This issue completes the first volume of my editorship of the journal and I would like to thank all the contributors and reviewers for their hard work. There have been some exciting developments with the journal over the past year as we strive to improve the quality and reach of the AEDP. For the first time we have been successful in being listed with SCOPUS and PsycINFO, which ensures that the articles published in the journal are available internationally. This will hopefully mean that many more high quality manuscripts from Australia and overseas will start to be submitted to the journal, which can only increase the standing of the AEDP over the next few years. Currently we are being assessed by Thomson Reuters for an impact factor, but this may take another year before we know if we have been successful in this endeavour.

The present research describes the preliminary evaluation of Mindfields, a self-regulatory intervention designed to enhance the development of life skills and self-set goals among school-aged adolescent offenders. Differences between intervention and control participants pre- and post-treatment were assessed using the Mindfields Assessment Battery (MAB). Twenty-four adolescents from a youth correctional facility, youth justice service centres, and alternative education schools (Mage = 14.79, SD = 1.47) were assigned to either an intervention group (n = 18) or a wait-list control group (n = 6). At pre-intervention, there were no significant differences between intervention and control participants. Post-intervention analysis between the two groups revealed that intervention participants reported significant reductions in self-reported delinquency and impulsivity compared to the control group. Moreover, while the pre- to post- intervention scores for the control participants remained relatively stable, the pre- to post-scores for intervention participants indicated significant reductions for pro-delinquency and improvements in self-satisfaction. Preliminary findings are promising and provide evidence for the effectiveness of this new self-regulatory intervention for school-aged adolescents.

Dynamic assessment is increasingly being used by educational psychologists around the world and is largely seen as a valuable approach to assessing children and providing useful classroom suggestions to help teachers working with children who have learning difficulties. However, a common complaint about the approach is the difficulty in moving from theory to practice, and in particular how to feedback the results of a dynamic assessment to teaching staff, parents, and children in order to provide an effective programme of intervention. This article provides some background to a practical resource created by two practising educational psychologists who have developed a framework on how to put dynamic assessment into practice that has the potential to make meaningful gains in children's learning.

School bonding has been identified as a protective factor for a broad range of adolescent outcomes, and it is thus important to identify factors that foster positive relationships with school. The ecological perspective suggests the importance of both individual and contextual antecedents across developmental periods, yet previous research has tended to examine only a narrow selection of school bonding correlates. This study sought to identify longitudinal influences on school bonding, examining the role of both individual and contextual factors over childhood and early adolescence. We draw on data from 1,308 participants (51% female) in the Australian Temperament Project, a large representative Australian sample that has followed the psychosocial development of participants from infancy to adulthood, and thus provides a rare opportunity to address this gap in the literature. Path analysis was conducted to examine individual and contextual predictors of school bonding at 15–16 years. The individual characteristics of higher academic achievement and sociability, and lower hyperactivity predicted school bonding. Contextual factors also made a significant contribution, including the parent–child relationships and maternal education. The results indicate that both individual and contextual factors make unique contributions to school bonding in adolescence, suggesting a number of potential targets for intervention.

This article discusses the efficacy of different methods of referring children for educational psychological services from the perspective of resilience theorising and research. Four referral systems are considered, and they are intake, patch, screening, and cross-agency referrals. It is argued that the intake system, where referrals are received by a central agency from a number of sources, is problematic from a practice as well as a theoretical perspective. The patch approach is where an educational psychologist works in a defined geographical area, and this system is recommended instead because it promotes an in-depth understanding of the particular circumstances of children, parents, and teachers. It is also suggested that geographical patches, plus the screening of students at several developmental points, is the most useful referral approach because it combines comparative standards and local knowledge. As well, cross-agency referrals, which are referrals from other social service agencies, can function as useful sources of clients for psychological services

Test anxiety (TA) affects exam performance and has been found to be composed of a cognitive (worry) and emotional component. The cognitive component has been implicated in the performance decrements seen in individuals with high TA; however, interventions involving cognitive therapies have provided mixed and limited outcomes with regard to improvement in performance. This article explores TA in relation to attentional control theory, which provides a framework for the impact of anxiety on working memory and cognitive performance. Possible interventions for the treatment of TA guided by attentional control theory will then be discussed and the need for further research to explore the efficacy of these interventions established.