Reports on the development and pilot testing of a multimedia tool (SMART Talk) that teaches anger management, perspective taking, and mediation skills. Results indicate that SMART Talk is popular with both males and females, and its use increases knowledge and practice of prosocial behaviors. (Author/GCP)

Assessed similarities between 192 target children and their friends and nonfriends. Found that children and friends were more similar to one another than nonfriends across the dataset. Friendship similarities were greater in antisocial behavior than in other domains. Similarities between friends in sociometric status and size of the friendship…

Frequency of prosocial and antisocial student behaviors was rated by 1,503 students and 92 teachers in 4 urban middle schools ranked by achievement. The highest achieving school combined academics with a culture of caring, reflected in higher prosocial and lower antisocial behavior rates. Lower achieving schools had higher antisocial behavior…

Describes a kindergarten teacher's successful efforts to create more heterogeneous groupings and less animosity among students in her class. Discusses efforts to encourage after-school visiting among peers, classroom agreements about put-downs and exclusion during play, turn-taking, teacher-assigned grouping, conflict management, efforts to…

Analyzed factors associated with being non-violent and constructing a non-violent, prosocial masculine identity. Subjects were African-American and Hispanic adolescent males in two low-income Chicago neighborhoods. Found several factors associated with being non-violent, including the ability to draw lessons from past experiences and have a…

Describes the concept of a kid-friendly home environment that attracts and welcomes children into the home. Provides a series of simple steps leading to positive relations with children and their friends to create an "open house," as well as a description of the positive effects such an environment has on children. (SD)

Explored preschoolers' emotion regulation skills within a pretend play context using a negatively valenced event designed to elicit a high level of arousal. Found that children's success in continuing pretend play was related to emotion regulation skills in other contexts, whereas their effectiveness at resolving conflict was not. (TJQ)

This study introduces a social context model within which peer acceptances of prosocial-leadership, aggression, and social withdrawal were examined as functions of the contextual norms of these behaviors. The major postulate of the model is that the extent to which a behavior permeates a social context facilitates peer acceptance of the behavior.…

In Roberts and Strayer (1996), we reported that emotional expressiveness and anger were important predictors of empathy for school-age children, and that empathy strongly predicted prosocial behaviors aggregated across methods and sources. In this paper, we report how empathy was associated with direct observations of anger and aggression in peer…

The association between bullying behaviour and academic achievement was investigated in 1016 children from primary schools (6-7-year-olds/year 2: 480; 8-9-year-olds/year 4: 536). Children were individually interviewed about their bullying experiences using a standard interview. Key Stage I National Curriculum results (assessed at the end of year…

The annual "From the Inside" feature is intended to share real-life positive stories about working with youth. In this year's installment, Ms. Martin writes about her experience being a teenage mentor with girls in grades 6 to 8, the lessons she learned, and the impact this experience has had on her life.

Many terms have been used to describe the perseverative behavior displayed by children with autism, including "circumscribed, narrow, obsessive, restricted, or special interests." Past researchers have focused on the punishment of such perseverative behaviors by individuals diagnosed with autism, and many parents and teachers also may be inclined…

This study examines resilience among a sample of American Indian adolescents living on or near reservations in the upper Midwest. Data are from a baseline survey of 212 youth (115 boys and 97 girls) who were enrolled in the fifth through eighth grades. Based upon the definition of resilience, latent class analyses were conducted to identify youth…

The primary purpose of this study was to understand further the heterogeneity of popularity, by exploring contextual correlates of two dimensions of positive peer regard among seventh graders within two highly disparate sociodemographic groups: affluent suburban and low-income urban (N = 636). Three sets of attributes were examined, all…

This report informs about an international seminar, convened by the Lugansk Regional Committee of Educators for Peace. Among the interrelated themes dealt with included: (1) the role of technology in education for a new age; (2) systems thinking; (3) education for peace and new world order; (4) international projects such as "The Peace…