abstract: To explore subtypes of social withdrawal in different sociocultural contexts, concurrent social, school, and academic correlates of shyness and unsociability were examined in 93 urban (Mage = 14.05, SD = 0.86 years) and 136 rural (Mage = 14.39, SD = 0.69 years) seventh and eighth graders from Liaoning, China. Adolescents' shyness and unsociability were assessed with self-, peers’, and teachers’ reports. Peer-group relationships (acceptance, rejection, and exclusion) were obtained from peer nominations. Adolescents reported perceived friendship quality (positive friendship quality, conflict and betrayal) and school attitudes (school liking and avoidance). Teachers rated students' academic engagement and performance. Academic achievement (exam grades) also was obtained from school records. According to factor and correlational analyses, shyness and unsociability emerged as distinct, but positively related, constructs, within each informant. Cross-informant agreements on shyness and unsociability were low to moderate, especially between teachers' and self- or peers' reports. Urban-rural differences were expected in the associations of shyness, but not of unsociability, with the correlates, but the hypotheses were not supported with multiple-group (urban vs. rural) path models. In the combined (urban and rural) sample, shyness was associated with negative peer relationships, low friendship quality, and negative school attitudes (for self- but not peer-reported shyness), but was unrelated to academic correlates. Self-reported unsociability related negatively to positive friendship quality and positively to academic achievement, but was unrelated to other adjustment correlates. Peer-reported unsociability, however, was associated with negative peer relationships, less positive friendship quality, low school liking, low academic performance, and low academic achievement. The study was an initial step towards understanding subtypes of social withdrawal and adjustment correlates in various domains among Chinese adolescents living in different social contexts. The lack of urban-rural differences was not consistent with the contextual-development theory. Like their Western peers, shy Chinese adolescents were at risk for relational and school adjustment problems, but they did not have academic difficulties. Unsociable Chinese adolescents also tended to have poor adjustment at school, including relational problems with peers and friends, negative school attitudes, and academic difficulties, but only when they were perceived as unsociable by peers, rather than themselves. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Family and Human Development 2016

As infrações cometidas por adolescentes despertam interesse e preocupação. A maioria dos estudos realizados sobre o tema direciona-se a aspectos relacionados à família. Em termos de proporção, outras instituições de socialização dos adolescentes, tais como a escola e os pares, são menos investigadas. Nesse sentido, interessa a este trabalho investigar os aspectos escolares atinentes à problemática no contexto nacional, uma vez que investigações internacionais recentes demonstram que a conduta delituosa apresenta forte associação com a desadaptação às exigências e às expectativas do meio escolar, sendo essa relação, na adolescência, mais forte que a existente com os problemas na família. Os objetivos da pesquisa foram: 1) identificar quais variáveis encontram-se associadas ao comportamento infracional em adolescentes, e 2) verificar de que modo as variáveis associadas contribuem para o aparecimento/manutenção do comportamento infracional, no quadro da Teoria da Regulação Social e Pessoal da Conduta Divergente de Marc LeBlanc. Para a coleta de dados, procedeu-se à aplicação da Escala Escola do Inventário MASPAQ (Measuring Adolescent Social and Personal Adaptation) e de um questionário de caracterização socioeconômica. Participaram da presente pesquisa 60 adolescentes, divididos em dois grupos, constituídos, respectivamente, por 30 adolescentes infratores (GI) e 30 não infratores (GNI). Estes grupos foram subdivididos também em outros dois, compostos cada um por 15 participantes: adolescentes infratores evadidos da escola (GI-Evadidos); adolescentes infratores estudantes (GI-Estudantes); adolescentes não infratores evadidos (GNI-Evadidos); e adolescentes não infratores estudantes (GNI-Estudantes). Para LeBlanc, a Regulação Escolar se ancora sobre três mecanismos complementares: Desempenho, Vínculo com a escola e Constrangimentos escolares. Cada uma dessas condições é explorada pelo instrumento empregado, o que possibilita avaliar o nível de adaptação do aluno e como se dá a regulação da conduta pela escola. Em síntese, os resultados possibilitaram tanto uma compreensão geral do sistema que regula o comportamento dos adolescentes na escola, quanto específica, concernindo a cada aspecto avaliado nas diferentes dimensões postuladas no quadro da Teoria. As experiências escolares se mostraram nitidamente distintas entre os grupos e foi possível identificar as fragilidades ou pontos fortes de cada um. A quase totalidade das diferenças estatisticamente significativas incidiu nas comparações entre os grupos GI-Evadidos e GI-Estudantes, bem como entre os Grupos GI-Evadidos e GNI-Estudantes. Denotou-se que os adolescentes infratores evadidos (GI-Evadidos) possuem mais problemas escolares em comparação aos outros três grupos investigados; ao passo que os adolescentes não infratores estudantes (GNIEstudantes) demonstraram os melhores resultados, de modo a evidenciar que uma experiência educacional mais positiva concorre para a boa vinculação escolar e ausência de conduta contrária à lei. A presente investigação também lançou pistas para o desenvolvimento de intervenções dirigidas a fatores escolares, na medida em que as evidências indicaram quão fundamental é a experiência educacional, no sentido de funcionar como risco ou como proteção à conduta infracional na adolescência. / The infractions committed by teenagers have caused interest and concern.Most studies on the subject focus only on issues related to the family. Thus, other institutions of socialization of adolescents, such as school and peers, are not much investigated. In that sense, this work is interested to study the aspects related to school in the national context, since international recent research has shown that juvenile delinquency is strongly associated with maladjustment to the demands and expectations of the school environment, being this relation stronger than the relation with family problems. This research objectives were: 1) identify which variables are associated to the criminal teenagers behavior, and 2) verify in which way the associated variables contribute for the criminal behavior emersion/maintenance, under de perspective of Personal and Social Control Behavior Theory by Marc LeBlanc. The School Scale of MASPAQ Inventory (Measuring Adolescent Social and Personal Adaptation) and a questionnaire of socioeconomic characterization were used of the data collection. 60 adolescents participated in this research and they were divided in two groups, that were formed, respectively, by 30 adjudicated adolescents (GI) and 30 non-adjudicated adolescents (GNI). These groups were also subdivided in other two groups, each one was formed by 15 participants: adjudicated adolescents who were evaded from school (GI-Evaded); adjudicated adolescents students (GI-Students); non-adjudicated evaded adolescents (GNI-Evaded); and non-adjudicated adolescents students (GNI-Students). For Le Blanc, the School Control is based on three complementary mechanisms: academic performance, school bonding and constraints. Each of these conditions is analyzed in its various aspects by MASPAQ, which enables to evaluate the student\'s level of adaptation and how the control of conduct is made by the school. In short, the results enabled as far as a general comprehension about the system that adjust the adolescents behavior in school, and a specific comprehension, regarding each aspect evaluated in different dimensions claimed in the Theory frame. The scholar experiences show themselves clearly distinct among the groups and it was possible to identify the weaknesses or strong points of each one of them. The nearly totality of the statistically significant differences fell on the comparisons between the GI-Evaded and GI-Students groups, as well as those between GI-Evaded and GNI-Students groups, denoting that the evaded infriging teenagers (GI-Evaded) showed most problems in comparison on others groups; while non-adjudicated adolescents students (GNI-Students) showed the best results, in order to show that a more positive educational experience contributes to the good school and no binding of conduct contrary to the law. Moreover, the current investigation threw clues for the development of intervention towards scholar factors, insofar as the evidences pointed how elemental the educational experience is, in the sense of working as a risk or as a criminal behavior protection in adolescence.

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The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations among Taiwanese elementary school children's effortful control, social relationships and their adjustment at school. Data were gathered on 407 third- to sixth-grade children (81 third graders, 79 fourth graders, 116 fifth graders, and 131 sixth graders) attending three low- to middle-class public elementary schools in Taipei County, Taiwan. Participating children as well as their parents, teachers, and peers provided questionnaire and peer sociometric data. Two main research questions were addressed: a) whether there were direct relations among children's effortful control, social relationships, and adjustment at school; b) whether social relationships mediate the relations between children's effortful control and their adjustment at school. Additionally, two alternative models were tested to evaluate the likelihood of other conceptual considerations. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and examine the direct and meditational relations among the study constructs. As expectation, findings of this study provided illuminating evidence for the direct effects of effortful control on children's adjustment at school. Moreover, the role of teacher-child relationships as a mediator in the pathways from effortful control to children's adjustment at school (i.e., social behavior, school attitudes, and academic adjustment) was strongly supported. Consistent with the hypotheses, the meditational effects of peer relationships were also clearly supported in the pathways from effortful control to social behavior as well as school attitudes. However, inconsistent with the hypothesis, there is no evidence of mediating effect of peer relationships by which effortful control contribute to academic adjustment. Finally, to compare with the alternative models, the hypothesized model was ranked as the best fit model to the given data. In general, the current study suggested that children's self-regulatory capabilities (i.e., effortful control) influence their adjustment at school both directly and indirectly through their relationships with teachers and peers. It contributes to the literature of children's school adjustment by examining the effects of both dispositional self-regulation and social relationships. It is also one of the first studies to examine how teacher-child relationships and peer relationships are linked to multiple aspects of children's adjustment at school. For practical implications, it is critical to provide parents, caregivers, and teachers with specific strategies and techniques to support the development of effortful control. The findings of the study also call for a need to develop preventive interventions or training programs focusing on the development of positive classroom relationships.

This study identifies developmental processes underlying the relationship between school bullying and physical aggression in emergent adulthood. The data are drawn from the �Life at School� project, a longitudinal study of schooling, socio-emotional functioning, and bullying in a sample of young people living in the Australian Capital Territory. This study consists of three waves of self-report data collected from 88 females and 63 males (N=151) during primary school (Time 1), high school (Time 2) and emerging adulthood (Time 3). The study extends earlier analyses to consider the relative significance of distal functioning and the proximal effects of heavy drinking and work/study roles during the transition to emerging adulthood in shaping pathways from school bullying to adult aggression. Results showed that bullying in either primary school or high school, and being male, increased the risk of adult aggression. Once bullying and sex were controlled, socio-emotional functioning (including emotion/behaviour regulation and school adjustment) did not make unique contributions to the prediction of adult aggression. To further investigate the effects of bullying, four bully trajectory groups were identified from children�s reports: a non-bully group, a child-limited group (bullying during primary school only), an adolescent-onset group (taking up bullying during high school), and a persistent group (bullying during both primary and high school). Moderated regression showed that a) frequent drinking at Time 3 significantly increased aggression only for the persistent bully group, and b) participation in university study, in comparison with being in the workforce, was significantly associated with lower levels of aggression only for persistent and adolescent-onset bullies. That is, both the past and present were important, but their effects only became apparent when considered in combination. Given the pivotal significance of drinking and university participation for continuity of aggression, the second analysis stage used path analyses were used to explore the chains of events leading to these adult variables, and subsequent aggression. First, adaptive emotion regulation during high school directly predicted less frequent adult drinking, while continuity in such adaptive regulation between primary and high school was mediated by continuity in positive school connectedness. Second, greater parental education increased the likelihood that young people would attend university, both directly, and indirectly by increasing academic functioning during high school. In contrast, childhood impulsivity was directly related to a decreased likelihood of university participation and, in turn, to more frequent adult aggression. The final issue examined was the extent to which these mediated pathways from childhood were the same or different across the four bully trajectory groups. Descriptive comparisons indicated that pathways to drinking and work/study role were consistent across the four groups, with the partial exception of the adolescent-onset bullies. The analyses show that the expression of bullying and adult physical aggression is flexible, open at each stage of development to influence from personal resources (e.g., capacity for adaptive shame management), social resources (e.g., parental education), and changing institutional settings, through for example the cultural and behavioural norms that characterise the university, workplace, and drinking environments and which constrain aggressive behaviour or promote a sense of future orientation. Patterns of adult aggressive behaviours are thus shaped not just by past bullying, but by the subtle interplay of emergent adult settings and experiences, socio-emotional functioning in school contexts, and family social capital.