Discussion Questions_week4_11022010 Eccles, J.S. & Roeser, R.W. (2009). Schools, academic motivation, and stage - environment fit. In Lerner, R.M. & Steinberg, L. (Eds.) Handbook of adolescent psychology: Third edition (1) (pp. 404 - 434). John Wiley and Sons, Inc. · In the part of text called Extracurricular and Out-of-School Activities is described that these activities have positive impact on adolescent development and that they can also hinder from substance usage, crime, violence, and sexual activity. The text also says, that for example in sports, drug and alcohol usage appears to be a result of negative influences of specific peer group. But is it just a case of sport? Can we find these negative influences of specific peer groups also in other activities? · I think that violence at schools is a serious theme. Is it important, that teachers are trying to preclude violence in particular areas of the school at particular times of the day (where violence is most likely to occur) and also to influence students educationally in this field? Is it really their responsibility? · What is the school context? Which processes, social actors and levels does it contain? · What are nonistructional spaces in the school? Which are pros and cons of these places unmonitored by adults? · What is your opinion for public and private schools? Can you find pros and cons of these schools? What are differences between motivations of students at these schools? · Were you hit by the transition from elementary school to high school or from high school to university? Think of the most difficult transition for you and try to describe it, why? · Were relationships between you and teachers or you and other students formed easier on smaller schools (elementary, high school) or bigger schools (university)? · Do you think that your contact with teachers at university is sufficient? Would you like to get to know them better? · Do you think that it is optimal to start classwork at 8 a. m. (it is common in the Czech republic)? · Teachers should be rolemodels for children. Do you think that Czech teachers are subjects to selection and therefore prepared for this important social role? · Many teachers in the Czech Republic complain now about their students that they are less respectful that the students few years ago, more individualist and not really able to accept the way the school courses are being made. Do you think it is really like that? If so, what do you think is the reason for that? · „Across a variety of measures of academic and social functioning (e.g., grades, problem behavior), results showed that adolescents attending smaller schools, on average, did better than the adolescents attending larger schools after sociodemographic factors were controlled. „ Why do you think students visiting smaller schools have better results than those visiting bigger schools? Is it really the school size (and the climate in the school) what makes the difference? Can there be some other reasons? · In our school system, 9th grade students usually have to choose their further education- high schol, secondary grammar schol,...etc. What do you think about making such a crutial decision in age, when you are building your own identity? What is your personal experience? · There are some schools- specially for girls/ boys and some of them are even boarding schools. Would you consider this condition as positive or no? · How many students must be in the class to get stimulating environment to get school amusing and challenging in the same time? · How can we deal with different levels of children skills and competence? It is even possible with “real life” limitations? · Author speaks about profits in math by girls, when they are taught special way. Is it mean that it would be better to teach math separately boys and girls (or also other subjects)? · What is your opinion on state and public schools? Can you find pros and cons of these schools? What are differences between motivations of students at these schools? Were you hit by the transition from elementary school to high school or from high school to university? Think of the most difficult transition for you and try to describe it, why? · Were relationships between you and teachers formed easier on smaller schools (elementary, high school) or bigger schools (university)? · Does school affect their students during some periods of time more or less intensively than during others? In which stage of development does school affect their students the most? · It's written in the text that changes to other stages of primary and secondary schools are very risky as the motivation of students might decrease. What methods could we use to prevent this? · How can we take advantage of Pygmalion effect in school environment? Can you give any example? · How could we forego adolescent’s suicidal tendencies that happen because of bad school performance? · Author said, that respecting teachers is one of important aspect of positive teacher-student relationship. Are teachers today less respected by students than before? Why yes/not? Wentzel, K.R. & Looney, L. (2007). Socialization in school settings. In Grusec, J.E. & Hastings, P.D. (Eds.) Handbook of socialization: Theory and research (382- 403). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press. · What kind of the social experience is the most important? What is the least important? Those provided by families, the broader community, the school or the peer group? Was it any different in the past? · Why elementary school-age children often describe teachers as being important sources of support and adolescents rarely mention relationships with teachers as having importance in their lives? · Can the conclusions concerning socialization in school settings (based on findings from non-experimental correlational studies) be changed on the grounds of more extensive research (that requires in-depth conversations with extensive observations of students and teachers)? · Which are the main teacher`s goals for students at elementary school? · How can family factors influence social competences of children at school? · Can the time children spend at schools influence the way how they see their working hours later at work? Can the longer school days come to the ability to spend more time at work and less with your family/friends? Does the length of school days influence the way families and family lives are organized? · Do you think children see their unpopular peers as less able to achieve their goals? What does research suggest about this topic? · What is the danger about teachers’ expectations? On the other hand, what can be an advantage? · What is considered to be a fairly unique outcome of schooling? Why is that so? · Do you think that a teacher´s age is an important factor in education, especially when we speak about adolescent students? Can a young teacher be the same authority / role model as an older colleague? · How could the teacher form positive and significant relationship with deviant older adolescents to give them support and guidance? · What is the country difference regarding to goals for student at school? In china, the goal is always simple as: get higher score in examination cause it's directly related to getting into higher education. If the student is not trying to get higher scores, then he is opposing the teachers' goal and might receive less care from the teachers. · How can we in schools support developing soft-skills that are later spending money and time in companies not just to develop them but also get grounds of skills and competencies? · It's written in the text that it was proved that schools with less number of students do have a positive effect on their academic results and their stay at school. How many students should then ideally be there in a school? · Warm and perceptive relationships between teacher and pupil are recommended for a for-social behavior of a child. On the other hand, the teacher must be neutral and fair-minded to all of his pupils. What should the teacher do to fulfill both these requirements? · What do you think is more natural or innate – to be competitive or cooperative in behavior? · Can teachers be more important persons in child socialization than parents? When and in which ways? · What do you think about placing the kid in the nursery school? What are pros and cons for the child development and are there any problems with the transition to kindergarten? · How would you describe the relationship between teachers´stereotypes of minority students and their academic achievement. · What are the main differencies between elementary school and high school, considering the relationship with teachers and social support? · What is the influence of socially integrative outcomes in reaching social competences? · Teachers wages in Czech republic are low. Can it influence quality of teaching at czech schools? · What are the goals for czech students at school? (In USA the goals are moral character, conformity to social rules and norms, cooperation and positive styles of social interaction.) · Is the degree of peer acceptance of rejection influential for social competence? · In which way does size of the school effect school climate? Leventhal, T., Dupere, V. & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2009). Neighborhood influences on adolescent development. In Lerner, R.M. & Steinberg, L. (Eds.) Handbook of adolescent psychology: Third edition (2) (pp. 411 - 443). John Wiley and Sons. · Which behavior can be positively associated with living in a disatvantaged neighbourhood context? · What do you think about researching of possitive and protective factors that could help to adolescent to overcome negative influences from neighborhood? · Do you think that moving of problem adolescents and their families from disadvantage neighborhoods can lead to their reparation or minimizing of problem behaviour? · Do you think that nearly everybody in the Czech republic has enough money to study at university? Do you know somebody who wasn´t able to study at university because his family didn´t have money fot it? · Do you think that gap between children from wealthy and poor families could be markedly reduced if they attended one classroom together? · Do you feel the neighbourhood you grew up in influenced the way you grew up? If so, how? What were the positive aspects of your neighbourhood? What were the negative ones? · When you know about the bad influences in your neighbourhood, do you think you can protect your children of it? If so, how? · Parents’ or youth’s ratings to capture neighborhood for processes have several methodological problems. Can you come up with one? · How is living in a disadvantage neighborhood associated with school attributes like quality, climate and norms? · Comparing past and present days, what dou you think of influence of neighborhood , did it change- increase/ decrease or stay the same? · Do you think, that having friends in neighborhood differs in importance, when an adolescent lives in house/ block of flats (town/ village)? · Is it really that parents provide less supervision and regulation of boys' activities relative to girls', resulting in boys' greater exposure or susceptibility to neighborhood influences? Are there any other reason that contribute to this difference? · Why a 7-year follow up of quasi-experimental study of a desegregation effort in Yonkers. New York came into coclusion that older adolescents who moved to middle-income neighborhoods reported poorer school performance than youth who remained in high poverty neighborhoods?? · Why neighborhood low SES had more pronounced effects on African Americans' odds of dropping out of high school than European Americans? Is it because of peer or family influence? · How can we help adolescence from less structural neighborhood to overcome its limitation? · Researches are negative focused. Do you think, that it better to research negative factors than to find possitive fastors that could shape adolescent development by better way? · Researches find that bad physical home environment can cause health problems as asthma... But other recent rechearches say that too sterile environment causes loss immunity of individual. It evokes more allergy. Do you agree with first or second argument? · If we talk about chzech situation with disadvantage neighborhoods where Romanies often live. Do you think that problems in their development are caused by disadvantage neighborhoods or their personal traits? · How can we deal with poor child outcomes caused by neighborhood disadvantages as poverty, low social organization or few institutional resources the best? · Do you have some personal experience with “informal social control” as the authors are talking about that (“the degree to which residents monitor the behavior of others in accordance with socially accepted practices”)? Which forms this control could take? · What could be the characteristics which distinguish the boys and the girls in accordance to finding that a) “Several of the studies […] found that neighborhood SES may have more pronounced effects on young adolescent boys´ achievement than on girls´ achievement.”? b) “…it is likely that the disruptive effects of moving on social networks were more harmful among boys than girls.”? · In the proces of neighborhood defining, what are the most frequently used data? · What do you think about the situation in the Czech republic, if we consider influence of neighborhood on adolescents´development? · How would you describe the differencies between younger and older adolescents, if we think about influence of the neighborhood. · How does a culture and ethnicity effect the socialization process and process of moving to neihgborhood with different SES? · Studing text deals with a number of researchs of neighborhood influence to adolescents development. These researchs bring different outcomes. What can be the reasons? · What is the influence of neighborhood on adolescent boys? · What could be possible reasons for people who didn´t except vouchers for moving to better neighborhood? · Can age of adolescents play signifficant role in process of moving to neighborhood with better SES?