Journal of Child and Youth Development

Editorial

Wassilis Kassis, Beate Wischer — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Journal of Child and Youth Development (JCYD), an international, online, open access, peer reviewed journal that will encompass all aspects of personal and social development in childhood and adolescence. While the focus will be on peer-review articles, the journal will consider additional contributions that are scientifically sound and within its scope.

Contextual Factors Related to School Engagement and Resilience

Michael Ungar, Linda Liebenberg — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A study was conducted to assess risk, resilience and service use factors, including school engagement, among 497 13-21 year olds who were users of multiple services such as child welfare, mental health, youth corrections, outreach services for homeless youth, and, when in school, special educational services available outside the classroom. As hypothesized, factors associated with individual, relational and community
aspects of resilience like cultural adherence and fair treatment in one's community were more strongly related to school engagement than individual or relational (family) factors.
However, higher rates of service use among youth with complex needs did not result in higher levels of school engagement as was expected. A discussion is included of the role service providers play encouraging youth to engage at school as well as the possibility that service providers who coerce youth to attend school may inadvertently cause young people to resist school attendance and disengage.

Evaluating resilience-based programs for schools using a systematic consultative review

Angie Hart, Becky Heaver — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Resilient approaches to working in school contexts take many different forms. This makes them difficult to evaluate, copy and compare. Conventional academic literature reviews of these approaches are often unable to deal with the complexity of the interventions in a way that leads to a meaningful comparative appraisal. Further, they rarely
summarise and critique the literature in a way that is of practical use to people actually wishing to learn how to intervene in an educational context, such as parents and
practitioners. This includes teachers and classroom assistants, who can experience reviews as frustrating, difficult to digest and hard to learn from. Applying findings to their own particular settings, without precisely replicating the approach described, presents serious challenges to them. The aim of this paper is to explain how and why school-based
resilience approaches for young people aged 12-18 do (or do not) work in particular contexts, holding in mind the parents and practitioners who engage with young people on a daily basis, and whom we consulted in the empirical element of our work, as our audience.
Further, we attempt to present the results in a way that answer parents’ and practitioners’ most commonly asked questions about how best to work with young people using
resilience-based approaches. The review is part of a broader study looking more generally at resilience-based interventions for this age group and young adults. We offer a critical overview of approaches and techniques that might best support those young people who need them the most.

Preventing depression, which story does the evidence tell?

Sara Hjulstad Bækkerud, Odin Hjemdal, Roger Hagen — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Depression implies both an individual suffering and high financial costs for society. Even though evidence shows that some forms of psychological treatment for depression could be effective, there is still a large potential for improvement because a significant proportion of the patients in treatment studies do not convalesce and many patients that do experience relapses at follow up. Lately the focus on preventing depression has increased and the present paper is a review of empirical studies related to prevention of depression among children and adolescents. Collectively the evidence points to larger effect sizes for targeted intervention programs rather than universal programs, both measured at post-treatment and at follow-up. There are also better results for interventions implemented by psychologists than for interventions implemented by teachers and other professions.
Targeted programs do not have the effects one would expect, and generally the effects of these interventions seem short lived. Possible reasons for these results are discussed and further directions for research of this field are suggested. It is essential that future work on the prevention of depression among children and adolescents is based on evidence and empirical findings.

Young Children’s Self-Regulated Learning: What Does it Look Like in the Classroom?

Uta Wagener — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This article argues that self-regulated learning (SRL) in the classroom is an inherently social, dynamic, and complex process and that it is crucial to discuss SRL with regard to concrete practices and with a focus on what children actually do and say in classrooms. Current theoretical views on SRL are presented and consensual as well as conflicting aspects are identified. It presents a qualitative study of SRL in first and second grade children using qualitative triangulation of observation and interview. An example from a video observation in this study shows a fine-grained view of a process of SRL. The example which is analysed in detail shows a six-year old first grade student sitting at a table with other children and working on a mathematics task over a period of 30 minutes. In the analysis it becomes evident that this boy is self-regulating continuously and that several processes of complex self-regulation go hand in hand and are interwoven in this day-to-day learning episode. Multiple goals, social goals as well as learning goals are handled and balanced. With reference to the example presented, it is argued that SRL is always social, ubiquitous, not necessarily academically effective, and at times implicit.

Call for Submissions – Deadline October 31st, 2013

Jennifer White, Wassilis Kassis — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Special Issue on Children and Youth Suicide Prevention: Research, Policy, and Practice