What can parents and teachers do to help adolescents adjust to middle and high school transitions?

What will be an ideal response?


Answer: Middle and high school transitions often lead to environmental changes that fit poorly with adolescents’ developmental needs. They disrupt close relationships with teachers at a time when adolescents need adult support. They emphasize competition during a period of heightened self-focusing. They reduce decision making and choice as the desire for autonomy is increasing. And they interfere with peer networks as young people become more concerned with peer acceptance. Support from parents, teachers, and peers can ease these strains. Parental involvement, monitoring, gradual autonomy granting, and emphasis on mastery rather than merely good grades are associated with better adjustment. Adolescents with close friends are more likely to sustain these friendships across the transition, which increases social integration and academic motivation in the new school. Some school districts reduce the number of school transitions by combining elementary and middle school into K?8 buildings. Compared with agemates who transition to middle school, K?8 sixth and seventh graders score higher in achievement. Furthermore, teachers and administrators in K?8 buildings report more positive social contexts—less chaos, fewer conduct problems, and better overall working conditions. These factors predict students’ favorable school attitudes, academically and socially. Other less extensive changes are also effective. Forming smaller units within larger schools promotes closer relationships with both teachers and peers along with greater extracurricular involvement. And a “critical mass” of same-ethnicity peers—according to one suggestion, at least 15 percent of the student body—helps teenagers feel socially accepted and reduces fear of out-group hostility. In the first year after a school transition, homerooms can be provided in which teachers offer academic and personal counseling. Assigning students to classes with several familiar peers or a constant group of new peers strengthens emotional security and social support. In schools that take these steps, students are less likely to decline in academic performance or display other adjustment problems.

Psychology

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Research indicates that in societies where there is an intact rule of law, people are ____

a. happier b. less creative c. more aggressive d. less likely to help one another in times of hardship

Psychology

Identify and discuss three of the factors that contribute to interpersonal liking (i.e., three of the things that, in general, make a person more or less likeable)

What will be an ideal response?

Psychology

Which of the following is true of Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning?

A. Four distinct levels of moral reasoning are identified. B. Different people progress through the levels in different orders. C. The conventional level is the highest level of moral reasoning. D. Not all people reach the higher levels of moral development.

Psychology

Which of the following is true of communication styles?

a. Men are more likely to use the expressive style. b. Women are more likely to use the instrumental style. c. Most men and women use both styles, depending on the situation. d. Differences in communication style are a matter of kind, not degree.

Psychology