Since its inception, relational aggression has been conceptualised as a set of destructive attempts by young girls to get their own way, and these aggressive acts have been demonised in public and media debate. This article challenges the prevailing developmental psychopathologisation literature to centre the focus on functionality, positioning relational aggression as a set of behaviours that are used as specific communication strategies. A ‘Girls’ Relational Aggression Communication Model’ is provided as a new conceptual framework that integrates positioning subtypes from the literature: ‘popular’, ‘regular’, and ‘tough’ girls. This reconceptualised communication model is a contribution to the field as it enhances understanding of the nuances in girls’ relationships. In particular, it reframes the positioning of ‘tough’ girls, who have been largely ignored in relational aggression research.

School psychological services in Victoria are provided by Student Services, which is not a school based service. The staff includes Guidance Officers, Psychology Officers, Social Workers, Welfare Officers, Interpreters and Speech Therapists. Services are provided to pre-schools, special facilities, government and registered schools. This paper focuses on the psychological services provided.

Behavioural problems in young children can be detrimental to the psychological well-being of their parents. The present study examined the effectiveness of a newly developed intervention in improving parental stress and parenting sense of competence for parents of young children with a developmental delay (DD), presenting with behavioural problems. The sample comprised 15 parents and 1 grandparent of children, aged between 2 and 5 years, with DD. Parents completed a questionnaire package at pre-intervention and post-intervention, including measures to assess parent stress and sense of competence. Paired sample t-tests revealed a significant decline at post-intervention in the total frequency of hassles associated with raising a child with DD, as well as reductions in stress associated with parents' needs. General stress and parenting sense of competence showed no significant post-intervention improvements. Correlation analyses revealed a negative relationship between parent stress and sense of competence, at pre-intervention and post-intervention. It was concluded that the intervention was useful for reducing the overall frequency of stress and the stress associated with the needs of parents raising a young child with DD. Findings have implications for the development of parental supports by early childhood intervention practitioners. Due to a number of methodological limitations, suggestions were made for future research.

Research suggests that gender and perceived language proficiency level are among the factors that may impact the strategies language learners use. This study explored the impact of these variables on learning strategies used by 111 English-major Jordanian students. The instrument was Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). The study revealed that females opt to use strategies more frequently than males. Results also showed that the higher the proficiency level, the more frequent the strategy use. Metacognitive strategies were the most prevalent among the different strategy types whereas memory strategies were the least deployed. These findings are discussed and implications are outlined.

In 1988 the report entitled “Interagency Responses to School Children with Social and Behavioural Problems” was released in South Australia. The investigation, chaired by Ms. Penny Stratmann, was asked to review the current provision of services for children of school age in South Australia who exhibit social and behavioural problems, and to examine inter alia, the extent of the problem.

The report stated that the extent of the problem was difficult to assess in numerical terms because; (i) schools do not keep systematic records, (ii) identification of disruptive students is a matter of definition and attitude (some schools would identify student behaviour as disruptive which other schools may be able to prevent or contain), (iii) it is even harderto identify is the number of children whose response to problems is passive (they are often compliant, no trouble, not noticeable), and (iv) small numbers of disruptive students create a disproportionately large amount of havoc in schools and stress in teachers. (These outcomes are the most significant in their impact but the least measurable).

Educational and Developmental Psychologists are frequently required to assess a person for the presence or absence of an intellectual disability. The assessment is important as the availability of particular services is usually tied to a formal determination that an intellectual disability is present. A key element to deciding on the existence of an intellectual disability is the presence of a level of intelligence below a predetermined level. Although definitions of intellectual disability usually refer only to significant sub-average intellectual functioning, the actual cut-off score used to indicate this level of intellectual functioning has varied over time. Whatever that cut-off level is determined to be, there are technical difficulties that make assessment of intellectual functioning less than straightforward. These difficulties result from (a) standardized tests having different standard deviations, resulting in differing scores for cut-off levels based on standard deviation calculations, (b) different standardized tests giving different scores when administered to the same person, (c) less than perfect test reliability creating uncertainty about whether the measured intelligence corresponds with the actual intelligence of the individual being assessed, and (d) many people having impairments in sight, hearing, or motor function that make the standardized administration of tests impossible. It is recommended that educational psychologists be familiar with these issues so that they can make decisions that satisfy social justice objectives. Furthermore, it is argued that familiarity with these issues will help psychologists to defend their decisions when it is necessary.

The present study aimed to investigate the development of attention skills through middle childhood and to document developmental trajectories associated with tasks of increasing attentional demands. The sample comprised 57 children (aged 5–12 years) who were divided, according to age, into three groups. Performance differences between the groups were compared on two measures, each including four subtests of increasing complexity and tapping both speed and accuracy: CogState, a computerised measure, and The Contingency Naming Test, a paper-and-pencil test. We predicted that there would be: (1) improvements in performance with increasing age, (2) deceases in performance with increasing task complexity and (3) parallel increments in performance on computer-based and paper-and-pencil measures. The results indicated that there were rapid improvements in performance on both computer-based and paper-and-pencil measures between the ages of 5 and 8 years indicated by changes in both response speed and response accuracy. In contrast, more moderate improvements were identified between the ages of 9 to 12 years and occurred mainly in the domain of speed.

Direct Instruction (D.I.) is a fairly recent model of teaching, but some of its underlying principles and strategies go back to the early 1970's (see the review by Rosenshine 1978).

The D.I. model of teaching is “an orientation that identifies major skills, selects and modifies commercial programmes that teach those skills, appropriately places students in the classroom programmes, and presents lessons each day in the most efficient manner possible” (Carnine & Silbert, 1979 p.11). D.I. focuses on such factors as increasing engaged time (the amount of time students actually spent on tasks relevant to the skill they are practising), improving the organization of the classroom to allow for more engaged time and carefully structuring the teaching programme to include an objective-based mastery learning paradigm, with frequent criterion-referenced testing to check that objectives have been met.

Central to the teaching programme is the task analysis of complex cognitive tasks such as reading, into hierarchies of component skills, which are then taught. Once students have been taught these component skills, they are taught how to combine them, to develop skills in the original, more complex task. (Carnine & Silbert, 1979 p. 11).

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a study examining the impact of congenital visual impairment on the development of motor skills and kinaesthetic acuity. Studies of children with a visual impairment have consistently noted deficits in motor development. It was hypothesised that these deficits may be linked with poor kinaesthetic sensitivity. Six preschool children with a visual impairment (mean age 55.17 months) were compared to nine classmates (mean age 56.67 months) matched for age, gender, and general verbal ability, on modified tasks from the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC) and the Kinaesthetic Acuity Test (KAT). Although the difference between groups was significant for one task only (static balance), it was noted that all differences observed were in the hypothesised direction. Further longitudinal or cross-sectional data are required to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the relationship between vision impairment, kinaesthetic development, and motor skills.

Year 12 students are in a transitional year, academically and interpersonally. This year involves many changes and the need for students to make future plans, which can be a challenge for many adolescents. During times of transition, such as Year 12, expectations and beliefs about relationships and the relational self (i.e., attachment patterns) may undergo changes. Identifying attachment patterns among Australian Year 12 students was the first aim of this 6-month longitudinal study (N = 130, M age = 16.4). A second aim of this study was to determine correlates of attachment change and stability. These correlates included psychological symptoms, loneliness, rejection sensitivity, social competence, and social support. Using an adolescent version of Bartholomew and Horowitz’s (1991) Relationship Questionnaire, self-reported attachment style showed some change, with 36% of adolescents changing attachment style category during the study. Adolescents were classified into groups based on their attachment styles at the two assessments. Groups included adolescents who were stably insecure, stably insecure, changed to insecure and changed to insecure. When groups were compared, most hypothesised differences were found. First, stably insecure individuals had the most positive psychological functioning, and they had the most stable and positive perceptions of self and others when compared to other groups. Second, stably insecure adolescents were less well-adjusted than others. Third, the changed to insecure group showed improvements in functioning over time. However, it was not clear that adjustment had declined in the changed to insecure group.

The single almost universally recognized aspect of creativity is novelty, often understood as novelty of products. However, determining which novel products are “truly” creative is difficult, because of the influence of practical and aesthetic/professional criteria. From a psychological point of view, it is more productive to study personal properties associated with creativity on the one hand and psychological processes which lead to the production of novelty on the other, especially with school children, since few of them produce widely acclaimed creative products. For this reason, creativity tests are most useful as indicators of potential. The tests can be divided into two groups: those concentrating on biographical and personal properties (creative person) and those which aim to measure creative thinking (creative process). Although a variety of tests of both kinds exists, their ability to measure real life creativity in a reliable way is open to doubt. This may well be because creativity involves a combination of psychological elements, with the result that its measurement requires new procedures that cross conventional test boundaries.

The present study examined the effects of repetition on the academic performance of students in grades one to five. Subjects (n = 122) were all selected by their schools for repetition at the end of the school year. Of these, 74 repeated the grade and the remaining 48 proceeded to the next grade because these students' parents rejected the schools' recommendations to repeat their children. All children were pre- and post-tested on a range of standardized, class-based and criterion-referenced tests to determine the academic effects of repetition and promotion on students.

Although the repeated group showed a significant improvement in place in grade, analysis of variance yielded very few differences between repeated and promoted students on the standardized academic measures, although trends favoured the promoted group. It was concluded that repetition is of limited benefit in enhancing academic performance, although the gains were sufficient to allow favourable comparisons of repeated students with their new peer groups, as measured by their place in grade, leading teachers to conclude that substantial improvements had occurred.

Many different reasons may account for the well documented relationship between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning difficulties. Longitudinal Australian data support the earlier occurrence of behaviour problems than reading problems, especially for boys. Language, motivation, and biological mechanisms, and combinations of these factors, may contribute to this association. Current emphasis must be placed on early intervention for behaviour problems, assessment of LDs which are suspected by the Grade 2 or 7-year-old level, and a long-term perspective on the management of both conditions.

Past research has identified many correlates of failure to complete 12 years of high school, but further work is required to synthesise this knowledge prior to the implementation of appropriately targeted intetventions. In the current study, a detailed questionnaire containing items relevant to school leaving was constructed using the findings from past research. The questionnaire was administered to 299 students in Years 9 to 11 at a Queensland coeducational state high school. Factor analysis of the students' responses yielded nine factors which were related to an intention to withdraw from school prior to Year 12. Discriminant analysis indicated that early school leaving was most parsimoniously predicted by a combination of scales measuring academic and occupational values, past school performance, family support, and a “masculine-jock” orientation.

Children who suffer traumatic brain injury frequently experience difficulties in those behaviours represented as “executive” or prefrontal lobe functioning. In an educational setting these may involve disorganisation, difficulty moving from one activity to another, following rules, and staying on task to complete activities. Return to school involves a three-phase process: (1) an assessment period where school is viewed as a vehicle for stability; (2) modification of the school environment; and (3) student strategies. For the assessment phase, checklists are based on neurobehavioural sequelae of brain injuries in children and classified according to functional categories of Personal/Social, Work Habits, and Cognitive/Communicative behaviours. These are used to generate teaching and learning strategies for the second and third phases. One approach presently under trial is the development of executive skill training involving student plans. Student plans provide a framework for training students to generalise from one activity to another. Recent research provides some promise for the efficacy of this approach. The challenge to those working in rehabilitation of students with brain injuries, particularly where the frontal lobes are implicated, is to develop a process where students can recognise there is a problem, apply strategies across settings, unprompted, and monitor their performance. These are the very dysexecutive behaviours typical of students with brain injuries.

The initial interview is an important aspect of development of and intervention in tertiary student learning. Yet there are no published interview schedules available to psychologists working in the area of tertiary academic skills development This paper presents an interview schedule for use with individual tertiary students seeking assistance with learning and academic skills development. Some preliminary comments about the application of the schedule are also offered.

Relational aggression is becoming increasingly recognized as a very prevalent behaviour amongst females, especially within school settings. Robust findings have supported N.R Crick and K.A. Dodge's Social Information Processing Model (1994) as being a useful model in explaining physical aggression amongst males. However, little research has examined the model with regards to relational aggression in females and research that does exist has shown inconsistent findings. The current study examined the fifth step of the model, Response Decision, in a sample of female adolescents. The four factors that have previously been identified as contributing to the response decision step were examined, including response evaluation, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy evaluation, and response selection. In view of suggestions made by W.F.Arsenio and E.A.Lemerise (2004), level of moral reasoning was also examined with regard to how relationally aggressive responses were evaluated. These factors were examined within hypothetical relationally aggressive peer situations in relationally aggressive, overtly aggressive, relationally plus overtly aggressive and non-aggressive participants. The results show that compared to non-aggressive and overtly aggressive females, relationally aggressive females show a bias in the four processes of the response decision step. Differences in levels of moral reasoning were also found between the different aggression type groups. Hence the findings provide support for Crick and Dodge's (1994) Social Information Processing model in explaining relationally aggressive behaviour. The findings are discussed with regards to their implications for educational settings.