This issue contains articles about teachers and how school psychologists and counsellors can help alleviate some of the stress of their jobs. There are also papers about students, families, and career counselling. I hope you enjoy this issue and find it informative.
The first article is by Kim Preston and Rebecca Spooner-Lane, who describe a six-week mindfulness program for managing stress with teachers from an Australian alternative school that provides educational opportunities for students who present with complex needs. Although there was only a small sample, the participants experienced decreased stress and emotional exhaustion levels. The following article is also about teachers’ wellbeing. Andrea Soykan, Dianne Gardner and Terence Edwards surveyed over 1,500 teachers in New Zealand to see how they coped with stress. They found that those teachers with higher psychological capital — that is, those who had a combination of hope, resilience, optimism and self-efficacy — had increased wellbeing and reduced stress. Both papers call for more support for teachers and their wellbeing.
The next three articles deal with students. Gokmen Arslan surveyed middle-years students in Turkey about their positive psychological traits, such as co-vitality, in relation to their school adjustment. It was found that youth with high positive psychological traits report more prosocial behaviour, school belongingness and academic achievement, as well as less externalising and internalising behaviour. Patrick O’Donnell and Linda Dunlap report on teachers’ acceptance of a progressive muscle relaxation intervention for primary students with test anxiety. There were good levels of acceptability from teachers if the intervention was with a school psychologist or counsellor, CD player or digital music player. In South Korea, Minyoung Lee, Soohyun Choo and Sang Min Lee investigated what made high school students hate academic work. At an individual student level, academic hatred was related to gender, parental academic pressure, depression and test anxiety. At the class level, academic hatred was related to low socio-economic level and low teacher autonomy.
Families and parenting form the basis of the next two studies. Ali Serdar Sagkal and Yalcim Ozdemir examined the mental toughness of parents of Turkish adolescents. Strength-based parenting was related to subjective happiness and less psychological distress for adolescents. In Greece, Anastasia Tsamparli and Helias Halios looked at the quality of sibling relationships in relation to family functioning in families with typically developing school-aged children. They found that the more family cohesion and adaptability, the better the sibling relationships. First-born children reported higher levels of cohesion in their family than second-born children, while same-gender siblings reported higher levels of warmth and closeness in their family than families with children of different genders.
The last article concerns career counselling, by Elif Cimsir, who tested the theory that insight might increase life satisfaction by helping students to choose a suitable academic major in high school.
As this issue goes to press it is time to wish everyone happy holidays and a great start to the new year.
