Over the past fews years it has been pleasing to notice an increase in the quality and diversity of submissions to this journal. It is anticipated that this upward trajectory will remain in place over the next few years, thus ensuring that the journal continues to be useful to both practitioners and those in the academic field.
In this issue there is an interesting array of articles across the spectrum of research and practice in psychology. In the first article, Gunasekera and colleagues present a very topical study on how African students, who are mostly new migrants to Australia, transition to mainstream schooling. The article highlights many of the psychological issues that relate to social conformity in a new culture, and suggests methods for supporting these students to gain successful outcomes. It would be expected that this would go some way to alleviating some social difficulties that can arise when transitioning to a new culture.
In another highly topical article, Allen and colleagues present a timely discussion on aspects of social connectedness in adolescents. This discussion paper brings the issue into focus and suggests that there is a variance in the results from studies, suggesting that adolescents can receive both positive and negative psychological outcomes from social media. Allen et al. bring to the fore the current evidential situation vis-à-vis the use of social media in adolescents. In the third article of this issue, Sarggison and colleagues focus on early childhood in New Zealand. They present findings suggesting that there may be links between children experiencing emotional and behavioural problems and their motor and language development. The results of this study have implications for practitioners in all domains of developmental and educational psychology.
Singh and Reece consider a meta-analysis that examines the benefits of psychotherapy over pharmacology in clients with major depressive disorder. These findings, which have important implications for psychological practice, suggest there are various approaches that are effective in the treatment of this group. However, the authors put forward CBT as the most efficacious method of first-line treatment. The final article by Rosmawati provides a discussion on Dynamic Systems Theory and the practical uses of this approach when researching in the area of second language acquisition.
