The aim of the present study was to better understand the combined and unique effects of teacher–student and parent–child relationships in students' achievement motivation and self-esteem. Participants were 3450 high school students administered items assessing their interpersonal relationships, academic motivation and engagement, academic self-concept, and general self-esteem. Preliminary correlations showed that both teacher–student and parent–child relationships are significantly associated with achievement motivation and general self-esteem. Importantly, however, when using appropriate structural equation models to control for shared variance amongst predictors, findings showed that although teachers and parents are clearly influential, after controlling for gender, age, and the presence of both interpersonal relationships in the one model, teacher effects are stronger than parent effects, particularly in the academic domain.

Pastoral care in schools has traditionally been associated with notions of help, advice, values development, and children's moral welfare. In the past it has been viewed predominantly as a separate set of extra-curricula activities offered to students by school staff with particular support roles, or ‘pastors’ from affiliated church or religious communities. In some Australian schools and education sectors pastoral care continues to be conceptualised in this way. However, over the past two decades interest has intensified in a ‘whole school approach’ to pastoral care that supports the holistic development of students as they learn. What has influenced this change of direction? What are some of the key challenges encountered when implementing this approach? How might we define ‘a whole school approach’ to pastoral care? What are the core principles and associated school practices of this approach to pastoral care? We attempt to address these questions in this paper. In doing so, we have drawn on the MindMatters Plus Demonstration Project and constructed a ‘whole school’ framework for pastoral care. We emphasise the importance of distributed leadership in our framework, where all staff and students alike are responsible for developing an ethos of care. This is a ‘work-in-progress’. We invite feedback on our proposal.

Judgments about the quality of students' experience of school generally focus on their academic performance and indeed this is an important indicator but closer attention needs to be paid to equally important, more broadly based outcomes that include social/emotional adjustment as they also are shown to impact on students' lives at, and beyond school. In this study, students' academic performance and social/emotional adjustment were informed by data collected from both students and teachers. Teachers of years 5 to 9 students in 58 separate classes across 21 South Australia schools reported on randomly selected students in each of their classes yielding data for 888 students who themselves reported through a questionnaire on (a) the extent to which they perceived relationships with family, peers and teachers as sources of stress or support at school; (b) their psychological health; (c) coping strategies; (d) experience of bullying and victimisation; (e) their academic performance; and (f) feelings about and sense of belonging to school. Data were used to estimate direct and indirect effects of a path model of hypothesised influences on students' social/emotional adjustment to school. The model fit the data well. The quality of a student's experience of school is most accurately represented by the inter-relationship of both academic and social/emotional outcomes which are influenced in large part by the quality of the relationships (supportive or stressful) among students, not only with peers and families but also with teachers who exert just as strong, and a sometimes stronger influence, on students' wellbeing.

Australia is a much sought-after destination of study for many thousands of international university students. However, tertiary study brings with it many challenges that may potentially precipitate psychological distress in international students. Psychological distress may be experienced in various ways. The aim of this study was to investigate the manner in which psychological distress is manifested in international students and the factors that contribute to their psychological distress. The participants consisted of 86 international students enrolled at a Queensland university who completed a battery of 9 self-report questionnaires. Results showed that obsessive–compulsiveness reflected by worry, ruminations and perfectionist tendencies was the most common symptom of psychological distress in international students. Dysfunctional coping was the only factor contributing to psychological distress. These findings have important implications for the international students with reference to the assessment of their mental health issues and the designing of suitable intervention programs.

During the developmental stage of adolescence young people face many stressful challenges (Dacey & Kenny, 1997). Some adolescents manage these challenges adaptively but others do not and are therefore at the risk of adopting maladaptive responses to stress (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2002; Patton & Noller, 1990). Because adolescents are generally reluctant to talk in the first instance to parents, or other adults including adult counsellors, programs have been established to train adolescents in peer counselling. The present study examined the conversational skills that young people prefer to use when helping their peers and investigated their response to the use of traditional counselling skills with regard to ease of use and helpfulness. The results suggest that adolescents find some commonly used counselling skills difficult to use and unhelpful. Additionally the study suggests that young people found that some normal adolescent conversational behaviours which have been discouraged in adolescent peer counsellor training programs were helpful. The findings of this study have important implications with regard to training adolescents.

This article presents an investigation into the properties of a new narrative technique for career assessment and counselling, ‘My Career Chapter: A Dialogical Autobiography’. This technique is used to facilitate clients' construction of a meaningful career-related autobiography. Previous research indicates the usefulness of My Career Chapter for adult clients and its alignment with recommendations for the development and application of qualitative assessment and counselling techniques. This study specifically commences research into the technique's applicability for adolescents. A focus group, comprised of guidance counselling professionals whose work primarily pertained to the needs of adolescents, found that there is potential to develop a version of My Career Chapter that is suitable for adolescents.

This study explored acculturation and acculturative stress in Sudanese adolescent refugees living in Brisbane. Twenty Sudanese adolescents participated in semi-structured interviews which revealed that the main source of acculturative stress was related to concern over English language proficiency, issues of parental control and conflicting cultural rules. However, optimism for the future was also evident in all the interviews. The results suggested the need for culture specific counselling practices and ongoing English language and cultural support for Sudanese refugee children in mainstream schools.

The incidence and circumstances of young people carrying knives and dangerous implements was investigated through surveys conducted with 150 ‘street youth’ and 184 ‘school youth’ in Sydney. It was found that a significant proportion of both samples carry and use knives/dangerous implements and that these implements had been used within the last week by many respondents. These implements are most commonly carried by young people between the ages of 13 and 14 years. A significant proportion of the sample reported having been threatened with knives/dangerous implements in the past. Police involvement was reported for both samples, but there was a higher proportion reported for the street sample. Young people report carrying knives/dangerous implements for safety, pressures from within and outside themselves, and to exert power and control over others. The research suggests that more emphasis needs to be placed on making young people feel safer in the community in order to address this problem.

This article explores the issues for counsellors working with international students, particularly Asian international students. As globalisation has expanded people have tended to study overseas in great numbers, hence the increasing importance for professionals to examine counselling in this cultural speciality. In order to understand effective counselling, this article discusses the major problems faced by international students and suggests specific counselling strategies in the context of general guidelines for cross-cultural counselling.

Children and adolescents suffering from an eating disorder will typically experience the adverse impact of such a disorder upon their education. These sufferers are often forced to defer their education whilst seeking treatment. However, there are a number of signs educators and school psychologists can look for to identify a student who may be struggling with an eating disorder, so as early intervention can be made to assist these students in the best possible manner. Based on a summary of recent research and literature, this article explains how eating disorders may be manifested in a school setting, how educators and school psychologists can help a student suffering from an eating disorder, and how schools can intervene to prevent eating disorders in students. Possible directions for future research in this area will also be explored.

This study identified issues in school – and in life outside school – that caused significant worry for 120 Chinese adolescents (72 males, 48 females) attending a secondary school in Hong Kong. The study explored relationships existing among 3 variables comprising degree of worry, students' general self-efficacy, and their academic achievement. Findings indicated that the students' principal worries centred on school-related matters such as examinations, promotion to higher classes, and getting a job after graduation. Students also worried significantly about the health status of family members, and family finances. Differences in patterns of worry and in self-efficacy beliefs were found between lower- and higher-achieving students. No significant correlations were found among students' degree of worry, general self-efficacy, and achievement. Results are discussed from the perspective of Chinese culture, the Hong Kong education system, and support for students.

The development of social–emotional competence is of key importance during early childhood, particularly during the preschool years. We too often believe that early childhood education should focus on the promotion of academic skills to increase intelligence and, therefore, neglect the importance of social and emotional learning. Children who are socially and emotionally well adjusted do better at school, have increased confidence, have good relationships, take on and persist at challenging tasks and communicate well. The school setting is the optimal environment to implement interventions focused on increasing social–emotional competence. This article examines the importance of developing social–emotional competence during the early years of life and discusses universal intervention approaches within the classroom. A particular universal intervention program — The Fun FRIENDS program (Barrett, 2007) — aimed at increasing social–emotional competence is described in detail. The Fun FRIENDS program is a developmentally tailored, downward extension of the preexisting, evidence-based FRIENDS for Life program (Barrett 2004; 2005).

There is a relationship between career indecision and anxiety, however the relative contributions of state and trait anxiety are unclear in the literature. 110 first-year university students completed the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Career Decision Scale (CDS) to measure anxiety and career indecision. Regression analyses revealed that state and trait anxiety made independent contributions to career indecision and that state anxiety is a much stronger predictor of career certainty than is trait anxiety. Although anxiety significantly predicted career decidedness, participants did not indicate that anxiety impacted on their career decidedness in response to open-ended questions. As such, counselling clients may not be consciously aware that anxiety impacts on their career decidedness. It is recommended that counsellors create a relaxed environment to ease clients' career decision making.

Traditional Functional Analytic procedures rely upon the identification of one or two ‘target’ behaviours for examination via observation and analysis. From these data, multiple functions are identified for each target behaviour via antecedent-behaviour-consequence data collection. However, although these methodologies have been shown to be effective with a wide range of inappropriate behaviours in classrooms, they have limitations when the inappropriate behaviours are so many and varied that selection of one or two as ‘targets’ becomes unreliable in terms of obtaining an accurate representation of the child's overall behavioural repertoire. A variation on this procedure is described and data from a case example are presented as a suggested alternative way of obtaining the kind of data required for effective classroom management of difficult behaviour.