk students specifically the foster youth. This grounded-theory study examines the teacher-student interaction and the effects of social-emotional intelligence on the foster youth through qualitative and quantitative methods using the Foster Student Interaction and Social-Emotional Intelligence survey (FSI&amp;SEI) open-ended questions, interviews, and journals. A Southern California District educates approximately 500 foster students. This high school located in the urban district was chosen because they had the highest number of foster youth. The 15 participants who participated in the study consisted of a site administrator, a counselor, teachers, and foster parents. After collecting, the FSI&amp;SEI seven participants agreed to be interviewed. The overall findings of this study indicate that teacher awareness of who their foster students are, struggles foster students face, and intentional conversations regarding the whole child impact the foster student&rsquo;s social-emotional intelligence as well as their ability to form relationships with teachers.</p><p>

<p> As more opportunities abound for students to accelerate their learning during middle and high school, research is limited in the relationship between accelerated learning and the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents. This explanatory correlational research study provided additional empirical evidence of the relationship between accelerated studies, psychosocial adjustment, and the coping strategies adolescents utilize. Participants were 93 eighth to twelfth grade students enrolled in accelerated learning courses in a northwestern state in the United States. Students were administered instruments measuring their perceptions of: stress, life satisfaction, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, suicidal ideation, academic beliefs and task values, school climate, and coping strategies. Correlation coefficients determined relationships between psychosocial adjustment, age, number of accelerated learning program classes, gender and coping variables of students participating in accelerated learning programs. Results suggest that additional research is needed in the exploration of the relationship between a number of accelerated learning program classes adolescents participate in and their psychosocial adjustment. Gender had few significant relationships to other variables and grade level correlated with psychological factors, life satisfaction, motivation, school climate, and grade point average. There were statistically significant, strong to weak correlations amongst psychosocial adjustment variables; and in particular, an intricate association between psychological indicators of possible mental health issues, stress, life satisfaction, school functioning, age, and coping strategies.</p><p>

Substance abuse is the foremost health problem in the United States, with an estimated annual cost of over $400 billion and is linked to over 400,000 preventable deaths each year. Adolescents are among those abusing drugs and alcohol. Approximately one-half of high school students use alcohol and one-fourth smoke marijuana, and by their senior year of high school, over half will have used an illicit drug. Effective substance use interventions for young adults are important in preventing the progression toward other drug use disorders and harmful consequences of frequent drug use. Schools have been identified as a viable setting in which to conduct brief interventions to reduce adolescent substance use. However, a standard therapy for implementing motivational interventions in the school setting has not yet been established. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a motivational intervention on substance use in a school-based adolescent population and to test the hypotheses that motivational interviewing, compared to assessment only, would result in a reduction of substance use and an increase in each participant’s readiness to change. The proposed study utilized a randomized controlled design in which participants received one of two conditions, two 30-minute sessions of a motivational intervention or assessment only. Assessments were administered before and one month following the intervention. Results demonstrated that the intervention was effective in reducing daily cigarette use and symptoms of cigarette dependence for participants in the experimental group. These results are consistent with past research investigating the effectiveness of motivational interventions on reducing adolescent substance use, yet the current findings are unique because this is the first school-based motivational intervention delivered by school personnel to effectively reduce adolescent substance use. Results indicate that the current intervention could be implemented as a standard therapy for using motivational interventions to decrease adolescent substance use in the school setting.

The exchange of information between therapist and client has long been understood as an essential part of any therapeutic relationship; however, the perceptions of the client have often been overlooked in favor of the expert position of the therapist. Over the past several years research in family therapy has attempted to address this imbalance with methodologies that are grounded in the epistemological assumption that there are multiple realities and, as a result, considers the views of the client and therapist as equally valid. Spradley's Developmental Research Sequence (DRS), an open ended interview procedure designed for ethnographic studies, was used to study the perceptions of both client and therapist within the context of an Early Intervention Clinic. These perceptions emerged from 19 interviews conducted with three therapeutic systems that involved three families and three therapists. The interviews revealed eight primary topics of discussion that provided feedback to the therapeutic system in the form of identifying gaps of information that may exist between client and therapist. The results of this study suggest that there are differences in expectation and understanding that exist between members of the treatment system. Based on the result of this study, it was concluded that both therapist and client need to understand any differences in understanding and expectations that may exist within the therapeutic system. The results are discussed in terms of gaps of information that, if unaddressed, can inhibit the therapeutic process.

The purpose of this dissertation was threefold: To determine if parental involvement in monitoring mathematics homework of seventh grade Hispanic students improved their achievement, to assess the effects of parental homework monitoring on the students' self-esteem and to determine if the students' perceptions of their teachers, their parents and their own involvement in mathematics homework changed after the monitoring experience. A total of 28 families/31 students participated in the study. A pretest-posttest control group design was used. The experimental group subjects' parents received training in homework monitoring. The Computation section, Level 2 of the Mathematics subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventories and, a "Student Mathematics Homework Perception Scale" constructed by the researcher were used for pre and posttest measures of achievement, self-esteem and students' perceptions. The students' grades and the percentage of homework they completed and returned for the first three quarters were obtained from their mathematics teachers. Ten of the experimental group subjects' families were interviewed at the end of the study. Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between either the computation or the self-esteem posttest scores of the two groups. No significant differences were obtained for teachers' grades and the percentage of homework completed and returned. However, the grades and percentage of homework completed and returned by the experimental group showed a trend in the expected direction. A significant difference was found (p $<$.05) in the perception posttest scores of teacher involvement in mathematics homework. Significant negative correlations were found between parent level of education (p $<$.05) and self-esteem measures and between teachers' grades and self-esteem measures (p $<$.05) for the experimental group. The home interviews revealed: Positive feelings and sense of closer relationship between parents and students, a heightened sense of responsibility for mathematics homework by parents and students in their respective roles, and conflictual issues between parents and students in following the homework monitoring program. Educational implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

<p> This study examined peer victimization, specifically indirect peer victimization and cyber victimization, in a sample of 311 college fraternity and sorority students at a large, public university in the southwestern United States. Of specific focus was the relationship between peer victimization&mdash;both within fraternity and sorority groups and between fraternity and sorority groups and outside members&mdash;and co-occurring psychological stress (i.e., anxiety, depression, stress). The potential mediating roles of group identity and campus connectedness were also examined. This study utilized the social psychological theory of Social Identity Theory to predict the relationships between the aforementioned variables. Results indicated that a majority of college fraternity and sorority students (58%) have experienced at least one instance of indirect peer victimization since being initiated into their respective organization. Collectively, the majority of respondents reported low levels of peer victimization and high levels of group identity and campus connectedness. As hypothesized, peer victimization was significantly and positively correlated with stress. In addition, higher ratings of within-group peer victimization were related to lower ratings of group identity. However, ratings of between-group peer victimization were not significantly related to ratings of group identity, which did not support the hypothesis that there would be a significant and positive correlation between the two. </p><p> It was also found that campus connectedness mediated the relationship between peer victimization and Stress. Specifically, campus connectedness served as a protective factor from stress. Alternately, group identity did not protect against stress. Lastly, a specific subgroup of participants was identified as experiencing significantly high levels of peer victimization. Participants designated as "Victims" were significantly more likely to report ethnic minority status, be male, and be a fifth-year college student. Moreover, these students reported significantly higher levels of stress, and lower levels of group identity and campus connectedness. The implications of these findings for university and educational settings are discussed.</p>