Joanna Giota

Dimensions of quality in Swedish day care centers — An analysis of the early childhood environment rating scale

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) was used to measure the quality in 40 Swedish day care centers randomly chosen from the total number of day care centers in the city of Gothenburg. The ECERS was translated as exactly as possible from the original version. Statistical analysis of the inter‐rater agreement were made and problems in relation to the training and competence of the raters are discussed. The reliability of the instrument was estimated. Inter‐item correlations of the subscales and between these were analyzed. In a rotated varimax factor analysis one main factor was extracted explaining 40% of the variance. Items included in this factor were all related to the quality of the overall socialization and communicative environment like child/adult relationship, social‐emotional tone, informal use of language, etc. A second factor was interpreted as Quality of physical environment including items on learning material, display and room arrangement. Three small factors were interpreted...

Special Education in Comprehensive Schools: Extent, Forms and Effects

The present study aims to describe the extent and forms (integrated versus segregated) of special education support offered to pupils in comprehensive schools in Sweden over a period of 29 years and to study relations between support, background variables and goal attainment in Grade 9. The study is based on about 35,000 children born in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987, participating in the ongoing longitudinal project “Evaluation Through Follow‐Up”. The findings reveal that boys and pupils from lower educational home‐backgrounds and with non‐Swedish backgrounds are over‐represented among the groups that have received special education support. The findings also suggest that pupils who have received support, in general, tend to achieve educational goals in core curriculum subjects to a lesser extent than those who have never had any kind of support.

Multidimensional and Hierarchical Assessment of Adolescents’ Motivation in School

In this study, first‐ and second‐order confirmatory factor analyses were used to investigate the structure of the different types of academic, social, and future goals pursued by adolescents in school, and whether goals can be hierarchically organized. A multiple goals perspective on goal preferences was adopted. The study was based on 10,000 sixth‐grade pupils participating in the ongoing Swedish longitudinal project “Evaluation Through Follow‐up.” The findings reveal that achievement goals are multidimensional in structure and that pupils in school pursue not only one type of goal at a time, but different types simultaneously. Striving for performance seems to be less salient among 13‐year‐old pupils in Sweden. The importance of examining the approach and avoidance forms of achievement goals independently from each other and from mastery goals in future research is stressed, however. The study indicates that achievement goals can be considered as more global and hierarchically organized. Future research is needed to further examine this point. The findings also suggest that the instrument used could be developed to provide a useful tool for further pupil motivation research.

Perceived Demands of Schooling, Stress and Mental Health: Changes from Grade 6 to Grade 9 as a Function of Gender and Cognitive Ability.

The link between perceived demands of school, stress and mental health in relation to gender is complex. The study examined, with two waves of longitudinal data at age 13 and age 16, how changes in perceived academic demands relate to changes in perceived stress, taking into account gender and cognitive ability, and to investigate how these factors affect the level of psychosomatic and depressive symptoms at the age of 16. A nationally representative sample including about 9000 individuals from the Swedish longitudinal Evaluation Through Follow up database born in 1998 was included. A growth modelling approach was applied to examine relations over time. The results show girls to have a considerably higher self-reported level of mental health problems at the end of compulsory school than boys. This gender difference is entirely accounted for by perceived school demands and stress in grades 6 and 9. Students who were stronger in inductive than vocabulary ability reported lower levels of perceived academic demands and less stress in grade 6. There is a need to develop interventions for minimizing the consequences of stress among adolescents and modify those particular aspects of academic demands which cause stress and poor mental health, especially among girls. Copyright

Adolescents' Goal Orientations in Society and the Educational Context: A Dutch-Swedish comparative study

The purpose of this article is to examine whether 13‐year‐old pupils in Sweden and the Netherlands have similar or different goal orientations for going to school and learning. For this purpose a cross‐national comparative study was conducted involving 717 Dutch and 7391 Swedish pupils. The findings suggest that while goal orientations—constituted by different types of subgoals—seem to be culturally independent, the contents of these orientations are not. The results also suggest that there are considerable differences between the Dutch and Swedish education systems and the way Dutch and Swedish pupils perceive similar aspects of the educational process.

How Cultural Factors Influence School-Based Substance Use Prevention Programs

This article analyzes school-based substance use prevention programs, comparing programs in the United States and Nordic countries, explores how cultural factors influence the ways in which prevention programs are designed and implemented, and how evaluation is affected by design and implementation.

An Example of International Drug Politics–The Development and Distribution of Substance Prevention Programs Directed at Adolescents

Many substance use prevention programs directed at adolescents exist that have been developed by researchers in the United States and are intended to be used in school settings. Some of the problems associated with such programs are reviewed, including their accessibility, ease of use, copyright status, evaluation options, program scales, and ratings, together with an overall consideration of the factors and processes posited to be associated with substance use and non-use (posited “at-risk” and “protective” mechanisms). The authors contend that there is a great need to: (a) develop substance use prevention programs which are commercially available but are not protected by copyright, (b) assess empirically each component in a program separately, and (c) encourage funding bodies to be more active in supporting the production of manuals and evaluation instruments for substance use prevention programs directed at adolescents. We need more and better process evaluations that are also sensitive to both endogenous and exogenous forces in order to know the processes by which a successful prevention program achieves its effects, is prevented from doing so and which processes are irrelevant. A social competence framework might be used as both a goal and as a theoretical base to achieve a better understanding of the processes by which substance use prevention programs reach their effects.