Racially and ethnically minoritized individuals, first-generation college students, and women are significantly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. This lack of equal representation limits creativity and progress in these fields and perpetuates systemic barriers that discourage students from pursuing STEM pathways. This special communication introduces the three-tiered mentorship model employed in the Teen Science Ambassador Program (TSAP), which incorporates senior mentors, near-peer mentors, and high school ambassadors (i.e., mentees) to promote education, hands-on research, and career development in STEM for underrepresented students. We discuss the benefits and challenges of the three-tiered model and offer recommendations for optimizing its effectiveness to enhance mentorship experiences for all participants. Findings from the TSAP program suggest that the three-tiered approach benefited all participants: high school ambassadors gained STEM skills and confidence, near-peer mentors developed leadership and communication abilities, and senior mentors improved mentorship skills. However, the effectiveness of near-peer mentorship is highly dependent on clearly defined roles and structured involvement. Thus, feedback collected from each mentorship tier was used to inform subsequent iterations of the program. The layered mentorship structure fostered a sense of community and belonging, which is crucial for retaining individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM.

This study aimed to investigate the reasons for school absenteeism among students studying at different types of high schools, and school counsellors’ practices and proposed solutions for reducing school absenteeism. This was a qualitative research conducted with a phenomenological design. The study group was formed using criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods. The research was conducted in Turkey during the 2018–2019 academic year with 21 school counsellors working at different types of high schools and having at least 5 years of experience. The school counsellors were asked four questions on school absenteeism using a semistructured interview form. Each interview took 30–45 minutes and interview notes were taken synchronously. According to the research findings, poor academic outcomes, parental involvement, school management and school schedules, as well as health issues and a lack of social activities are the main factors influencing school absenteeism. Potential solutions that can be offered by school counsellors include increasing family involvement, improving the school climate, addressing health issues, planning new social activities and offering flexible syllabus options for students.

This study aimed to determine the predictive power of the theory of planned behaviour in predicting the intention and behaviour of positive thinking in school students. A cross-sectional study was performed on 367 high school male students in Iran. Data were gathered using a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity and reliability had been confirmed before. Descriptive and inferential analysis (univariate and multiple logistic regression models, Pearson correlation) was performed using SPSS software V.20. AMOS version 22 was used to perform the path analysis. According to the results, the construct of attitude was the most important construct in predicting positive thinking intention. Finally, the theory of planned behaviour constructs could predict 36% of intention variance and 20% of behaviour variance of positive thinking. Since the construct of attitude is one of the most powerful constructs in predicting student positive thinking intention in male teens, it is recommended that more attention be paid to this construct in educational programs to improve the mental health of male high school students. The results of this study can help psychologists and counsellors, families, and teachers improve students’ mental health.

In Carl Kaestle's 1992 essay “Standards of Evidence,” generalization is how we know when we know. Kaestle sketches a model of increasing certainty in historical claims as they are developed and refined at increasing scales of research, from local to international. A historical claim might originate in the study of a particular place or case, but to know that the claims were true, the historian needed to move from the microlevel view to a more macro one, perhaps at the national rather than local level. Once tested and refined through comparison with other cases, possibly smoothing some of the rougher edges in the process, the claim could then be transferred beyond national borders. When a historical claim is polished enough to fit other contexts, we know it is true. Kaestle illustrates this increasing certainty through increasing scale with reference to the history of literacy and, more specifically, to scholarship on how Western European and US industrialization shaped literacy rates. Bringing studies from various locales into connection, and then comparing these cases with the national context, Kaestle summarizes that it was the commercial processes of urbanization, rather than industrialization itself, that helped produce rising literacy in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Generalization at greater scale becomes not only the means through which to claim the value of historical work, but the basis for constructing historical knowledge in the first place.

Adolescents have been largely neglected from tuberculosis control efforts. In low- to medium burden settings much of the tuberculosis burden in this age group occurs from school outbreaks. We report on a large tuberculosis outbreak in adolescents from a boarding high school in Jiangsu Province, China. From March to June 2018, a tuberculosis outbreak occurred in a boarding high school. We conducted an outbreak investigation involving clinical diagnostic tests and molecular analysis to determine the outbreak origin. Cases were detected through symptom screening, tuberculin skin testing (TST), chest radiography, sputum smear, solid sputum culture and GeneXpert MTB/RIF. Mycobacterial interspersed repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem-repeat (MIRU-VNTR) genotyping and spoligotyping methods were performed on Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) isolates to identify the outbreak origin. A total of 845 students and 131 teachers/staff attended a TST screening for tuberculosis infection. The prevalence of elevated tuberculin reactions at ≥5, ≥10 and ≥15 mm was 12.19% (119/976), 6.35% (62/976) and 3.28% (32/976), respectively. Radiographic abnormalities were present in 5.73% (56 of 976) individuals, 40 students and 16 teachers/staff. Of these, 12 students were diagnosed with confirmed tuberculosis. In total, 14 students (two index cases and 12 confirmed cases) were diagnosed and reported in the tuberculosis outbreak, an attack rate of 1.7% (14/847) among students (two index cases and 845 screened students). Results from MIRU-VNTR typing and spoligotyping analyses demonstrated that three M. tuberculosis strains belong to the Beijing family with corresponding MIRU-VNTR alleles. This school-based tuberculosis outbreak among adolescents demonstrates that transmission among individuals in this age group is common and must be prioritised. It suggests that identifying and timely diagnosis of smear-positive cases, especially in the early phase of outbreaks, is the key to preventing further spread among close contacts.

Background and Objectives: Federal and provincial governments in Canada are promoting provincial legislation to prevent and manage sport-related concussions (SRCs). The objective of this research was to determine the incidence of concussions in high school sport, the knowledge of the signs, symptoms, and consequences of SRC, and how likely student athletes are to report a concussion. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of athletes (N = 225) from multiple sports in five high schools in one Manitoba school division was conducted. Results: Participants in this study were well aware of the signs, symptoms, and consequences of SRC. Cognitive and emotional symptoms were the least recognized consequences. SRC is prevalent in high schools in both males and females across all sports. Of the 225 respondents, 35.3% reported having sustained an SRC. Less than half (45.5%) reported their concussion. Athletes purposely chose not to report a concussion in games (38.4%) and practices (33.8%). Two major barriers to reporting were feeling embarrassed (3.4/7) and finding it difficult (3.5/7) to report. There was, however, strong agreement (Mean 5.91/7, SD 0.09) when asked if they intend to report a concussion should they experience one in the future. Conclusions: The results suggest that high school athletes would benefit from more SRC education. Coaches and team medical staff must be trained to be vigilant for the mechanism, signs, and symptoms of injury in both game and practice situations. This study will also inform the implementation of pending legislation in Manitoba and perhaps other provinces in Canada.

This article reports on the findings of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research project, ‘Building the future for Indigenous students’, an investigation of the hopes and dreams for the future of over 1,000 secondary students, 733 of whom were Indigenous, living in very remote, remote, and urban locations in the Northern Territory. Using both quantitative and qualitative research tools, researchers sought to understand what motivated the students at school and how they studied — critical elements in successful school achievement. In this article, the analysis of Indigenous student responses to a series of questions in the qualitative component of the study is presented. The analysis concludes that urban and remote Indigenous school children provide similar responses to questions that probe: (1) the value of education/school/self, (2) learner future goals, (3) learner motivation, and (4) learning preferences. The study also finds that very remote Indigenous school children, while similar in some question responses to both groups, also show some important differences that raise questions for more research.

How should we explore the relationship between race and educational opportunity? One approach to the Black-White achievement gap explores how race and class cause disparities in access and opportunity. In this paper, I consider how education contributes to the creation of race. Considering examples of classroom micropolitics, I argue that breakdowns of trust and trustworthiness between teachers and students can cause substantial disadvantages and, in the contemporary United States, this happens along racial lines. Some of the disadvantages are academic: high achievement is more difficult when one faces mistrust, ego depletion, effort pessimism, and insult. And within a knowledge economy, exclusion from knowledge work makes one vulnerable to injustice. But the problem goes deeper than achievement, for schools are contexts in which we develop self-understandings and identities that situate us as members of society. If students of color are systematically denied full participation in trusting conversations that create shared knowledge—especially, knowledge that holds power within the dominant culture—they are unjustly deprived resources to form flourishing selves that are suited to the positions of power and authority. The argument suggests that knowledge is not best understood simply as a commodity to be distributed, and opportunity is not just a matter of access. Moreover, even if access is granted, those who are motivated and talented can fail: they drain their willpower by coping with insults, or reasonably lose optimism about their efficacy. Over time, motivation may shift away from achievement, and under the circumstances this can be a rational response. The barriers to achievement are many, but true opportunity is impossible without trust and trustworthiness.

Adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS) are increasingly being placed in academically focused high schools. These students, although academically able, may not be coping with the wider classroom and social demands of transition to, and within, the high school environment. Schools are keen to enrol these students. However, there appears to be a gap between the rhetoric and the reality relating to the varying perceptions of key stakeholders. In this paper we present the results of a study of the perceptions of key stakeholders in the transition of two students with AS into two academically focused high schools. Eight participants were involved in semistructured, one-on-one interviews. Key stakeholders included executive teachers, classroom teachers, students and their caregivers. The results indicated that there were some differences in the teacher and caregiver perspectives across physical, academic and social areas of transition.

In Chinese public discourse, it has almost become a truism that the generation born after the mid-1980s is more selfish, individualistic, and materialistic than previous generations. Consequently, an important task for public moral education is to correct this behaviour and to generate compassion for others beyond the family, to strengthen nationalist sentiments and to imbue a sense of duty to the greater community. Schools provide the Chinese government with a key opportunity to achieve this. Based on fieldwork in a rural high school in China, this article demonstrates how the official visions of the learned individual portrayed in textbooks collide with a more powerful ideology of individualism that is implicitly promoted through activities within the school, and is reflective of an ongoing process of individualization, not only in Chinese society, but also within state institutions, such as the school.

Supporting students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in inclusive settings presents both opportunities and significant challenges to school communities. This study, which explored the lived experience of nine students with ASD in an inclusive high school in Australia, is based on the belief that by listening to the voices of students, school communities will be in a better position to collaboratively create supportive learning and social environments. The findings of this small-scale study deepen our knowledge from the student perspective of the inclusive educational practices that facilitate and constrain the learning and participation of students with ASD. The students' perspectives were examined in relation to the characteristics of successful inclusive schools identified by Kluth (2003). Implications for inclusive educational practice that meets the needs of students with ASD are presented.

The associations between adaptive/maladaptive perfectionism and different dimensions of aggression among adolescents have seldom been made the focus of empirical research. Research in this area is important as only negative conceptualisation of perfectionism, proposed within the literature, represents a limited perspective of perfectionism for adolescents. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relations between adaptive/maladaptive perfectionism and aggression in a sample of 445 Turkish high school adolescents. The Almost Perfect Scale — Revised (APS-R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001) and the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ; Buss & Perry, 1992) were used for data collection. The subdimensions of the APS-R were high standards, order (adaptive perfectionism), and discrepancy (maladaptive perfectionism). The subdimensions of the BPAQ were anger, physical aggression, hostility and verbal aggression. As hypothesised, the regression analyses revealed that, discrepancy was the positive predictor of anger, physical aggression and hostility while order was the negative predictor of anger, physical and verbal aggression. As predicted, high standards were found to be the negative predictor of hostility. However, unexpectedly, high standards were found to be the positive predictor of verbal aggression.