This research examined the interactions between friendship patterns, school achievement, coping skills, self-concept and the classroom learning environment for 182 early adolescents, mean age 13 years 5 months (47.25% male). Participants completed the Friendship Nomination Form. The second phase of data collection focused on adolescents with high or low friendship ratings, who then completed four social and two academic measures. The social measures were: (1) Friendship Quality Scale (FQS; Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1994), (2) Self-Description Questionnaire II–Short Form (Marsh, 1990), (3) Coping Strategy Indicator–Short Form (CSI-S; Amirkhan, 1990) and (4) What is Happening in this Classroom Scale (WIHIC; Fraser, Fisher, & McRobbie, 1996). Adolescents with more friends reported more companionship and help from friends. Those with fewer friends perceived their classroom to be less cohesive and less cooperative. Females reported more closeness and friendship commitment than males. Friendship patterns had a significant influence on students' English achievement but not their mathematics achievement. The implications of the findings for school professional are discussed.

At the request of the National Executive of the APS College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists (CEDP), a survey was carried out with the aim of profiling its membership in order to better describe the nature of college membership when information is sought from its parent body, the APS, and to provide better services for its members. Of the 327 CEDP members contacted by email, 119 completed an online questionnaire providing demographic information and data concerning their professional practice, skills, involvement with the APS and professional development needs and preferences. The data obtained indicates that the CEDP contains an aging, predominantly female, city-based membership. Respondents consider they share many skills and competencies with other psychologists but do have a specialised knowledge base. They collaborate with colleagues from other Colleges but would welcome the opportunity to do this more. While they value the work of the APS they would like increased support by the APS in raising the profile of educational and developmental psychology. While the majority of members could find and access professional development (PD) relevant to their practice, a sizeable minority considered the costs involved excessive. The implications of these data for CEDP policies, especially with regard to recruitment and service provision, are discussed.

Accurate knowledge and positive attitudes within the community are important for the effective diagnosis, treatment and support of people with ADHD. Most previous research about knowledge and attitudes has focused only on professional groups and parents of children with ADHD. The aim of this study was to explore knowledge about ADHD characteristics and causes, and attitudes towards issues such as medication in the general population. Six hundred and forty-five members of the Australian community, all of whom were parents, completed a questionnaire. The findings showed that the core features of ADHD were well-known, but there were misconceptions and considerable uncertainty about many aspects. Most respondents failed to recognise the genetic basis of the disorder and its potentially lifelong nature. Fathers were less knowledgeable than mothers. Although most participants believed that ADHD is a genuine disorder and recognised the benefits of medication, the majority believed that it is diagnosed too frequently and that medication is prescribed too readily. The study concluded that, in many respects, the public is not well-informed about ADHD and suggested that the media may have an important role in enhancing community awareness of the disorder through responsible, sensitive and accurate reporting.

The Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Third Edition (Bayley-III) and Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (SB5) were administered in a sample of 26 typically developing children (12 males and 14 females) aged 24–42 months. Children completed the assessments in two separate sessions, counterbalanced for order of administration. Scores on the two instruments were not significantly related, with the exception of the SB5 Knowledge score, which was moderately correlated with the Language score on the Bayley-III (r = .41, p = .04). Despite no other significant correlations, for 22 of the 26 children, scores were very consistent across the two instruments. Implications for test selection are discussed.

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.

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.

Fifteen per cent of Australian couples now experience fertility problems and many turn to assisted reproductive technology such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) to conceive their child. This study investigated gender differences in relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood, and the effects of gender and age on relationship and psychological adjustment at six–nine months postpartum, in a sample of IVF conceiving couples initially recruited from a private fertility treatment clinic in Sydney. The results revealed different patterns of adjustment for mothers and fathers, whereby mothers showed a significant decline in relationship satisfaction from pregnancy to early parenthood while fathers did not. However, fathers exhibited more consistent relationship concern than mothers in both pregnancy and parenthood, and also reported greater parenting stress related to interaction with their child. There were negligible differences between older and younger parents, suggesting comparable adjustment across age groups. While the outcomes of this research do not indicate problematic adjustment, for those professionals who might be working with families conceiving through IVF they do highlight some specific adjustment issues for mothers and fathers during the postpartum period.

This is a reflective paper grounded in practice. It addresses the nature of working alliances in education between colleagues from different cultural, professional and generational backgrounds. The authors are specifically concerned with discussing the significance of accessing peer/cultural support in education, in particular how one colleague mentored another and the way knowledge was exchanged during this process to increase awareness and understanding. This topic is considered in the context of supporting male Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students while they study and live away from home to complete their secondary school education at boarding school in Western Australia (WA).

This article reports mean scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Version III) for 211 randomly selected healthy term (≥ 37 weeks gestation) Australian infants at one year of age. Mean scores were significantly different from standardised norms in all subscales except fine motor. Australian infants scored higher on cognitive and receptive language (p < .01) and lower on expressive language and gross motor (ps < .01) subscales. These findings raise questions regarding the validity of this test in the Australian population and suggest that the test be re-normed on Australian children for valid interpretation of scores in this cultural context.

Elementary and secondary school leaders advocating remediation and prevention of student discipline problems are doing so in lieu of direct development of student self-discipline (Larson, Smith, & Furlong, 2002). This shift has lead to the use of zero-tolerance strategies towards discipline (Maxcy, 2002). In this article, zero-tolerance policies — in particular, the use of out-o-school suspension — is critiqued from three ethical theory perspectives. This research argues for alternate approaches to discipline (Jackson, Boostrom, & Hansen, 1993; Skiba & Peterson, 1999) based in classical ethical theory, with specific emphasis on social justice (Rawls, 1971). Implications on Australian school systems and educational psychological development are discussed.