These findings suggest that among teens experiencing challenges with managing type 1 diabetes, interventions that decrease family conflict may be critical to promoting optimal glycemic control in those teens with greater problems with self-regulation.

Many Latino students miss opportunities to develop their full potential in U.S. schools. Increasing attention is being paid to the malleable, nonacademic, factors that can affect student learning. The current study sought to evaluate the impact of school climate on Language Arts grade for Latino students in a large, low-income, urban middle school. In addition, the novel construct of Social-Normative Expectations, student perceptions of school-wide norms about achievement expectations for their peers, was explored in relation to school climate and academic achievement. The study sample reflected 513 Latino students, Grades 7 and 8. A mediation model found that approximately 30% of the variance in final Language Arts grades was accounted for by the predictors, including control variables ( R2 = .299). A distinctive mediation effect was also found, whereby the impact of school climate was associated with an approximately .6 points lower final grade mediated through the indirect pathway of Social-Normative Expectations ( b = −0.064, SE = 0.019, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [−0.104, −0.028]). Implications of these findings are discussed.

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This study examined the associations among race/ethnicity, school climate, and social‐normative expectations (expectations about peers' future achievement) in high and low socioeconomic status (SES) schools, with a particular focus on school climate as a process that might influence social‐normative expectations. Results showed that more positive perceptions of school climate were significantly associated with higher levels of social‐normative expectations in both low and high SES settings. Additionally, identifying as Black was negatively associated with social‐normative expectations in both high and low SES schools. School climate significantly moderated the negative relationship between race and social‐normative expectations in high SES schools; however, there was no moderation in low SES schools. In both high and low SES schools, school climate was a robust predictor of social‐normative expectations, highlighting the importance of social‐normative expectations as a metric of school climate improvement in both high and low SES schools. In conclusion, policies related to school culture and climate, school improvement, and turnaround should explicitly focus on the connection of racial and ethnic equity, specifically for Black and Latinx students, to reflect the range and reality of students' social‐normative expectations.

The skills conveyed in high school are essential for success, and evidence suggests that psychosocial well-being is critical to that process. Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) is an in-school, academic support program that targets underserved students. The current study explored the impact of an intervention program targeting academic achievement on student perceptions of social support and psychosocial impairment. The study was conducted in an under-resourced, majority Latinx high school and the sample included 75 AVID students and 140 demographically matched controls. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were performed to identify the impact of participation in the AVID program on symptoms of emotional and behavioral distress. After controlling for demographics factors and academic achievement, student perceptions of emotional and teacher support explained 7.2% of the variance in psychosocial distress; participation in the AVID intervention was found to have significantly improved the variance accounted for (ΔR2=.02, 5.13, p=.025; R2=.11, F(9,204)=2.90, p=.003). The results of this study indicate that perceived teacher social support and AVID participation were, independently, significantly associated with reduced student psychosocial distress. These findings suggest that interventions targeting the complex mechanisms of school achievement may also have a positive impact on psychosocial impairment beyond student perceptions of social support.

Although there is substantial evidence for the merits of integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) into educational settings, little empirical research on this learning approach has been conducted in Mainland China. We synthesized the frameworks of Western SEL and the guidelines of Chinese mental health education, and conducted a preliminary assessment of a short-term SEL curriculum that we designed and piloted in an elementary school. We randomly assigned two classes comprising 111 fifth-grade students to take the SEL curriculum (intervention group), and compared them with a third class comprising 53 fifth-grade students assigned the usual curriculum (control group). The results show that the intervention group had a significant increase in emotional intelligence scores after completing the activities in the curriculum, and the control group experienced an increase in feelings of competitiveness. Students in the intervention group generally perceived the SEL curriculum as striking the right balance between enjoyable activities and valuable learning. Our findings imply that it would be a positive educational development to design SEL curricula for systematic use across multiple grades, thus weaving these into the formal Chinese elementary school system.

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