Emotion-related socialization in the classroom: Considering the roles of teachers, peers, and the classroom context

Positive student-teacher relationships and exclusionary discipline practices

Teacher-student relationships are beneficial for students and especially important in the middle school context. Suspensions are critical to reduce as it can be detrimental to the educational trajectory of students, particularly for marginalized students in underfunded schools. This study looked at the relations between teacher-student relationships and suspensions across the academic year in a sample of students (N = 541) and teachers (N = 51) in two urban school districts in the Midwest. A brief measure of teachers' perceptions of relationships with students completed in the fall of the academic year predicted the odds of receiving in-school suspension (ISS; odds ratio [OR] = 0.65) and out-of-school suspension (OSS; OR = 0.72) by the end of the school year. Student reports of the relationships were also associated with ISS (OR = 0.94), but not OSS. On average, teachers' report on the scale improved over the course of the school year (d = 0.11); however, student report of the relationships worsened (d = 0.30). The difference in the student report of the relationships from fall to spring was also associated with the odds of receiving ISS and OSS (ORs = 0.94). These findings suggest that student and teacher perceptions together are associated with harsh discipline practices that can negatively impact students' developmental trajectories. Relationships can change but direct action is necessary to develop, maintain, and repair relationships during the academic year.

Friend influence and susceptibility to influence on emotions towards math: The role of adolescent temperament

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Peer relationships during adolescence play an important role in shaping academic outcomes. The present study examined friend influences on emotions towards math, as well as the role of temperament in these influences.

SAMPLE

The sample consisted of 350 Finnish students (mean age 13.29 years; 64% girls) who were involved in stable friendship dyads from fall to spring of Grade 7.

METHODS

In this two-wave study, information on adolescents' temperament (i.e., negative emotionality, extraversion, effortful control) and on seven emotions towards math (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and boredom) was collected during grade 7. The data were analysed using longitudinal actor-partner interdependence models.

RESULTS

The results showed that friends resembled each other in all the investigated math-related emotions. Furthermore, over and above these initial similarities, friends mutually influenced each other's math-related enjoyment and anger towards math. Students characterized by higher negative emotionality also influenced their friends with lower levels of negative emotionality towards an increase in math-related anger and a lack of effortful control made adolescents more susceptible to friend influence over math-related shame and anxiety.

CONCLUSION

Our findings demonstrate that friends influence each other over time in math-related enjoyment and frustration. Furthermore, high negative emotionality may make adolescents more influential over their friends' math-related anger and a lack of effortful control may make adolescents more susceptible to friend influence over math-related shame and anxiety. Thus, the current findings have implications for how peer relations may impact individual outcomes in mathematics, for better or worse.

How peer relationships affect academic achievement among junior high school students: The chain mediating roles of learning motivation and learning engagement

BACKGROUND

Despite the recognition of the impact of peer relationships, learning motivation, and learning engagement on academic achievement, there is still a gap in understanding the specific mechanisms through which peer relationships impact academic achievement via learning motivation and learning engagement.

METHODS

This study aims to investigate how peer relationships affect junior high school students' academic achievement through the chain mediating roles of learning motivation and learning engagement, employing the self-system model of motivational development as the theoretical framework. In January 2024, 717 participants were selected from two middle schools in eastern China (mean age = 13.49 years, SD = 0.5). The data analysis in this study was performed using the structural equation model (SEM) in AMOS 24.0 and SPSS 24.0.

RESULTS

The results showed that peer relationships were directly and significantly related to junior high school students' academic achievement, and that peer relationships were indirectly and positively related to junior high school students' academic achievement via learning motivation and learning engagement respectively. The results also revealed a significant indirect and positive relationship between peer relationships and junior high school students' academic achievement, mediated by the sequential mediating roles of learning motivation and learning engagement. Moreover, the path "peer relationship→learning motivation→academic achievement" has the strongest indirect effect.

CONCLUSION

For junior high school students to achieve academic success, the appropriate interventions should be implemented to improve peer relationships, learning motivation, and learning engagement.

The Saturation- and Dose-Dependent Effects of a Teen Sexual Harassment Prevention Program: Findings from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Using a randomized controlled trial, we investigated changes in both sexual harassment (SH) perpetration and victimization of 2104 middle school students in New York City who received divergent saturation and dosage levels of Shifting Boundaries, an SH prevention program, which was represented by the length of the program. We assessed the saturation effect of the program by comparing the outcomes across respondents from 26 schools in which there were varying percentages of students enrolled in the program. The data suggested that, overall, the program was effective in reducing sexual harassment victimization but achieved a null effect against respondents' SH perpetration and that neither the length nor the school-saturation level of the program exerted a significant effect on SH perpetration. Although the data indicated a significant difference in SH victimization between the treatment and control group, when comparing subgroups who received treatment with divergent saturation and dosage levels, no statistically significant difference was identified. Our results suggested that the program effect was not contingent on the portion of students in a school who enrolled in the program, nor was it contingent on the dosage.

Psychological wellbeing in Chinese university students: insights into the influences of academic self-concept, teacher support, and student engagement

Objective

This study investigates the complex interplay between academic self-concept, teacher support, student engagement, and psychological wellbeing among Chinese university students. We aimed to elucidate the mediating role of student engagement in these relationships.

Methods

A sample of 597 Chinese undergraduate students from diverse universities participated in the study. We employed structured questionnaires to assess academic self-concept, teacher support, student engagement, and psychological wellbeing. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test our hypothesized model.

Results

Structural equation modeling indicated that the partial mediation model, which considered both direct and indirect effects, outperformed full mediation and direct effect models. Student engagement significantly mediated the relationships between academic self-concept, teacher support, and psychological wellbeing. Importantly, teacher support demonstrated a direct impact on psychological wellbeing, even when accounting for the mediating role of student engagement.

Conclusion

This study underscores the pivotal role of student engagement as a mediator in the relationship between academic self-concept, teacher support, and psychological wellbeing among Chinese university students. While student engagement plays a substantial mediating role, our findings also recognize the persistent direct influence of teacher support on psychological wellbeing. These insights have implications for educators and policymakers aiming to enhance the wellbeing of university students by fostering positive academic self-concept and teacher support while recognizing the importance of student engagement.

Peers' Emotionality and Children's Academic Achievement in Second Grade: Testing the Moderating Role of Children's Behavioral Self-Regulation

Although there is interest in the role of peers in children's schooling experiences, few researchers have examined associations and related underlying processes between peers' emotionality, an aspect of temperament, and children's academic achievement. This study evaluated whether target children's (N = 260) own self-regulation, assessed with two behavioral measures, served a moderating function for associations between peers' emotionality and children's own academic achievement in second grade. There was a positive association between peers' positive emotionality and reading scores for children with higher self-regulation. Peers' negative emotionality was negatively related to target children's reading scores, particularly for children with higher self-regulation levels, but was unrelated to math scores. Peers' positive and negative emotionality did not predict math scores, and there was no strong evidence for the moderating role of target children's self-regulation in this association. This study highlights the potential role of children's self-regulation in modulating peer effects on academic achievement, particularly reading.

Inter-brain coupling reflects disciplinary differences in real-world classroom learning

The classroom is the primary site for learning. A vital feature of classroom learning is the division of educational content into various disciplines. While disciplinary differences could substantially influence the learning process toward success, little is known about the neural mechanism underlying successful disciplinary learning. In the present study, wearable EEG devices were used to record a group of high school students during their classes of a soft (Chinese) and a hard (Math) discipline throughout one semester. Inter-brain coupling analysis was conducted to characterize students' classroom learning process. The students with higher scores in the Math final exam were found to have stronger inter-brain couplings to the class (i.e., all the other classmates), whereas the students with higher scores in Chinese were found to have stronger inter-brain couplings to the top students in the class. These differences in inter-brain couplings were also reflected in distinct dominant frequencies for the two disciplines. Our results illustrate disciplinary differences in the classroom learning from an inter-brain perspective, suggesting that an individual's inter-brain coupling to the class and to the top students could serve as potential neural correlates for successful learning in hard and soft disciplines correspondingly.

Early Childhood Education Teacher Workforce: Stress in Relation to Identity and Choices

The early childhood education teacher workforce is consistently relied upon to bolster children's academic and socioemotional development in preparation for kindergarten and long-term outcomes. This is especially true of children who, historically overlooked and marginalized, are labeled "at risk." While research has focused on pervasive stressors as obstacles to these classroom professionals (e.g., teacher/teaching stress, curricular mandates, quality assessments, COVID-19), there is less research on stress in relation to the formation of teacher identity; specifically, how stress contributes to and detracts from the formation of a teacher's micro-identity, and how negative impacts of stress to the micro-identity may contribute to teachers' decisions to leave the field. Although once considered to be one of the fastest growing industries, The Great Resignation, as it has come to be known, estimates up to 25-30% of the workforce leave annually. To better understand the choices teachers make to leave the profession, the current study examined the influence of stress on teachers' microidentity by centering the voices of six Head Start teachers. Implementing a qualitative design, this investigation asked (a) Who are the Head Start teachers in the workforce today? (b) What are the particular stressors with which they contend? (c) How does the micro-identity of these teachers change as a result of stress, and what are the potential choices that follow? Results and findings indicated that Head Start teachers experience (1) stress as reality, (2) stress-shaped identities, and (3) identity-mediated choice. Implications and insights are discussed.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10643-023-01468-w.

Disruption to Education During COVID-19: School Nonacademic Factors Are Associated with Children's Mental Health

OBJECTIVE

Few studies have examined aspects of the school environment, beyond modality, as contributors to child and youth mental health during the coronavirus pandemic. We investigated associations between nonacademic school experiences and children's mental health.

METHODS

Parents of children ages 6 to 18 years completed online surveys about school experiences (November 2020) and mental health (February/March 2021). Parent-reported and child-reported school experiences (i.e., nonacademic factors) included school importance, adapting to public health measures, and school connectedness. Children's mental health symptoms of depression, anxiety, inattention, and hyperactivity were collected using standardized parent-reported measures.

RESULTS

Children's (N = 1052) self-reported and parent-reported nonacademic factors were associated with mental health outcomes, after adjusting for demographics and previous mental health. Lower importance, worse adapting to school changes, and less school connectedness were associated with greater depressive symptoms ( B = -4.68, CI [-6.04, -3.67] to - 8.73 CI [-11.47, 5.99]). Lower importance and worse adapting were associated with greater anxiety symptoms ( B = - 0.83 , CI [-1.62, -0.04] to -1.04 CI [-1.60, -0.48]). Lower importance was associated with greater inattention (B = -4.75, CI [-6.60, -2.90] to -6.37, CI [-11.08, -7.50]). Lower importance and worse adapting were associated with greater hyperactivity (B = -1.86, CI [-2.96, -0.77] to -4.71, CI [-5.95, -3.01]).

CONCLUSION

Schools offer learning opportunities that extend beyond curriculum content and are a primary environment where children and youth develop connections with others. These aspects of school, beyond academics, should be recognized as key correlates of child and youth mental health.

Teachers at risk: Depressive symptoms, emotional intelligence, and burnout during COVID-19

Background

Previous studies indicated that depressive symptoms are common among teachers due to job stress and difficulty in managing emotions. The aim of this research was to determine the levels of depressive symptomatology in a sample of secondary school teachers who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic and to analyze the relationships with their levels of burnout and emotional intelligence.

Methods

The study involved 430 secondary school teachers residing in Madrid (Spain) who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants' age was between 25 and 60 (M = 41.40; SD = 11.07) and the gender distribution was 53.72% men and 46.28% women. We used the Spanish version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Maslach Burnout Inventory Educators Survey (MBI-ES) and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24).

Results

The main results indicated that teachers presented high means of depressive symptomatology, with women obtaining higher scores than men. Significant relationships were also observed between the levels of depressive symptomatology and the dimensions of burnout and emotional intelligence. Finally, the three dimensions of emotional intelligence would contribute to the depressive symptomatology of teachers, while of the burnout dimensions only Emotional Exhaustion would make a contribution.

Conclusion

The possible consequences of depressive symptomatology in teachers during the pandemic are discussed, as well as the need to enhance protective factors such as emotional intelligence and to study burnout levels.

How do topics and emotions develop in elementary school children? A text mining perspective based on free-writing text over 6 years

Free-text data with long duration and continuity have great potential for studying environmental concerns and emotional expressions in child development. Based on ecosystem theory, using topic modeling and sentiment analysis in text mining to mine 4556 free-text writing data from first to sixth grade in elementary school, this study aims to reveal concerned topics' evolutionary trends and sentiment expression differences in topics during elementary school children's development. The results show the following: (1) Children prefer to focus on the topics of school and family in elementary school; (2) With the growth of grades, the proportion of family topics continues to decline, while that of social culture topics keeps rising; (3) When describing school, family, social culture, and interest, children mostly express negative emotions, and when describing peers and ability they mostly express positive emotions; (4) As the grade increases, the emotional expression on social culture topics become negative, while that on ability and interest topics become positive, and there are more differences in emotion expression between topics in junior and senior elementary grades. Discussion and conclusion are discussed at the end.

School and learning contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for child and youth mental health

Despite significant disruption to school during the COVID-19 pandemic, research on the impact on children is sparse. This study examines in-person and virtual learning contexts and the impact of school format on mental health (MH). Children and adolescents were recruited from community and clinical settings. Parents and children completed prospective online surveys about school experiences (November 2020) and MH symptoms (February/March 2021), including school format and activities. Standardized measures of depression, anxiety, inattention, and hyperactivity were collected. Hierarchical regression analyses tested associations between school format and MH. Children (N = 1011; aged 6-18 years) attending school in-person (n = 549) engaged in high levels of participation in COVID-19 health measures and low levels of social learning activities. Learning online in high school was associated with greater MH symptoms (B = -2.22, CI[-4.32,-.12] to B = -8.18, CI[-15.59,-.77]). Children with no previous MH condition that attended school virtually experienced a similar magnitude of MH symptoms as those with previous MH conditions. However, children who attended school in a hybrid in-person format, with no previous MH condition, experienced less hyperactivity as same-age peers with prior MH problems (B = -8.08, CI[1.58,14.58]). Children's learning environments looked very different compared to before the pandemic. Removing children from school environments and limiting opportunities that support their MH, such as social learning activities, is problematic. Efforts to address the learning contexts to protect the mental health of children are needed.

How does inhibitory control predict emotion regulation in preschool? The role of individual children's interactions with teachers and peers

Emotion regulation is foundational to children's psychological wellbeing and future school adjustment. As young children are spending increasing amounts of time in preschool programs, investigating how early childhood classrooms can foster emotion regulation development is warranted. In this study, we tested individual children's interactions with teachers and peers as potential mechanisms through which inhibitory control supports emotion regulation in the preschool classroom. Participants included 767 preschool children (49% female; M = 4.39 years old, SD = .08) from low-income households (income-to-needs ratio M = 1.45, SD = 1.06). Fifty percent of children were Black, 22% White, 13% Latino, and 15% Other race/ethnicity. Children completed direct assessments of inhibitory control in the fall, teachers reported on children's emotion regulation in the fall and spring of the preschool year, and trained observers rated the quality of individual children's interactions with teachers and peers in the fall, winter, and spring. Accounting for earlier emotion regulation, mediation analyses indicated that children's inhibitory control operates through individual children's (a) positive interactions with peers and (b) negative interactions with teachers and peers to support their subsequent emotion regulation. These findings underscore the role of the preschool classroom as an emotion socialization context for children from low-income households, along with providing additional evidence about the importance of social interactions to understand children's emotional development in context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A comic-based body image intervention for adolescents in semi-rural Indian schools: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Adolescents in India experience body dissatisfaction, however, empirically supported interventions are lacking. This paper describes the protocol for the development, acceptability testing, and cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a six-session comic-based intervention, which aims to improve body image and related outcomes among adolescents in semi-rural Indian schools. If found to be acceptable and effective, UNICEF will disseminate the intervention across schools in eight states of India. The acceptability study will be conducted with 24 students in Classes 6-8 (age 11-14) and nine teachers from Hindi-medium government schools using interviews and focus groups. The subsequent RCT will be conducted with 2400 students, with schools randomized to either the comic-based intervention or lessons-as-usual (control) groups. The primary outcome is body esteem, and secondary outcomes are disordered eating, appearance ideal internalization, body-image-related life disengagement, self-esteem, negative affect, and positive affect. Additional exploratory outcome measures are skin colour dissatisfaction, body hair dissatisfaction, appearance-based teasing, and endorsement of traditional gender roles. These outcomes will be examined at three timepoints: baseline (T1), 1 week-post-intervention (T2), and 12-weeks follow-up (T3). Analyses will compare outcomes in the intervention with the control group. This will be the first study to evaluate a body image intervention for adolescents in semi-rural Indian schools.

The Associations of Affection and Rejection During Adolescence with Interpersonal Functioning in Young Adulthood: A Macro- and Micro- Level Investigation Using the TRAILS TRANS-ID Study

Affection and rejection in close relationships during adolescence are thought to impact adult interpersonal functioning, but few studies focused on how the quality of adolescents’ relationships with different people (e.g. parents, peers, and teachers) impacts the daily, micro-level social experiences as well as general, macro-level interpersonal functioning in young adulthood. The present study investigated the associations between: (i) parental, teacher and peer affection and rejection during adolescence and macro-level (over several months) interpersonal functioning as well as different patterns (i.e. mean, variability and inertia) of micro-level (daily social experiences) during young adulthood; (ii) macro-level interpersonal functioning and the patterns of micro-level social experiences during young adulthood. The sample consisted of N = 122 (43% female) youth. At 11.2 ± 0.4 and 16.0 ± 0.6 years old, self- and other-reported parental, peer and teacher affection and rejection were assessed. At 23.7 ± 0.6 years old, participants reported daily social experiences and interpersonal functioning across six months. The results suggested that: (i) higher teacher-reported peer rejection was associated with lower macro-level interpersonal functioning, higher means and higher variability in negative social experiences during adulthood; (ii) higher macro-level interpersonal functioning during young adulthood was associated with higher means and lower inertia in positive and lower variability in negative daily social experiences. These findings indicate that the affection and rejection during adolescence impact interpersonal functioning at macro- and micro-level during adulthood. The present study also shows distinct associations between macro-level interpersonal functioning and dynamics in daily social experiences.

Individualized Assessment and Therapeutic Intervention for Mental Health of American Postmodern Novelists

Objective

Therapeutic intervention can improve the overall level of mental health of American postmodern fiction writers by improving their social communication skills and overall well-being. This paper discusses the application of art therapy in the mental health education of American postmodern novel creators and proves that expressive art therapy intervention is effective in improving the mental health level of American postmodern novel creators.

Method

This article attempts to help American postmodernist novel creators understand their own mental health status by means of individualized assessment and therapeutic intervention and to analyze and discover their own potential mental health problems. The writers of postmodernist novels in the USA were measured and screened by means of scales and questionnaires, and the members who met the experimental intervention were divided into experimental group and control group, and the experimental group received a 30-day reception music therapy intervention. After the intervention, the data will be counted, and the quantitative and qualitative aspects will be analyzed to comprehensively evaluate the effect of the intervention. Results/Discussion. Receptive music therapy intervention has a significant effect in relieving the anxiety of American postmodernist novel creators and plays a positive role in helping American postmodernist novel creators better adapt to study life and build good emotional psychology and interpersonal relationships. Psychological counseling relies more on external forces to correct cognition and adjust psychology, while music therapy intervention, as a nonsemantic art, can arouse inner functions and mobilize the self-healing potential of American postmodern novel creators. Practice has proven that when the language intervention of traditional psychotherapy encounters resistance and silence, music as a special language plays a vital role. The nonlinguistic nature of music, through a mode of reproduction of sounds in nature, makes the beautiful and soothing melody stimulate a pleasant and peaceful psychological experience through human hearing.

Future Directions in Suicide and Self-Injury Revisited: Integrating a Developmental Psychopathology Perspective

The recent rise in suicide rates among children and adolescents has made suicide prevention in youth a major focus of government agencies and mental health organizations. In 2012, Nock presented future directions in the study of self-injurious thoughts and behavior (SITBs), highlighting the need to better examine which risk factors are associated with "each part of the pathway" to suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury in order to inform prevention and intervention efforts. Over the past decade, we have made important advances in understanding the development of SITBs and effective interventions. However, there are still major gaps of knowledge in our understanding of how to prevent suicide. Researchers have recently called for more studies focusing particularly on the pathway from suicidal ideation to suicidal behavior. However, we caution against prioritizing only a part of the suicide risk continuum (e.g., the transition from suicidal ideation to suicidal behavior) while minimizing research focusing on earlier developmental points of the pathway to suicide (e.g., the first development of suicidal ideation). We emphasize that childhood and adolescence represent a critical opportunity to intervene and prevent SITBs by altering developmental trajectories toward persistent and escalating SITBs over time. We advocate for integrating a developmental psychopathology perspective into future youth suicide research that focuses on how and when risk for SITBs first emerges and develops across childhood into emerging adulthood. This research is critical for informing interventions aimed at bending developmental pathways away from all SITBs. Here, we describe the need for future research that integrates key developmental psychopathology principles on 1) the identification of the continuum from developmentally typical to atypical as SITBs first emerge and develop, particularly among young children in early to middle childhood, 2) the way in which expressions of and risk for SITBs change across development, 3) how SITBs dynamically move along a continuum from typical to atypical over time, and 4) suicide prevention efforts. We also offer recommendations for future directions that focus on identifying disparities in SITBs occurring among minoritized youth within a developmental psychopathology perspective.

Empirical benchmarks for changes in social and emotional skills over time

This study provides empirical benchmarks that quantify typical changes in students' reports of social and emotional skills in a large, diverse sample. Data come from six cohorts of students (N = 361,815; 6% Asian, 8% Black, 68% White, 75% Latinx, 50% Female) who responded to the CORE survey from 2015 to 2018 and help quantify typical gains/declines in growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. Results show fluctuations in skills between 4th and 12th grade (changes ranging from -.33 to .23 standard deviations). Growth mindset increases in fourth grade, declines in fifth to seventh grade, then mostly increases. Self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness decline in sixth to eighth grade. Self-management and social awareness, but not self-efficacy, show increases in 10th to 12th grade.

Academic performance under COVID-19: The role of online learning readiness and emotional competence

The COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures and social isolation, which created both learning and emotional challenges for adolescents. Schools worked hard to move classes online, but less attention was paid to whether students were cognitively and emotionally ready to learn effectively in a virtual environment. This study focused on online learning readiness and emotional competence as key constructs to investigate their implications for students' academic performance during the COVID-19 period. Two groups of students participated in this study, with 1,316 high school students (Mean age = 16.32, SD = 0.63) representing adolescents and 668 college students (Mean age = 20.20, SD = 1.43) representing young adults. Structural equation modeling was conducted to explore the associations among online learning readiness, emotional competence, and online academic performance during COVID-19 after controlling for pre-COVID-19 academic performance. The results showed that, for high school students, both online learning readiness and emotional competence were positively associated with online academic performance during COVID-19. However, for college students, only online learning readiness showed a significant positive relationship with online academic performance during COVID-19. These results demonstrated that being ready to study online and having high emotional competence could make adolescents more resilient toward COVID-19-related challenges and help them learn more effectively online. This study also highlighted different patterns of associations among cognitive factors, emotional factors, and online academic performance during COVID-19 in adolescence and young adulthood. Developmental implications were also discussed.

Exploring mental health stigma among chinese-english bilinguals: Dual-process model of emotional competence, flipped learning readiness, and academic performance in Mainland Chinese Universities

Due to severe global competition and performance-related academic challenges, Chinese students are compelled to learn English and become bilinguals despite their non-English majors. Consequently, these students frequently experience psychological issues, including mental health stigma. Hence, the present study aims to explore the psychological factors associated with the academic performance of Chinese-English bilinguals as an outcome of their emotional competence, flipped learning readiness, and mental health stigma. Drawing on data from 448 Chinese-English bilingual students in universities in mainland China, the results based on structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that their academic performance, flipped learning readiness, and emotional competence are negatively influenced by their mental health stigma. Moreover, the findings also validate that both flipped learning readiness and emotional competence significantly mediate the indirect effects of mental health stigma on the academic performance of bilinguals. The study's implications offer new and compelling evidence on the primary issue of mental health stigma among Gen Z bilingual students to raise deterrence against this psychological menace through collaboration across policymakers, academics, and mental healthcare providers.

Ethnic discrimination in secondary education: Does the solution lie in multicultural education and the ethnic school composition?

Ethnic discrimination is a serious problem in education. Previous quantitative research is predominately focused on the consequences of ethnic discrimination. Very little is known, however, about the characteristics of the school context that influence the initial experience of ethnic discrimination. This knowledge is essential to support schools in how to organize in a way that diminishes the likelihood of adolescents being discriminated against. This study examines the relationship between multicultural education and perceived ethnic discrimination, and the moderating role of the ethnic composition of the student population. Multicultural education is a broad concept. The focus lies on the three main actors: multicultural policy from the perspective of the principal, multicultural teaching from the perception of the teacher and students’ perception of multicultural teaching. The results of a multilevel analysis on a large-scale dataset (N = 2715 students, 38 schools) collected in secondary education in Belgium show that students of ethnic Belgian descent are more likely to report ethnic discrimination by peers if the school applies a more multicultural policy or if the school has a high concentration of students with an other-than-Belgian background. Students with an other-than-Belgian background are more likely to report ethnic discrimination by teachers if the school applies a more multicultural policy. If students perceive that their teachers pay attention to multicultural education, they are less likely to report ethnic discrimination by teachers, but more by peers. The ethnic composition is not directly related to perceived ethnic discrimination, nor does it play a moderating role.

Determinants of school attendance in elementary school students in Japan: a structural equation model

BACKGROUND

Managing school nonattendance is a priority worldwide. Frequent school nonattendance in early school years has immediate and long-term negative effects. Although strategies to address nonattendance are being developed and implemented, the number of students with school nonattendance issues is increasing. In this study, we explored students' feelings and perceptions about attending school and the potential determinants of a positive attitude towards attending school.

METHODS

We hypothesized that a positive perception towards attending school was influenced by relationships, perceptions of current circumstances, subjective health, and having someone to share experiences and thoughts with. For examining the hypothesized model, an original questionnaire with 14 items was developed, including perceptions towards school attendance (an item), relationships with friends and school teachers (5 items), current circumstances (4 items), subjective health (3 items), and the individuals available to share experiences and thoughts with (1 item). In total, 6860 children submitted the questionnaire (85.3% response rate) and 6841 responses were included to examine the model. Children were 10 or 11 years old, and selected from 111 state-run schools in 8 randomly selected school districts.

RESULTS

The final model demonstrated good fit and showed that the latent variable of relationships with friends and school teachers directly impacted on how children felt about attending school. The latent variable of subjective health also directly impacted on how children felt about attending school but not strongly. Other latent variables were not significant.

CONCLUSIONS

The importance of positive relationships with friends and teachers in overcoming school nonattendance has been emphasized in previous studies. This study has provided evidence that these relationships impacted children's positive perception about attending school in a large sample of students aged 10-11 years. The latent variable of subjective health may require more items to capture mental health.

Association Between Dynamic Parasympathetic Reactivity to Frustration and Children's Social Success with Peers in Kindergarten

The inability to regulate affective arousal in the context of frustration may jeopardize children's ability to form successful friendships, especially as new peer groups are formed during the transition to kindergarten. While substantial research has utilized teacher reports of children's socioemotional behavior, there is less empirical evidence on the peer perspective. The present study utilized data from n = 235 kindergarteners (54% high in disruptive behavior) recruited for a multicomponent intervention. We examined whether physiological reactivity to frustration was associated with children's social success. Peer nominations of liking or disliking to play with the child were used to compute a social preference score, where negative values reflect greater rejection than acceptance. Multilevel growth modeling was employed to capture changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity across a manipulated inhibitory control task administered in 3 blocks, with differing algorithms embedded to induce affect: points were earned in the 1st and 3rd blocks (reward) and lost during the 2nd block (frustration). Groups did not differ in RSA reactivity during the 1st block, but children who experience greater peer rejection showed significant decreases in RSA (increases in arousal) across frustration. This increased arousal persisted across the 3rd block despite the reinstatement of reward, indicating a greater degree of reactivity and a lack of recovery relative to peer-accepted children. Teacher screenings of disruptive behavior only partially aligned with peer ratings of acceptance, highlighting the benefits of leveraging peer report to capture regulatory functioning and identify children for intervention recruitment.

Parent and Peer Emotion Responsivity Styles: An Extension of Gottman's Emotion Socialization Parenting Typologies

This theoretical paper introduces six emotion socialization typologies that can be used for designating emotion responsivity styles of parents and peers of children in middle childhood, referred to as Parent and Peer Emotion Responsivity Styles (PPERS). This typology draws on theoretical foundations of meta-emotion and emotion socialization. These typologies are compliment with and extend Gottman's emotion-based parenting styles, as they are organized generally by whether the response is more positive or more negative and whether the response is more emotionally constructive or destructive, but extend the four styles to include whether the parent or peer targets the emotion directly when responding to a child's emotions, or whether they target the emotion-related behavior. On the positive end, there is the Emotion Constructive style, which targets the child's emotions directly. The other two positive styles include Emotion Responsive and Emotion Acceptive, which target the child's emotional behaviors with higher or lower levels of activity. On the negative side, there is the Emotion Destructive style which is employed to target the emotion itself, while the Emotion Punitive and Emotion Dismissive styles target the child's emotion-related behavior with varying levels of activity. Implications for the development and study of these theoretical typologies are discussed.

The Effects of a Reading-Based Intervention on Emotion Processing in Children Who Have Suffered Early Adversity and War Related Trauma

Early adversity and trauma can have profound effects on children's affective development and mental health outcomes. Interventions that improve mental health and socioemotional development are essential to mitigate these effects. We conducted a pilot study examining whether a reading-based program (We Love Reading) improves emotion recognition and mental health through socialization in Syrian refugee (n = 49) and Jordanian non-refugee children (n = 45) aged 7-12 years old (M = 8.9, 57% girls) living in Jordan. To measure emotion recognition, children classified the expression in faces morphed between two emotions (happy-sad and fear-anger), while mental health was assessed using survey measures of optimism, depression, anxiety, distress, and insecurity. Prior to the intervention, both groups of children were significantly biased to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as sad, while there was no clear bias on the fear-anger spectrum. Following the intervention, we found changes in Syrian refugee children's bias in emotion recognition away from sad facial expressions, although this returned to pre-intervention levels 2 months after the end of the program. This shift in the bias away from sad facial expressions was not associated with changes in self-reported mental health symptoms. These results suggest a potential positive role of the reading intervention on affective development, but further research is required to determine the longer-term impacts of the program.

Findings, issues, and new directions for research on emotion socialization

This special issue consists of 20 articles that focus on issues related to Eisenberg and colleagues' (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Cumberland, 1998) model of emotion socialization processes and its relevance for understanding a range of aspects of children's socioemotional functioning. The various papers have addressed a variety of issues including key mediating pathways, predictions of emotion-related socialization behaviors, moderators of pathways, and various potential outcomes of emotion-related socialization behaviors. Methods used in the articles include experimental interventions and nonexperimental longitudinal studies. The goals for this commentary include organizing the findings in this special issue to better highlight their relevance for the 1998 heuristic model and suggesting issues to consider in future research. Moreover, some gaps in the literature are noted. Finally, several minor changes to the model are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).