School Psychology Quarterly

Adopting global perspectives in school psychology.
This introduction to the special issue on global perspectives frames the collection of articles around recent calls for expanding the focus of research in psychology in general, and school psychology specifically, beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries and cross-cultural comparisons with non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic Confucian East Asian countries (cf. individualistic vs. collectivist societies; see Krys et al., 2024), while neglecting populations in Latin American, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and Oceania. The articles in this issue represent research from China, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Malaysia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and the United States and address topics as diverse as teacher consultation, implementation science, adapting evidence-based interventions, parent–teacher and teacher–child relationships, bullying, behavior management, school climate and equity, resilience during war, newcomer immigrants, refugee status in transit countries, and social media use. Research methods represented in this issue include correlational, case study, comparative (cross-country), mixed methods, and participatory approaches. We hope that the articles in this internationally focused collection heighten school psychologists’ knowledge of and interest in a world where science and practice expand beyond borders, and that the global-intercultural perspective represented herein can facilitate collaboration across cultures and contexts as we advocate for the rights and well-being of each child. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Resilience of teachers, students, and their parents under the conditions of martial law.
The article examines the results of a study of the resilience of teachers, students, and their parents 2 months after the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine. The total number of respondents who took part in the study is 14,556. There are employees of educational institutions (29%), students (22.41%), and parents (48.22%) from all regions of Ukraine among them. A reduced level of resilience of adult research participants (teachers, parents) and higher resilience of young people were revealed. The relationship between resilience and place of residence, forced resettlement, subjective assessment of one’s own security, involvement in various forms of education (teaching), as well as gender and age differences in resilience is presented. The results can become the basis for policy development regarding the system of support for teachers, students, and their parents in conditions of traumatic effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Refugee school consultation effects on teacher self-efficacy, self-care, and peer consultation skills.
Guided by a participatory culture-specific consultation model, this study contributes to an understanding of the effectiveness of school consultation with teachers of refugee students. The goal of the present study was to determine the impact of an individual consultation intervention with refugee teachers on their self-efficacy and self-care, in addition to their peer consultation skills. The participants were 109 teachers at refugee schools in Malaysia, most of whom were refugees (91% refugees; 73% female). Of the 109 participants, 84 teachers were coconsultants with psychology graduate students; all 109 were individual consultees. The study used a two-timepoint design with the outcomes of self-reported teacher self-care; teacher self-efficacy in the management of refugee student emotion regulation and emotional engagement; and consultation skills. Additionally, consultee-reported goal attainment, consultation effectiveness, and satisfaction were collected. The findings suggested significant latent growth from baseline to post-intervention in refugee teacher self-care and self-efficacy in the management of student emotion regulation and emotional engagement in addition to the growth of their consultation skills. The effect sizes were large for latent growth of teacher self-efficacy in promoting student emotion regulation, behavior, and emotional engagement (d = 1.19, 1.01, 1.02); the effect size for self-care was medium (d = .62). Growth was not dependent on dosage, age, gender, or consultee education, with the exception of teacher self-efficacy in management of emotional engagement which was dependent on dosage. After the intervention, the consultees reported that they completed their consultation goals at a higher level than expected, were satisfied with the consultation, and found the consultants to be helpful. The discussion situates the findings in relevant theory, research, and the culture-specific context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Conducting school-based research with newcomer immigrant adolescents: Challenges and solutions.
Newcomer immigrant adolescents (NIA) represent a particularly vulnerable group in the United States, facing numerous stressors placing them at risk for social–emotional and academic concerns. Schools play a critical role in supporting NIA in the United States. Despite this, insufficient research addressing the needs of this group within schools has been conducted. Considering the complexity of engaging in community-based research with marginalized populations, such as NIA, in this article, we elaborate on the challenges we faced during our research with NIA and propose solutions to these challenges. We do so with the goal of promoting continued engagement of such efforts within our field as to better address the needs of NIA within the United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Guidelines toward more socially just mental health screening in schools.
Mental health screening is a pivotal practice for promoting the social–emotional–behavioral (SEB) health and well-being of youth in schools. However, some aspects of traditional mental health screening practices may inadvertently perpetuate structural racism and unintentionally facilitate oppression and SEB disparities. We address this issue constructively by presenting an intentional approach to guide school psychologists and related professionals in implementing more socially just mental health screening in schools. Our guidelines are grounded within the four phases of the Participatory Culture-Specific Intervention Modeling (PCSIM) framework: system entry, culture-specific model development, culture-specific program development, and program continuation or extension. We propose that conceptualizing mental health screening within PCSIM methodology promotes more socially just practices by (a) displacing the implicit power of professionals, (b) giving transparent representation to local communities, and (c) employing methods that are recursive, culturally relevant, and intended to build capacity for sustained transformative change. Within each PCSIM phase, we recommend culturally responsive practices for professionals that foster equity in screening and SEB outcomes and discuss ways to resist practices that perpetuate oppression and disparities. We aim to convey a method for mental health screening that is not done to students and schools but rather done in partnership with and for the benefit of students and schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Mixed-methods needs assessment for development of school-based mental health implementation science capacity in low- and middle-income countries: Vietnam as a case example.
Worldwide, the majority of youth reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). School-based mental health (SBMH) services are particularly important in LMIC, in part because of LMIC’s limited mental health infrastructure. Among the challenges to developing SBMH in LMIC are limited implementation science (IS) capacity, critical for identifying barriers to evidence-based intervention (EBI) use and dissemination, etc., specific to the local country context. A key step in IS capacity development is conducting a needs assessment, to identify barriers (and their solutions) to IS development itself within the local context. The present study conducted an IS needs assessment focused on SBMH in the Southeast Asian LMIC of Vietnam. Seventy-five Vietnamese mental health professionals in SBMH-related fields participated in a mixed-methods study. Vietnamese SBMH researchers and practitioners most likely to have experience and/or interest in IS were selected for study recruitment. Professionals’ formal understanding of and experience with IS as a scientific field was highly limited. However, after reading a brief but detailed description of IS, participants’ interest in IS training was high, and their mean rating of its potential utility for Vietnam to develop SBMH was 4.7 on a 1–5 scale. Participants also reported on barriers and potential solutions for EBI use in SBMH in Vietnam. Contrary to expectations, the most frequent and severe barriers were not financial but related to limited stakeholder engagement. Overall, these and other study results provide some suggestions how IS capacity to support SBMH may be most efficiently developed in settings such as Vietnam. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Social media use, cyber victimization, and adjustment during COVID-19 virtual learning: A short-term longitudinal study among Chinese middle school students.
This study investigated the changes in social media use and cyber victimization before (November 2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) among Chinese middle school students. It also examined the relation between cyber victimization and school adjustment overtime, and whether depressive symptoms mediated this relation and whether the social media use moderated this relation. We collected two waves of survey data from 651 seventh to ninth grade students (Mage = 13.93, SDage = 1.17, 50.5% male) from two middle schools from Beijing, China over 4 months. Results indicated that middle school students spent more time on social media during the pandemic than before COVID-19 (d = 0.55). Cyber victimization was prevalent among Chinese middle school students at both time points (37.2% of students at T1 and 34.6% of students at T2 experienced some cyberbullying). The relationships between cyber victimization at T1 and T2 and school adjustment at T2 were fully mediated by depressive symptoms at T2. The indirect effects were −0.06 (mediation model, 95% CI [−0.12, −0.01], p = .02) and −0.07 (serial multiple mediation model, 95% CI [−0.11, −0.04], p <.001). Students’ excessive social media use (more than 1 hr per day) also moderated this mediation. Specifically, for students who used social media excessively, cyber victimization at T1 directly predicted depressive symptoms at T2. However, this relation was not significant among students who used social media moderately (1 hr or less per day). These results highlight the importance of collaboration between educators and parents to monitor students’ social media use, cyber victimization, and depressive symptoms in order to promote adjustment during COVID-19 virtual learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
A precision-based approach to implement evidence-based interventions for students with externalizing behaviors in developing countries: A single case experimental study in China.
The prevalence of externalizing behaviors imposes a far-reaching negative impact on students’ social, behavioral, and academic outcomes, which constitute a public health issue in low-resource and populous developing countries (e.g., China). Compared to the “one-size-fits-all” approach (OSFA; forcing a single evidence-based intervention [EBI] on any struggling students) that is prevalent in many countries, a precision-based approach (e.g., Student Intervention Matching System; SIMS) to intervention programming can better meet students’ heterogeneous needs by matching individual characteristics to active components of EBIs. But precision-based approaches cannot fulfill their potential in developing countries unless the contextual implementation barriers (e.g., high student–teacher ratio) are remedied with attention to feasibility, acceptability, and cultural compatibility. This collaborative pilot study with Chinese school stakeholders examined the efficacy, feasibility, acceptability, and cultural compatibility of SIMS to match behavioral EBIs to students with externalizing behaviors. A concurrent multiple-baseline across-participant design was used with six students (three dyads). Visual and quantitative analyses evidenced the superior efficacy of SIMS in improving externalizing behaviors compared to the OSFA approach. Social validity data endorsed the feasibility, acceptability, and cultural compatibility of SIMS and the matched EBIs perceived by school stakeholders (educators, students, and parents). Implications, limitations, and future directions for adapting precision-based approaches in low-resource and populous countries were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Longitudinal relations among parent–child relationships, positivity, and teachers–student relationships in Chinese children.
Relationships with parents and teachers are crucial to a child’s socialization. However, little is known about the transactional processes between parent–child and teachers–student relationships and their mediating mechanisms. This short-term longitudinal study examined bidirectional relations between positive parent–child and teachers–student relationships, and the potential mediating role of positivity within these relations. There were 3,450 Chinese children (44.8% girls; Mage = 10.93 years) who participated in a four-wave longitudinal study, spaced 6 months apart. The random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling found: (a) both father–child and mother–child relationships directly predicted teachers–student relationships, and vice versa; (b) positivity functioned as a mediator in bidirectional relations between parent–child and teachers–student relationships. These results support a transactional spillover effect between parent–child and teachers–student relationships, suggesting Chinese children may become caught in a virtuous cycle either directly or indirectly via their positivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Associations between school-wide practices and school-wide bullying: Advancing the cross-country understanding of teachers’ perspectives from the U.S. and China.
To understand the role of different school-wide practices in school-wide bullying prevention in the global context, this present study was guided by the social–ecological framework to examine cross-country similarities and differences in the association between three forms of school-wide practices (i.e., punitive, positive, and social and emotional learning [SEL] practices) and school-wide bullying between United States (n = 1,833) and Chinese (n = 1,627) teachers from middle and high schools. Measurement invariance tests confirmed that the associations between the three forms of school-wide practices and school-wide bullying were comparable across the two countries. Results of multilevel analyses suggested that more frequent positive practices at the between-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in the United States but decreased school-wide bullying in the Chinese. Also, more frequent punitive practices at the within-school level were associated with increased school-wide bullying in both the U.S. and Chinese samples, and this positive association between punitive practices and school-wide bullying was significantly stronger in the Chinese sample than in the U.S. sample. More frequent punitive practices at the between-school level were also associated with increased school-wide bullying in the U.S. sample, but not in the Chinese sample. Moreover, the frequent SEL practices at the within-school level were significantly associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States, but not in China; the frequent SEL practices at the between-school level were associated with decreased school-wide bullying in the United States but increased school-wide bullying in China. Implications for school-wide practices in bullying prevention and intervention with sociocultural considerations were discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Cross-cultural connections: School climate and equity in Germany, Italy, Latvia, and the United States.
In recent decades, much international research has been carried out on school climate and its relationship with learning, socioemotional, and health outcomes (Berkowitz et al., 2017; La Salle, Rocha-Neves, et al., 2021; Pizmony-Levy et al., 2019). Limited research has been carried out to investigate the relationship between school climate and educational inequalities, with particular reference to the results obtained by minoritized students. This contribution focuses on this issue, and it is organized as follows. First, The International School Climate Collaborative, which led to the cross-cultural adaptation of the Georgia School Climate Survey, is presented with normative data for the use of the survey with secondary school students in four countries: Germany, Italy, Latvia, and the United States (La Salle, Rocha-Neves, et al., 2021). Second, the theme of the relationship between School Climate and Educational Equity is focused on the basis of the most recent scientific literature. Third, the theme of the relationship between School Climate and Educational Equity is focused on comparing four countries: the United States, Germany, Italy, and Latvia. Fourth, the practical implications are investigated, focusing on three possible interventions that could be useful for improving the school climate while promoting equity and valuing cultural differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

School Psychology - Vol 39, Iss 2