A cross-sectional study of variations in schoolwork stress in academic upper secondary school classes in Mid-Norway.

AIMS: This paper investigates stress related to schoolwork among students in academic upper secondary schools. The research questions asked are: 1. To what degree does students' schoolwork stress vary between academic classes?; And 2. are perceptions of classroom goal orientation, academic achievement, sex and parental education related to schoolwork stress? METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was done in the final year of upper secondary school in 71 school classes from 13 schools. A total of 1955 students in academic education programs were invited to participate in the survey, and 1511 completed the survey; the response rate was 77%. The outcome measure was a composite measure of schoolwork stress (alpha = 0.81). Multilevel modeling was used to estimate school class-level effects. RESULTS: The mean value of schoolwork stress was 4.0, on a scale of 1 (very little schoolwork stress) to 6 (very high schoolwork stress). About half of the students reported a score of 4 or higher. The analysis showed that individual characteristics explained most of the variation in schoolwork stress. Girls experienced a much higher level of schoolwork stress than boys (mean values of 4.3 and 3.6, respectively). There was also a significant class-level effect, estimated to 6% of the variance. Students' perceptions of classroom goal orientation was also associated with schoolwork stress. CONCLUSIONS: The main contribution was the discovery of significant variations in schoolwork stress between school classes. We also found that higher mastery climate was linked to lower schoolwork stress, whereas higher performance climate was linked to higher schoolwork stress.

Loneliness and Ethnic Composition of the School Class: A Nationally Random Sample of Adolescents.

Loneliness is a public health concern that increases the risk for several health, behavioral and academic problems among adolescents. Some studies have suggested that adolescents with an ethnic minority background have a higher risk for loneliness than adolescents from the majority population. The increasing numbers of migrant youth around the world mean growing numbers of heterogeneous school environments in many countries. Even though adolescents spend a substantial amount of time at school, there is currently very little non-U.S. research that has examined the importance of the ethnic composition of school classes for loneliness in adolescence. The present research aimed to address this gap by exploring the association between loneliness and three dimensions of the ethnic composition in the school class: (1) membership of ethnic majority in the school class, (2) the size of own ethnic group in the school class, and (3) the ethnic diversity of the school class. We used data from the Danish 2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey: a nationally representative sample of 4383 (51.2 % girls) 11-15-year-olds. Multilevel logistic regression analyses revealed that adolescents who did not belong to the ethnic majority in the school class had increased odds for loneliness compared to adolescents that belonged to the ethnic majority. Furthermore, having more same-ethnic classmates lowered the odds for loneliness. We did not find any statistically significant association between the ethnic diversity of the school classes and loneliness. The study adds novel and important findings to how ethnicity in a school class context, as opposed to ethnicity per se, influences adolescents' loneliness.

Liking and disliking minority-group classmates: explaining the mixed findings for the influence of ethnic classroom composition on interethnic attitudes.

Research on the influence of the number of ethnic minority group classmates on majority group students' interethnic attitudes produced conflicting results. With data from 728 early adolescents, we found that the effect of the ethnic class composition depends on two opposing student-level mechanisms. First, majority group students who liked a larger number of minority group classmates developed more positive attitudes toward minority groups. Second, students who disliked a larger number of outgroup classmates developed more negative outgroup attitudes. In our sample, these two effects neutralized each other because the sample consisted of about the same number of students that liked most of their outgroup classmates and students that disliked most outgroup classmates. Results were consistent in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. These results support a new interpretation of the mixed findings in past research, suggesting that past studies may have differed in the number of students who liked and disliked outgroup classmates.

Negative Impacts of School Class Segregation on Migrant Children's Education Expectations and the Associated Mitigating Mechanism.

This study thoroughly analyzes the impacts of school class segregation on the four dimensions of educational expectations of migrant children, and verifies the moderating effects of migrant children's identification with the college entrance examination policy on the relationship between the two. A total of 1770 questionnaires were collected for this study. Through multiple regression analysis and moderating effect tests on the data, this study reveals that school class segregation has a significant negative impact on the educational expectations of migrant children; the migrant children's identification with the college entrance examination policy also partially moderates the impacts of school class segregation on the academic achievement expectations and interpersonal expectations of migrant children. Informed by these results, this study proposes the following three mechanisms that can be used to mitigate the negative impacts of school class segregation on migrant children's educational expectations: (a) an institutional mechanism involving the "unified urban-rural household registration"; (b) a cultural mechanism involving "promoting learning through examinations"; (c) a compensation mechanism involving the "principle of justice". This paper provides a Chinese perspective on the issue of school class segregation by offering a policy reference for the improvement of the college entrance examination policy for migrant children and the reform of the household registration system.

School-Class Co-Ethnic and Immigrant Density and Current Smoking among Immigrant Adolescents.

Although the school-class is known to be an important setting for adolescent risk behavior, little is known about how the ethnic composition of a school-class impacts substance use among pupils with a migration background. Moreover, the few existing studies do not distinguish between co-ethnic density (i.e., the share of immigrants belonging to one's own ethnic group) and immigrant density (the share of all immigrants). This is all the more surprising since a high co-ethnic density can be expected to protect against substance use by increasing levels of social support and decreasing acculturative stress, whereas a high immigrant density can be expected to do the opposite by facilitating inter-ethnic conflict and identity threat. This study analyses how co-ethnic density and immigrant density are correlated with smoking among pupils of Portuguese origin in Luxembourg. A multi-level analysis is used to analyze data from the Luxembourg Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study (N = 4268 pupils from 283 classes). High levels of co-ethnic density reduced current smoking. In contrast, high levels of immigrant density increased it. Thus, in research on the health of migrants, the distinction between co-ethnic density and immigrant density should be taken into account, as both may have opposite effects.

Individual and school-class correlates of youth cannabis use in Sweden: A multilevel study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The school-class context is a crucial social environment for young people but substance use researchers have largely overlooked potential influences operating at this level. This study explores associations between school-class and individual-level factors and cannabis use in Swedish youth. DATA AND METHODS: Data comprised four waves (2012-2015) of the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs' (CAN) nationally representative school surveys among individuals in 9th and 11th grade. For the present analyses, we had data on totally 28,729 individuals from 2377 unique school classes. Multilevel logistic regressions predicted lifetime and 10+ times use of cannabis from both individual-level predictors and school-class-level measures derived from the individual-level variables. RESULTS: There were individual-level associations between most predictor variables and cannabis use. An early debut of tobacco use and binge drinking as well as low cannabis related risk perceptions had strong associations with cannabis use. Conversely, several school-class-level variables had aggregate relationships with cannabis use, most notably the overall level of risk perceptions in the school class. Some of the school-class factors predicted cannabis use over and above the individual-level covariates, suggesting the presence of contextual effects. Surprisingly, while female gender was negatively related with cannabis use at the individual level, a higher proportion of females in the classroom increased the odds for lifetime cannabis use even after controlling for individual and other contextual-level covariates. CONCLUSIONS: Youth cannabis use is related to various factors at both the individual and school-class level in Sweden. Truancy and perceived risk related to cannabis use had contextual associations with cannabis use. The positive contextual association between a higher proportion of females in the classroom and lifetime use should be explored further.

Corpos jovens em evidência no contexto da pandemia: o que pode um corpo? / Young bodies in the spotlight during the pandemic: what can a body do? / Cuerpos jóvenes en evidencia en el contexto de la pandemia: ¿qué puede hacer un cuerpo?

RESUMO Neste artigo discutimos as experiências de um projeto de ensino/extensão, com foco em reflexões acerca do corpo no ambiente escolar. Apresentamos um relato de oficinas realizadas entre o final de 2019 e o primeiro ano da pandemia, com uma turma do ensino médio de um colégio de aplicação, vinculado a uma universidade pública do Rio de Janeiro. O fio condutor partiu da pergunta "O que pode um corpo?", buscando problematizar como esses/as estudantes vinham constituindo os processos de "ser corpo" e como lidavam com isso na vida escolar. O projeto se orientava a cada encontro pelas narrativas discentes, provocando formas outras de pensar e sentir o corpo e produzindo, coletivamente, possibilidades de ampliar os modos de ver e sentir os corpossujeitos.

ABSTRACT This article discusses the experiences of a teaching and extension project, focusing on reflections of the body in the school environment. It presents the report of workshops held between the end of 2019 and the first year of the pandemic, in 2020, with a high school class from a College of Application, linked to a public university. The guiding thread started from the question "What can a body do?", with the aim of how these students were constituting the processes of "being a body" and how they dealt with it in school life. . The work was guided by the narratives of these students, provoking other ways of thinking and feeling the body and collectively producing possibilities to expand the ways of seeing and feeling the body-subjects.

RESUMEN Este artículo discute las experiencias de un proyecto de enseñanza y extensión, que se centró en reflexiones sobre el cuerpo en el ámbito escolar. Presenta el informe de talleres realizados entre finales de 2019 y el primer año de la pandemia, en 2020, con una clase de bachillerato de una Facultad de Aplicación, vinculada a una universidad pública. El hilo conductor partió de la pregunta "¿Qué puede hacer un cuerpo?", con el objetivo de cuestionar cómo estos estudiantes estaban constituyendo los procesos de "ser cuerpo" y cómo lo enfrentaban en la vida escolar. El trabajo fue guiado por las narrativas de estos estudiantes. Así, buscamos provocar otras formas de pensar y sentir el cuerpo, para producir colectivamente posibilidades de ampliar las formas de ver y sentir los cuerpos vivos y palpitantes.

Peer acceptance in the school class and subjective health complaints: a multilevel approach.

BACKGROUND: Feeling accepted by peers is important for young people's health but few studies have examined the overall degree of acceptance in school and its health consequences. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether health complaints among Swedish students can be attributed to the acceptance climate in their school class even when the health effects of their own (individual) acceptance score have been taken into account. METHODS: The data used were from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study for the years 2001 to 2002, 2005 to 2006, and 2009 to 2010, consisting of 13,902 5th-, 7th-, and 9th-grade Swedish students nested into 742 school classes. The statistical analyses were performed by means of linear regression multilevel analysis. RESULTS: The results indicated that the variation in subjective health complaints could be ascribed partly to the school-class level (boys: 5.0%; girls: 13.5%). Peer acceptance at the individual level demonstrated a clear association with health: the lower the acceptance, the higher the complaint scores. For girls, but not for boys, the overall degree of peer acceptance in the school class demonstrated a contextual effect on health, net of acceptance at the student level. Interaction analyses also revealed an increasingly favorable health among poorly accepted girls as the acceptance climate in the school class declined. CONCLUSIONS: A lower overall degree of peer acceptance in the school class is associated with poorer health among girls. However, girls who themselves feel poorly accepted are not as negatively affected health-wise by a poor acceptance climate, as are well-accepted girls.

Test Scores, Class Rank and College Performance: Lessons for Broadening Access and Promoting Success.

Using administrative data for five Texas universities that differ in selectivity, this study evaluates the relative influence of two key indicators for college success-high school class rank and standardized tests. Empirical results show that class rank is the superior predictor of college performance and that test score advantages do not insulate lower ranked students from academic underperformance. Using the UT-Austin campus as a test case, we conduct a simulation to evaluate the consequences of capping students admitted automatically using both achievement metrics. We find that using class rank to cap the number of students eligible for automatic admission would have roughly uniform impacts across high schools, but imposing a minimum test score threshold on all students would have highly unequal consequences by greatly reduce the admission eligibility of the highest performing students who attend poor high schools while not jeopardizing admissibility of students who attend affluent high schools. We discuss the implications of the Texas admissions experiment for higher education in Europe.

Formación docente, traza didáctica y subjetividad / Teacher training, teaching trace and subjectivity

El presente trabajo se inscribe en el marco del Proyecto UBACyT¹  en curso. Particularmente se centra en uno de sus principales objetivos que remite al análisis de las "experiencias de enseñar y aprender, fundantes de la tarea docente, a partir de la identificación y discusión de tradiciones, rituales, valores, cronologías, posturas teóricas, ideológicas, culturales y generacionales que estructuraron identidades individuales y profesionales"², de aquellos que realizaron la carrera del Profesorado de Psicología en el período comprendido entre 1957 y 1976. Se propone analizar estos aspectos desde la perspectiva del contexto en el cual éstos tienen lugar, considerando que alumnos y docentes pasan la mayor parte del tiempo de la escuela inmersos en una clase escolar. Como espacio privilegiado de las actividades de enseñar y aprender, la clase escolar, constituye un objeto de estudio central, en tanto es allí donde se articulan mayormente las cuestiones vinculadas a la tarea docente.

The current work forms part of the ongoing Project UBACyT. Particularly focusing on one of its main objectives which refers to the analyses of "the experience of teaching and learning as founding of the teaching task, through the identification and discussion of traditions, rituals, values, chronologies, theoretical, ideological, cultural and generational positions which structured individual and professional identities", of those who have coursed the Psychology career in the period between 1957 and 1976. It is proposed to analyse these aspects from the perspective of the context in which they take place, considering that students and teachers spend much time immersed in the school in a school class. As a privileged space for the activities of teaching and learning, the school class, it is a central object of study, as this is where the issues related to the teaching task are mostly articulated.