Using a think‐aloud procedure, we observed the behavior of 15 university students in Australia with experience in Italian as they attempted to learn the meanings of new foreign language (Italian) words. The great majority of the procedures they used involved some form of repetition of the new words and their meanings‐mostly a simple reading of the dictionary‐like entries provided, or repetitions of the word‐meaning complexes. They gave relatively little attention to the physical or grammatical features of words, nor did they commonly use elaborative acquisition procedures. The lack of association between use of context and recall of word meaning is of major interest, given the stress placed on context by many researchers and commentators. Even when students did use the cues in the sentences to generate possible meanings for the target words, this did not help them establish representations for the meanings of the words. Consideration of the use of context in vocabulary acquisition suggests a need to distinguish between the use of context for generation of meaning of a new word and the use of context for acquisition of the meaning for subsequent recall.

The effects of social group norms (inclusion vs. exclusion vs. exclusion-plus-relational aggression) and school norms (inclusion vs. no norm) on 7- and 10-year-old children's intergroup attitudes were examined. Children (n = 383) were randomly assigned to a group with an inclusion or exclusion norm, and to 1 of the school norm conditions. Findings indicated that children's out-group attitudes reflected their group's norm but, with increasing age, they liked their in-group less, and the out-group more, if the group had an exclusion norm. The school inclusion norm instigated more positive attitudes toward out-group members, but it did not moderate or extinguish contrary group norms. The use of school norms to counteract the effects of children's social group norms is discussed.

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An investigation was carried out to determine the extent to which evidence of collaborative learning could be identified in students’ textual interactions in an online learning environment. The literature on collaborative learning has identified a range of behaviors that characterize successful collaborative learning in face-to-face situations. Evidence of these behaviors was sought in the messages that were posted by students as they interacted in online work groups. Analysis of students’ contributions reveals that there is substantial evidence of collaboration, but that there are differences between conventional face-to-face instances of collaborative learning and what occurs in an asynchronous, networked environment.

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BackgroundThis paper argues for giving explicit attention to the quality of implementation of school-wide mental health promotions and examines the impact of implementation quality on academic performance in a major Australian mental health initiative.MethodHierarchical linear modelling was used to investigate change in standardised academic performance across the 2-year implementation of a mental health initiative in 96 Australian primary (or elementary) schools that was focused on improving student social-emotional competencies.ResultsAfter controlling for differences in socioeconomic background, a significant positive relationship existed between quality of implementation and academic performance. The difference between students in high- and low-implementing schools was equivalent to a difference in academic performance of up to 6 months of schooling.Key Practitioner MessageGiven the known relationship between student academic achievement and mental health, many nations are mounting school-based mental health interventions: however, the quality of program implementation remains a concernThe Australian KidsMatter primary school mental health intervention enabled the development of an Implementation Index allowing schools to be grouped into low- to high- implementing schoolsThe quality of implementation of KidsMatter appears to be positively associated with the level of student academic achievement, equivalent to 6 months more schooling by Year 7, over and above any influence of socioeconomic background

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