A warm welcome to this issue of the journal.
In paper 1 Julie Eilts, Jessica Wilke, Ute van During, and Neele Baker discuss the role of attachment, emotion regulation and empathy in bullying. They argue that a joint consideration of these factors in an integrative model has so far been absent from current research and thus the literature. In order to address this limitation, they examined the direct and indirect effects of attachment, empathy/perspective taking, functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation on bullying perpetration in a cross-sectional questionnaire. Significant direct effects from attachment on bullying perpetration, empathy/perspective taking and on functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation were found. The results highlight the need to promote empathy/perspective taking and reduce the use of dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Possible implications for the school are discussed.
In paper 2 Helen Raynham, Mick Cooper, Jacqueline Hayes, John Rae, and Peter Pearce discuss helpful and unhelpful factors in school-based counselling and pastoral care. The helpful and unhelpful factors identified were consistent with previous research on school-based counselling, which indicated that having an opportunity to talk and be listened to by a supportive adult who can offer appropriate guidance is helpful for young people. The identified helpful and unhelpful factors were not particularly unique to school-based counselling; rather, they represented a more general statement of what young people believed to be helpful and unhelpful in their interactions with adults.
In the next paper Brooke Avery-Overduin and Shiralee Poed from Queensland, Australia discuss alternatives to suspension and exclusion. They acknowledge that a considerable body of research exists to refute that school disciplinary absences lead to improvements in student behaviour. Evidence suggests that exclusionary discipline has negative consequences for individuals, with suspensions and exclusions predicting involvement with the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, known as the school-to-prison pipeline. Further evidence suggests that school disciplinary absences are disproportionately applied to particular groups. They conducted a systematic literature review on alternatives to exclusionary discipline and highlighted socio-emotional learning (SEL) programmes, the Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports framework (PBIS), and Restorative Justice Practices (RJP).
In a not unrelated study Angeliki Kallitsoglou, and Arif Mahmud examined teacher attitudes towards evidence-based practices for social, emotional and mental health difficulties in school and the association with teacher academic research engagement. The findings showed that while appreciation of academic research was high, its use to inform practice for pupils with social, emotional and mental health difficulties and knowledge about research was low. The implications from the findings of this study could inform teacher training programmes as well as having policy implications for teachers’ continuous professional development (CPD).
In paper 4 Aliya Konysbayeva, Roza K. Bekmagambetova, Saira N. Zhiyenbayeva, Manshuk B. Kurmanbekova, and Gulnur I. Kazakhbayeva discussed psychological and pedagogical support technologies for preschool children with anxiety. They showed that different children have different depths and intensities of emotions and these characteristics depend on physiological, psychological, and social factors. The practical value of the study is supported by the suggestion that the results obtained can be used by specialised professionals to complement their own research.
In the next paper Adeela Ahmed Shafi, Jordan Wintle, Sian Templeton, and Dan Clarke studied the development of social and emotional competencies in incarcerated young people in seven countries in Europe through the use of active games and sport. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to assess the effectiveness of the games in seven European countries including, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, and the UK, making it an especially unique project developing bespoke materials suitable in secure settings and then testing them across different country contexts. A total of 326 young people participated across 17 settings with a total of 105 educators trained in the methodology. The findings suggest that participation in the active games had demonstrable impact on those who participated, both overall, and for the specific identified competencies. Participation in such programmes can support the holistic development of social and emotional competencies which can facilitate readiness and openness to learning to other interventions. It is this which is a key finding and contributes to dis/engagement theory. Such programmes could form the basis of a suite of interventions designed to support the educational (re)engagement and development of children and young people in conflict with the law. These findings have currency for developing policy which promote positive outcomes for children and young people on release back into the community across a range of national contexts
Lastly, Kalum Bodfield and Aisling Culshaw, that in the case of mental health conditions, social, emotional and behavioural problems or even in some neurodevelopmental disorders, diagnosis is less useful as there are fundamental problems with the classification and understanding of mental health conditions. Despite this, the prevalence and importance of diagnosis remains in supporting students in education and those who are categorised as SEND. Therefore, this paper seeks to discuss the place that diagnosis has in education and the alternative models that exist in an effort to understand potential other avenues of supporting students and the benefits and limitations of these.