The subjective wellbeing of high-school students : validating the personal wellbeing index—school children

The Personal Wellbeing Index—School Children (PWI-SC) is designed as a parallel form of the adult PWI-A, to measure subjective wellbeing. This study examines the psychometric properties of the PWI-SC. Data from 351 students, aged between 12 and 20 years, were collected by two independent studies over the years 2005–2006. Using the combined data, the results indicate good psychometric properties for the PWI-SC. It is also found that females have higher SWB but that both genders show an age-related decline in SWB from early to mid adolescence. Notably, School satisfaction meets the criteria for a new domain for the PWI-SC and should be considered for inclusion in a future revision of the scale. The use of the PWI-SC in schools can provide important information for the development of educational policy.

Healthy weight regulation and eating disorder prevention in high school students: a universal and targeted web-based intervention

Background: Given the rising rates of obesity in children and adolescents, developing evidence-based weight loss or weight maintenance interventions that can be widely disseminated, well implemented, and are highly scalable is a public health necessity. Such interventions should ensure that adolescents establish healthy weight regulation practices while also reducing eating disorder risk.

Objective: This study describes an online program, StayingFit, which has two tracks for universal and targeted delivery and was designed to enhance healthy living skills, encourage healthy weight regulation, and improve weight/shape concerns among high school adolescents.

Methods: Ninth grade students in two high schools in the San Francisco Bay area and in St Louis were invited to participate. Students who were overweight (body mass index [BMI] >85th percentile) were offered the weight management track of StayingFit; students who were normal weight were offered the healthy habits track. The 12-session program included a monitored discussion group and interactive self-monitoring logs. Measures completed pre- and post-intervention included self-report height and weight, used to calculate BMI percentile for age and sex and standardized BMI (zBMI), Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) nutrition data, the Weight Concerns Scale, and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale.

Results: A total of 336 students provided informed consent and were included in the analyses. The racial breakdown of the sample was as follows: 46.7% (157/336) multiracial/other, 31.0% (104/336) Caucasian, 16.7% (56/336) African American, and 5.7% (19/336) did not specify; 43.5% (146/336) of students identified as Hispanic/Latino. BMI percentile and zBMI significantly decreased among students in the weight management track. BMI percentile and zBMI did not significantly change among students in the healthy habits track, demonstrating that these students maintained their weight. Weight/shape concerns significantly decreased among participants in both tracks who had elevated weight/shape concerns at baseline. Fruit and vegetable consumption increased for both tracks. Physical activity increased among participants in the weight management track, while soda consumption and television time decreased.

Conclusions: Results suggest that an Internet-based, universally delivered, targeted intervention may support healthy weight regulation, improve weight/shape concerns among participants with eating disorders risk, and increase physical activity in high school students. Tailored content and interactive features to encourage behavior change may lead to sustainable improvements in adolescent health.

The discourse of public education: an urban campaign for a local public high school in Melbourne, Victoria

This paper explores the metonymic slippage surrounding the discourse of public education, through observations and interviews with Lawson High School active campaigners in the state of Victoria, Australia. The notion of campaigning for public education has become an ever-present issue on an international scale, and this article aims to contribute qualitative knowledge regarding the key concepts that lobbyists produce and articulate within their meetings concerning public education. Data have been obtained through direct participatory observation within a contextually specific campaigning site, lobbyists' publications and one-on-one interviews with active campaigners. Findings indicate that campaigners present distinct conceptualisations of public education as a discourse and a well-defined model of their school-of-choice.

Adolescent alcohol-use trajectories in the transition from high school

A cohort of 3300 students from high schools across Victoria, Australia, were surveyed regarding their patterns of alcohol consumption from mid-1993 to 1995. The first wave of data was collected halfway through the students' final year of school (year 12). Students were then resurveyed 3 months following school completion and on two subsequent occasions, each separated by 6-month intervals. Analysis of the four waves of data indicated that five longitudinal patterns (trajectories) characterized temporal trends in male and female alcohol use through the transition from high school. Stable non-use trajectories were evident for 17% of males and 16% of females. Trajectories of less than weekly use characterized 45% of females and 46% of males, and showed little tendency to escalate toward harmful use. Among those using alcohol on a weekly or more frequent basis in high school, with few exceptions, use continued with at least the same frequency, but the quantity of alcohol consumed tended to escalate over time toward harmful levels. Overall, findings indicate that patterns of alcohol use tend to be stable over time, and more frequent alcohol use during the final year of high school tends to precede potentially harmful alcohol use following high school. Encouraging those high school students who consume alcohol once per week or more often to use alcohol on a less than weekly basis may be a valuable yet neglected harm minimization strategy.

I don't need IT because I'm going to be a teacher, and other popular beliefs: High school students' explanations for the under representation of girls in information technology subjects

This paper examines the implications for teacher educators of the dominant beliefs currently circulating within diverse Australian high schools about the (lack of) relationship between girls’ interests, girls’ careers, girls’ futures and the broad field of information technology. It identifies students' attitudes towards the content, relevance and general appeal of IT subjects to highlight the challenges for both teachers and teacher educators who may be seeking to address the issues associated with girls’ under representation in IT courses and also contribute to an ongoing project of gender based educational reform. Emphasis throughout the paper is on the persistence of discourses that continue to position girls and IT in opposition to each other and on the challenges of subverting these discourses through the introduction of new figurations (cf Rosi Braidotti, 1994) or transformative understandings of what it now means to be a female student, a female teacher, or a female IT user. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of these themes for teachers and teacher educators: particularly those with an on-going commitment to the broad field of educational justice.

Education to gain sustainability : analysis and approach from the experience obtained from two high school systems in mexican rural communities

The decade “Education for Sustainability” is just emerging and one of its goals emphasized the importance of considering the currícula in a transdisciplinary and community based programs. This includes recognizing local and regional interests as relevant topics into the currícula. “Education for sustainability” does not appear to have a strong basis on their actions as its theoretical discourse does. The study we present here about content analysis in the curricula of two high schools systems in rural Mexican communities is an example. In this research we analyzed: 1) how the curricula is oriented towards forest management and the way is connected to the social reality of the communities; 2) how does the learning process develops in the classroom and its dynamics with teachers and students and 3) how does the environmental learning take place. Results revealed that more research is needed with adolescents in order to change the educational structure in rural Mexican high schools.

Communicative language teaching of a foreign language : the Indonesian 1984 senior high school English syllabus

This thesis examines the implementation of the 1984 English syllabus, which is claimed to be communicative. The study was conducted in three government Senior High Schools in Singaraja, northern Bali. The results indicate that the implementation of the Communicative Approach has been constrained by the limited resources, inadequate professional development and the national examination system, the EBTANAS.

Reproduction, resistance and transformation at Marantha High School

The focus of this thesis is the attempt by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to reproduce SDA culture in students attending one of its schools, Maranatha High School. As a 'critical ethnography', it adopts a theoretical perspective from critical social theory to examine problems associated with this attempt. These problems are reflected in data gathered by a range of ethnographic techniques. The study first portrays the socio-political dynamics underlying the historical creation of Adventist culture generally, its embodiment in institutional forms, and the development of a substantial educational structure intended to transmit that culture to succeeding generations.

The study then focuses on current SDA educational philosophy, and the assumptions underlying the principles of selection, organisation, transmission and evaluation of knowledge considered to be valid. It then examines how Maranatha High School itself seeks to implement those principles. In this context, the study also reflects on the political implications of the modes of management and institutional control adopted at various levels of the organisation and in the school.

As a dialectical study, the thesis views the school as a social setting in which knowledgeable humans engage in communicative interaction. Rather than promoting smooth reproduction, the school is portrayed as a site of struggle, negotiation and potential transformation as participants resist forces that they perceive to be constraining and oppressing them. Consequently the thesis examines the perceptions of the various groups of participants, and the nature and impact of their interaction. In as much as teachers are official 'managers' of SDA culture and knowledge, this examination focuses especially on their personal definitions of the situation, the dilemmas that confront them from internal and external sources, the development of their own cultural forms in response, and the implications this action has for cultural reproduction and continuity.

Actual/ideal body images of high school girls and how it affects their self-esteem : implications for educational and clinical institutions

Given that adolescence is a critical period for the development of a positive self-concept and body image, it is imperative that educators have an understanding of adolescent students' body image and their dieting practises and behaviours. Negative body image is an issue that is rife within the adolescent student population in Australia and around the world, and is a factor that is commonly associated with and linked to disturbed eating behaviours and chronic eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa (AN). Despite the intuitive appeal and importance of investigating adolescents' body image in terms of what adolescents would like to look like and what they think that they look like now, very little research has investigated these concepts. Furthermore, very little research has explored whether there is a difference between these two constructs how this may affect adolescents' self-esteem. This study therefore aimed to explore the actual and ideal body images of adolescent high school girls aged between 12 and 18 years in two samples of adolescents, one with eating disorders (n=76, clinical sample) and one without (n=823 high school sample). Additionally, this study investigates these constructs in relation to self-esteem levels. The results of this study have important implications for educators and clinicians within educational and clinical settings.