WHEN IT'S GOOD TO BE “BAD”: VIOLENCE AND ADOLESCENT PEER ACCEPTANCE*

This article examines the relationship between adolescent violence and peer acceptance in school. Deriving hypotheses from subcultural theories of crime and violence, it tests whether the violence–status relationship varies across sociodemographic characteristics and educational contexts of students. Analyses of school network data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health suggest that violence generally holds a negative relationship to peer friendship nominations for both males and females. However, for males, this effect varies by the educational standing of the students. Violence shows a modest positive association to peer acceptance for males who perform poorly in school. No evidence exists that race moderates the violence –status relationship. These findings are replicated in longitudinal analyses of a large metropolitan high school. For females, violence has a significant negative relationship to peer status that does not vary by individual characteristics. However, school levels of violence moderate the relationship between social status and female violence such that violent females have greater numbers of friendships in highly violent schools. The implications of these findings for peer research and delinquency theory are discussed.     

Law’s not hard; it’s just hard to get into: a study of alternative entry students to law school

Widening access to higher education is a challenge currently under discussion in Australia and the United Kingdom. The increasing number of alternative entry programs offered by universities has made tertiary study, including law study, more accessible. One concern with widening access to legal education is the ability of students entering law school through means other than very high academic scores to undertake a law degree successfully. Students who enter law school are generally referred to as “high achievers”, having qualified through an admission policy based on competitive rankings. The implementation of equitable access programs in some Australian universities has resulted in a number of places being made available to final year high school students who meet the eligibility criteria. Lowering the entry requirements to some courses provides opportunities for students whose circumstances have affected their ability to attain competitive ranking scores. The Principals’ Recommendation Scheme (PRS) is one of these programs. The University of Technology Sydney in New South Wales, Australia commenced the PRS in 2012. UTS:Law was one of the first Faculties to develop a strategy to support these students. The Faculty is committed to resourcing all students in their study and, as a result, is engaged in the ongoing evaluation of the academic and co-curricular programs provided to students. This paper explains the implementation of the PRS and the relevant support infrastructure available to students. It also considers the research into student retention and academic success and makes a preliminary assessment that, to date, the PRS students are succeeding in the transition from secondary education to law school, and that the existing infrastructure is accommodating the needs of these students. The PRS is an alternative entry scheme that provides a model for consideration by other law schools, committed to widening access to legal education.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF ARREST FOR COLLEGE ENROLLMENT: AN ANALYSIS OF LONG‐TERM EFFECTS AND MEDIATING MECHANISMS*

This study draws on labeling theory and education research on the steps to college enrollment to examine 1) whether and for how long arrest reduces the likelihood that high‐school graduates will enroll in postsecondary education and 2) whether any observed relationships are mediated by key steps in the college enrollment process. With 17 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and propensity score matching, we derived matched samples of arrested and nonarrested but equivalent youth (N = 1,761) and conducted logistic regression and survival analyses among the matched samples to examine the short‐ and long‐term postsecondary consequences of arrest. The results revealed that arrest reduced the odds of 4‐year college enrollment directly after high school, as well as that high‐school grade point average and advanced coursework accounted for 58 percent of this relationship. The results also revealed that arrest had an enduring impact on 4‐year college attendance that extended into and beyond emerging adulthood. Two‐year college prospects were largely unaffected by arrest. These findings imply that being arrested during high school represents a negative turning point in youths’ educational trajectory that is, in part, a result of having a less competitive college application. Implications are discussed.     

中小学生自我概念发展的影响因素研究

本研究对高小及初中学生自我概念发展的影响因素进行了考察。结果表明 :高小和初中学生自我概念的直接影响因素均为同伴接纳、学生成就、父子关系和师生关系 ,但它们对两阶段自我概念的影响模式有差异 :对高小学生自我概念的影响具有决定性作用的是同伴接纳 ;对初中学生自我概念影响较大的是学业成就和同伴接纳 ;父子和师生关系对自我概念的影响从高小至初中稍有降低。家庭环境变量对中小学生总体自我概念没有直接效应     

Saved By the Bell: Reclaiming Home Court Advantage for At‐Risk Youth Funneled into the School‐to‐Prison Pipeline

Far too often, minority students are faced with punitive disciplinary actions and are consequently directed to the “school‐to‐prison” pipeline. From education to discipline, implementation of policies that criminalize minor delinquent behavior pushes these students out of school and into the juvenile justice system. Traditional disciplinary actions that would land students in the principal's office have gradually transformed to students being handcuffed and thrown in jail. This Note proposes a model statute requiring states with a high criminal delinquency rate to implement school‐based youth courts in public high schools.     

论中小学生违法犯罪的学校原因及其预防

一直以来,学校教育在引导未成年学生时,尚存在空白或不完善的方面。贯彻执行教育方针不力;对差生简单粗暴,处理不当;对"好学生"的管理和教育存在偏差;管理中还存在不少漏洞等成为当前学校环境中引起中小学生违法犯罪的重要原因。在预防中小学生违法犯罪中,学校教育承担着不可缺少的重要作用。学校应该从素质教育的角度来加强未成年人违法犯罪预防工作。把德育放在学校素质教育的首位;加强对学生的法制教育;性教育课进课堂;将心理教育和辅导摆上重要位置;加强工读学校改革和建设是学校在预防中小学生违法犯罪中应该采取的重要举措。     

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

Public education is a sphere of society in which distributive justice with respect to the allocation of opportunities to learn can have profound and lasting effects on students’ educational outcomes. We frame our study in the distributive justice literature, and define just outcomes specifically from a meritocratic and strict egalitarian perspectives in order to investigate how assignment to academic tracks and the availability of opportunities to learn during high school are associated with students’ academic achievement during college. We examine the role of “just” placement into high school academic tracks, “just” access to high-quality teachers, and “just” assignment of secondary schools’ resources in high school, in relation to college freshmen’s grade point averages (GPA). We utilize longitudinal data from a unique dataset with over 15,000 students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina public secondary schools and then attended North Carolina public universities. Our results suggest that “unjust” assignment of students to certain high schools, access to high-quality teachers, and assignment to learn in specific academic tracks result in long-lasting consequences that are reflected in freshman college GPA. Importantly, findings also show that the direction and magnitude of the relationship between distributional injustice at schools and college performance is moderated by students’ own gender and race. Race and gender interact with the high schools’ institutional contexts operationalized by tracking practices, teacher quality, and by school racial and socioeconomic composition. Results show that similar settings do not affect all students in the same ways.     

School Suspensions and Adverse Experiences in Adulthood

The “school-to-prison pipeline” and the negative effects of suspensions, expulsions and school arrests have received increasing national attention recently. Researchers have documented some of the potential harms of these exclusionary school discipline practices for students, including academic difficulties, increased misconduct, and future justice system contact. However, these investigations have been somewhat limited in scope, as they tend to focus only on students’ academic outcomes and juvenile justice system involvement. In this paper we seek to expand upon prior studies by considering how school suspensions may affect youth in peripheral and long-lasting ways. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health, we analyze whether being suspended from school relates to the likelihood of students experiencing a number of adverse events and outcomes when they are adults. We find that being suspended increases the likelihood that a student will experience criminal victimization, criminal involvement, and incarceration years later, as adults.     

人的主体性发展与中学教育

人的主体性,是人在社会实践中不断生成和发展的。充分发展以培养人的主体性为最终目的为主体性教育是时代的呼唤,也是当今学生主体性迅速发展的客观要求。作为常常被主休恶性循环研究所忽视的中学教育,必须弃教育中那种难知难智型的认识传递与智能训练的框架,遵循主体性原则,在教育目的、教育内容、教育方法、教育管理等方面进行改革,以培养自由发展的、富有创造性的主体的人。     

Educational tracking and juvenile confidence in the police in China

Juvenile confidence in the police (JCP) has become an important research topic in policing. In spite of an increasing amount of research literature on JCP, the influence of educational tracking especially vocational tracking on juveniles’ confidence in the police has received limited scholarly attention. Extant literature suggests a noticeable difference in family backgrounds, attitudinal perceptions, and problematic behaviours between vocational school students and regular high school students. Using the survey data of 3628 students collected from these 2 distinctive segments of educational tracking in a southwestern Chinese city, this study examines if and how youths in vocational schools perceive the local police differently from their regular high school counterparts. The findings indicate that vocational school students had more confidence in the police than their regular high school peers. In addition, school contexts played a significant role in shaping their respective attitudes toward the police. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Who Will Graduate? Disruption of High School Education by Arrest and Court Involvement

Little research has assessed the effects of juvenile justice involvement during high school on educational outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study assesses the effect of first‐time arrest and court involvement during high school on educational attainment. In addition, differential effects by structural location are examined. Findings suggest support for the labeling perspective. First‐time court appearance during high school increases the chances of dropping out of high school independent of involvement in delinquency. Furthermore, the effect of court appearance is particularly detrimental to less delinquent youths.     

GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: ADVANCING THE HIGHLY MOBILE STUDENT POPULATION TOWARD HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

Varied curricula among public school districts within the same state often result in localized core courses and high school graduation requirements. This inconsistency makes it difficult for highly mobile students–who make frequent non‐promotional school transfers during the school year–to obtain full or partial credit for successfully completed coursework, hindering progress toward graduation and increasing dropout rates. While student mobility permeates all communities, it is particularly devastating to some of the most vulnerable children in our society, including homeless children, foster youth, children from low‐income and single‐parent households, migrant students, youth in juvenile correctional facilities, and children of military families. Current federal legislation addresses only some of these groups, leaving many students underserved by the education system. This Note advocates for states to adopt legislation that specifically requires a standardized credit‐recognition system, allowing schools to award full and partial credit for coursework completed elsewhere within the state. Specifically, it addresses the importance of keeping highly mobile students in their schools of origin, when it is in their best interest. It further focuses on the need for state and local policies to require school districts to award and accept full and partial credit for coursework completed in another in‐state school district.     

Immigrants, assimilation, and perceived school disorder: An examination of the “other” ethnicities

Extant research on school disorder has largely ignored modern immigrant groups, or has lumped these groups in an “other” category. This was often done for pragmatic reasons, but it likely masked any unique experiences these groups had with regard to school disorder. The current study examined Latino and Asian immigrant students’ experiences with school disorder using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study. Findings indicated that Latino and Asian immigrant students report marked differences in school disorder. Current results revealed, in particular, that Asian immigrants report significantly higher levels of school disorder even though they outperform Latino students academically. Assimilation variables, however, have little to do with such perceptions. Implications from these findings are discussed.     

Teaching Forensic Entomology,Forensic Anthropology,and Haematology & Serology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Practical activities for distance learning

As the COVID-19 pandemic upended college and university instruction throughout the world, instructors were hard-pressed to find suitable alternatives for practical activities typically carried out outside of classrooms—in laboratories, workshops, clinics, and in the field. In response to this unanticipated challenge, they relied on their ingenuity to achieve pre-pandemic goals under pandemic conditions that necessitated the shift to online teaching. The Forensic Science Undergraduate Program housed in the School of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico was not exempt from this educational upheaval but, due to its interdisciplinary nature, required creating and/or adopting a wide range of activities capable of training students to perform practical tasks associated with subject areas that span the natural and social sciences, the humanities, and the law. This report aims to describe the approaches undertaken in three subjects (Forensic Entomology, Forensic Anthropology, and Hematology & Serology) by interviewing instructors and examining their teaching materials. Also, through online surveys, students’ reactions to these approaches were elicited to learn about their suitability and teaching potential. Instructor’s experiences during the pandemic have proven to be a rich source of ingenious solutions, with implications well-beyond the current crisis, such as creating blended or fully online courses aimed at larger numbers of students, forensic and legal professionals, and even other instructors. The wide variety of forensic sciences offers the opportunity to innovate and improve the teaching and learning of science, particularly to the benefit of students that must combine their school tasks with professional and/or family duties.     

The impact of after‐school programs on the routine activities of middle‐school students: Results from a randomized,controlled trial*

Research Summary Unsupervised after‐school time for adolescents is a concern for parents and policymakers alike. Evidence linking unsupervised adolescent socializing to problem behavior outcomes heightens this concern among criminologists. Routine activities theory suggests that, when youth peer groups congregate away from adult authority, both opportunity for and motivation to engage in deviant acts increase. After‐school programs are a possible solution to unsupervised teen socializing during afternoon hours and are much in demand. However, empirical research has yet to test the relationship between the availability of after‐school programs and youth routine activities. This study presents evidence from a multisite, randomized, controlled trial of an after‐school program for middle‐school students in an urban school district. Policy Implications Youth in the treatment group engaged in less unsupervised socializing after school than youth in the control group but not as much less as would be expected if the after‐school program was providing consistent supervision to youth who would otherwise be unsupervised. Additional analyses examined why the influence of the after‐school program was not more pronounced. We found that, although program attendance was related to decreases in unsupervised socializing, the program did not attract many delinquency‐prone youths who were unsupervised, which suggests that the students most in need of the program did not benefit. Furthermore, data obtained from a mid‐year activity survey revealed that youth in the study were highly engaged in a variety of after‐school activities. The addition of the after‐school program into the mixture of available activities had little effect on the frequency with which students participated in organized activities after school.     

THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF CONFLICT IN DIVORCE LITIGATION: A DISCURSIVE CRITIQUE OF “PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME” AND “THE ALIENATED CHILD”

In high‐conflict divorce litigation involving custody and access, mental‐health professionals are often used to assess the case and make recommendations. Using Foucauldian theories of discourse, this article suggests that these assessments, which are intended to resolve the conflict or offer profitable information, often participate in the conflict by constructing assessments and diagnoses that fit with legal discourse, and thus with the outcomes of adversarial‐styled rulings and ideologically driven interests. This article suggests that so long as such professionals are driven by the privileged discourse of law and psychology/psychiatry, the best interests of those at the center of the conflict can have their experience co‐opted by the iatrogenic features of these discourses.     

The age of reason: An examination of psychosocial factors involved in delinquent behaviour

Purpose. Delinquent behaviour among children and adolescents is escalating at a considerable rate. This has led to calls to lower the Age of Criminal Responsibility (ACR); however there is limited research on which to base such a decision. The present study addressed this omission by (1) assessing whether or not children can accurately distinguish right from wrong in relation to ‘real‐life’ transgressions and (2) investigating psychosocial factors that may constrain children from acting in accordance with their knowledge of what is right and wrong. Methods. A total of 452 students were recruited from five schools in Sydney, Australia. Forty percent of participants were younger children recruited from Year 5 classes in primary school (mean age of 10.49), and 60% were older children from Year 8 classes in high school (mean age of 14.29). All students completed a questionnaire measuring their understanding of right and wrong, their level of moral disengagement and delinquent behaviour, and their perceived self‐efficacy relating to academic achievement, empathy, and resistance to peer pressure. Results. The majority of children in both age groups demonstrated knowing the difference between right and wrong in relation to ‘real‐life’ transgressions. Further analyses using structural equation modelling (analysis of moment structures, AMOS) revealed that children who engaged in delinquent behaviour were unable to exercise this knowledge appropriately to regulate their behaviour. They were less able to resist peer pressure for transgressive conduct, had low levels of empathic and academic self‐efficacies, and disengaged from moral standards. Conclusions. Implications for policy change and future research directions are proposed.     

“AGING OUT: DON'T MISS OUT”—A MODEL OF COMMUNITY LEGAL EDUCATION

Typically, community legal education projects are ad hoc efforts where attorneys, law students, paralegals, or community organizers present how‐to workshops, develop manuals, or lead informational or training sessions for other attorneys, advocates, or members of the community. However, community education efforts can also promote and encourage public awareness, community engagement, and advocacy. This essay explores why community legal education efforts are needed and particularly well suited for youth transitioning out of foster care, and examines a specific community legal education effort that is being implemented with and on behalf of foster youth transitioning out of New Jersey's foster care system. The hope is that by studying this example, others may learn from it and be inspired to replicate it, as part of a state's or a community's overall effort to aid, empower, and engage foster youth.     

Knowledge is Power: A Theory-Based Approach to Reducing School Violence

The study assesses the impact of a theory-based school violence program though a survey of 1,500 middle and high school students. It is the first to apply the concept of optimistic bias within the school violence context. Despite high profile school shootings, the students maintained the belief that violence was less likely to happen to them (personally) or in their schools than elsewhere in the country. Findings indicate that optimistic bias can be reduced through educational campaigns, and suggest a means of reducing violence by first reducing optimistic bias.