Increasing attention is being given to the role of a positive school interpersonal climate in children's school functioning and social-emotional development. Children's perceptions are commonly used ...to measure the interpersonal school climate, but the individual and contextual characteristics that contribute to variation in children's perceptions remain unclear. This study examines the direct and interactive effects of multiple individual child characteristics and school-level interpersonal climate on elementary schoolchildren's perceptions of negative interpersonal climate and feeling afraid at school. Demographic, social-cognitive, behavioral, and academic characteristics are examined at the individual level. School context variables capturing interpersonal climate include school-level aggregated children's perceptions of negative climate and teacher perceptions of student respect, safety and teacher affiliation. Data come from 4,016 4th graders from 83 public elementary schools. At the child level, results indicate that children's empathy, victimization, and academic competence explained significant variation in at least 1 of the 2 outcomes in the expected direction. Girls also reported feeling more afraid. The associations for Black children between victimization and climate and behavioral problems and climate were weaker. For Hispanic children, the association was weaker between academic competence and feeling afraid and stronger between engagement and feeling afraid. At the school level, aggregated children's perceptions of climate were most strongly associated with both outcomes. Teacher affiliation and teacher-rated student respect-safety moderated the association between engagement and children's perceptions of negative interpersonal climate. These interactions are discussed in relation to existing theory and research, as are implications for policy and future research.
A focus on intraindividual change and person-specific pathways is a necessary starting point for developmental science inquiries. However, research often relies on ergodicity-based assumptions about ...group averages and other variable-centered approaches. Using ideas associated with relational developmental systems metatheory, such as the Bornstein Specificity Principle, we re-examine the ergodicity assumption using Executive Functioning (EF) data from the Measures and Methods Across the Developmental Continuum Project. Participants from Grades 4 to 12 (M age = 14.60) completed three behavioral EF tasks (i.e., working memory, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility). The final analytic sample included 64 participants who provided data on 30 measurement occasions. Intraindividual and interindividual EF latent constructs appeared to be different, and we identified a wide range of person-specific EF trajectories. These findings challenge the ergodicity assumption framing variable- and group-oriented approaches to individual development. This study demonstrates the feasibility of collecting intensive longitudinal data to understand youth development on an individual level as an alternative to immediate data aggregation and as means to illuminate the use of the specificity principle in understanding human development and in applications pertinent to enhancing the lives of diverse youth across specific times and places in their specific developmental pathways.
•Group-based findings may not apply equally well to all individuals in the group.•We found different within- and between-person executive functioning structures.•Children and adolescents demonstrated meaningful person-specific fluctuations.
Objective: Several studies have documented a range of adjustment problems experienced by peer victimized adolescents, however there has been less research exploring potential sources of support that ...may offset the negative impact of victimization. The current study explored the association among peer victimization, adjustment problems, connectedness, and parent engagement with the goal of identifying buffers of the associations between physical and relational victimization and adolescents' adjustment problems. Method: Students' (N = 28,104) from 58 high schools self-reported experiences of peer victimization. Self-report measures also assessed connectedness (student connectedness, teacher connectedness), parent engagement, and adjustment problems (internalizing problems, sleep problems, stress problems). Results: Regression analyses indicated that both forms of victimization were associated with adjustment problems across all grades, genders, and races. Interpersonal connectedness was associated with fewer adjustment problems. Despite several statistically significant interactions involving victimization and connection, only 2 interactions demonstrated buffering effects. Specifically, student connectedness was found to attenuate internalizing problems among relationally victimized girls, whereas parent engagement was associated with reduced internalizing problems among relationally victimized boys. Conclusions: Study findings highlight the potential protective influences of connection and parent engagement in the transactional relationship between victimization and adjustment problems.
This article synthesizes knowledge on the role of relationships and key macroand micro-contexts - poverty, racism, families, communities, schools, and peers - in supporting and/or undermining the ...healthy development of children and youth, using a relational developmental systems framework. Relationships with parents, siblings, peers, caregivers, and teachers are explored in the context of early care and childhood settings, schools, classrooms, and school-based interventions. Additional contextual factors include; chronic stress, institutionalized racism, stereotype threat, and racial identity. A companion article focuses on how the human brain develops, and the major constructs that define human development, the constructive nature of development, and the opportunities for resilience. Human development occurs through reciprocal coactions between the individual and their contexts and culture, with relationships as the key drivers. Relationships and contexts, along with how children appraise and interpret them, can be risks and assets for healthy learning and development, and their influence can be seen across generations and can produce intra- as well as intergenerational assets and risks. This knowledge about the individual's responsiveness to context and experience has both positive and negative implications across early childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. Sensitive periods for brain growth and development are considered within the contextual factors that influence development including; parental responsiveness and attunement, intentional skill development, mindfulness, reciprocal interactions, adversity, trauma, and enriching opportunities. The accumulated knowledge on human development and the power of context and culture can inform child-serving systems that support positive adaptations, resilience, learning, health, and well-being.
Aggression toward teachers is linked to burnout and disengagement from teaching, but a positive school climate may reduce aggression and associated teacher distress. Using authoritative school ...climate theory, the study examined whether schools with high disciplinary structure and student support were associated with less aggression and less distress. The sample of 9,134 teachers in 389 middle schools came from the Virginia Secondary School Climate Survey, a statewide survey administered to all public schools with 7th and 8th grade enrollment. The majority of teachers (75%) were female. More than half (53%) reported that they had more than 10 years of teaching experience; 23% reported 6 to 10 years; 24% reported 1 to 5 years. Students reported on the degree to which their schools were structured and supportive. Teachers reported on their experiences of aggression by students, their level of distress, and their feelings of safety. Staff-related infractions computed from Department of Education records were also used. Multilevel modeling revealed that teachers in authoritative schools experienced less aggression and felt safer and less distressed. Lower aggression by students mediated the association between more authoritative schools and lower distress such that more structured and supportive schools had greater teacher safety and, in turn, less distress. The findings support the idea that more structured and supportive schools relate to greater safety for teachers and, in turn, less distress. Research limitations and implications for practice are discussed.
This article synthesizes foundational knowledge from multiple scientific disciplines regarding how humans develop in context. Major constructs that define human development are integrated into a ...developmental system framework, this includes--epigenetics, neural malleability and plasticity, integrated complex skill development and learning, human variability, relationships and attachment, self-regulation, science of learning, and dynamics of stress, adversity and resilience. Specific attention is given to relational patterns, attunement, cognitive flexibility, executive function, working memory, sociocultural context, constructive development, self-organization, dynamic skill development, neural integration, relational pattern making, and adverse childhood experiences. A companion article focuses on individual-context relations, including the role of human relationships as key drivers of development, how social and cultural contexts support and/or undermine individual development, and the dynamic, idiographic developmental pathways that result from mutually influential individual-context relations across the life span. An understanding of the holistic, self-constructive character of development and interconnectedness between individuals and their physical, social, and cultural contexts offers a transformational opportunity to study and influence the children's trajectories. Woven throughout is the convergence of the science of learning -- constructive developmental web, foundational skills, mindsets (sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and growth mindset), prior knowledge and experience, motivational systems (intrinsic motivation, achievement motivation, and the Belief-Control-Expectancy Framework), metacognition, conditions for learning , cultural responsiveness and competence, and instructional and curricular design- and its importance in supporting in integrative framework for children's development. This scientific understanding of development opens pathways for new, creative approaches that have the potential to solve seemingly intractable learning and social problems.
The present study examines the psychometric properties of a student-reported measure of school quality, the CFS Conditions for Learning Survey, to examine its utility as a cross-national comparative ...measure to evaluate UNICEF's Child Friendly Schools initiative. Factor analyses conducted on data from fifth- and sixth-grade students in 68 schools across the Philippines, Nicaragua, and South Africa revealed a core set of items that loaded highly onto each of the three dimensions of the CFS Conditions for Learning survey across all three countries. Formal tests established measurement invariance for a subset of these items, indicating that they were free from methodological bias across countries. However, meaningful differences in the country-specific structure and substantive interpretation of school quality were also detected. The results suggest that items in the CFS Conditions for Learning survey can be used to create both reliable cross-national and country-specific indicators of school quality and provide a blueprint for future psychometric work in the field of comparative child and family policy.
The purpose of this study was to investigate within- and between-person associations between sleep and subsequent goal setting in adolescents. We conducted an intensive repeated measures longitudinal ...study to assess intra- and inter-individual associations between sleep and goal setting and potential moderators of such associations. Thirty-nine seventh through 12th graders reported on their sleep quality and propensity to set goals in their daily lives several times per week for approximately four months. We used a combination of multilevel modeling with time-varying covariates and centering techniques to partition within- and between-person variance. We found significant and positive associations between sleep and goal setting within individuals, but no such associations between individuals. That is, students were more likely to set goals for their work after getting a good night's sleep relative to their own average sleep quality, but getting good sleep on average relative to other individuals showed no association with average goal setting. These relationships were not moderated by participant age, gender, or sociodemographic status as indexed by maternal education. Differences in average sleep between adolescents matters less for their propensity to set goals than whether they experienced better- or worse-than-usual sleep the previous night given their own average. This finding represents the first evidence documenting effects of sleep on goal setting, which is an important psychological precursor to many youth behavioral and achievement outcomes. Our findings highlight the individuality of sleep needs and point to new directions for sleep-related practice and policy aimed at youth.
Pour favoriser la participation des jeunes à la vie civique, il nous faut comprendre les facteurs individuels et contextuels qui déterminent leur engagement dans les domaines civique et politique. ...Cette étude illustre les rapports entre les caractéristiques personnelles des jeunes, le contexte proximal et national dans lequel ils évoluent et leur participation à la vie politique. L’article, qui utilise les données extraites d’une enquête effectuée auprès de 632 élèves de quatre lycées à forte diversité ethnique de la région parisienne, se fonde essentiellement sur celles provenant des 245 participants en âge de voter. Nous y examinons les facteurs relevant du contexte individuel, proximal et national susceptible d’influencer l’engagement des jeunes en utilisant trois indices de participation politique et civique : l’engagement dans des activités politiques, la participation à des mouvements sociaux et la participation non conventionnelle. Il ressort des résultats que les jeunes qui possèdent de plus grandes connaissances dans le domaine politique ont plus de chances de participer à des activités politiques conventionnelles. Les variations dans deux des trois indices s’expliquent aussi par le genre et l’appartenance ethnique. Le rapport étroit révélé entre les contextes de l’école et des pairs et chaque type d’engagement souligne l’importance de l’éducation civique, de l’efficacité collective à l’école et d’un climat de classe ouvert favorisant la discussion dans la promotion de la participation politique des jeunes adultes.
To encourage youth’s involvement in civic life, we need to understand the individual and contextual factors that shape their involvement with civic and political issues. This study illustrates how youths’ individual characteristics and their interactions with proximal and national contexts relate to their participation in political life. Using survey data collected from 632 students from four ethnically diverse high schools in the Paris region, this paper focuses on data from 245 participants who were of voting age. We examine individual, proximal, and national context factors that may affect youth’s involvement using three indices of political and civic engagement: Commitment to Political Activities, Social Movement Participation, and Unconventional Participation. Results showed that youth with greater political knowledge were more likely to engage in Conventional Political Activities. Gender and race/ethnicity also explained some variation in two of the three indices. School and peer contexts were strongly related to each type of engagement, underscoring the importance of citizenship education, collective school efficacy, and open classroom climate for discussion in promoting young adults’ political participation.
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