Yohanan Eshel

The Informal Curriculum The Latent Aspect of Psychological Training

It has been argued that the nature of academic school psychological programmes and the training provided by them are revealed mainly by the informal and often more latent, messages delivered to students. These informal messages indicate the extent to which the programme treats students as partners in a complex learning process who may participate in determining its course or as those who should be informed; they may regard students as developing adults capable of responsible problem solving in the school setting or as those who still have to learn by watching others; and they determine the complementary roles of students and faculty members. We posit that these informal determinants of the training programme determine to a large extent the role definition of school psychology that guides them and is conveyed to the students.

Perceived Classroom Control, Self-Regulated Learning Strategies, and Academic Achievement.

Relations between perceived classroom control, self-regulation strategies and academic achievement were investigated in a sample of 302 sixth grade students. Four distinct perceived classroom control styles were determined, based on the balance between teacher and student control over learning. It was hypothesised that student mathematics achievement would be contingent on the combined effects of teacher and student control: it would be highest when both teacher and student control is high, and would be lowest when both of them are low. Student adoption of self-regulated learning strategies would be linked to the net effect of student control: they would be highest when student control is high and teacher control is low, and would be lowest when teacher control is high and student control is low. The data tended to support these hypotheses, indicating that both achievement and self-regulation strategies were contingent on classroom processes.

Sense of coherence and socio-demographic characteristics predicting posttraumatic stress symptoms and recovery in the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War

Abstract This study investigated the role of sense of coherence (SOC) as a mediator between demographic attributes of individuals (gender, age, economic situation, and exposure to traumatic events during the war) and two war outcomes (postwar stress symptoms and perceived posttraumatic recovery). The participants were 870 adults (ages ranged between 20 and 85), who were affected by the Second Lebanon War and were evacuated from their home town. They were administered the research questionnaire approximately one year after this war. Path analysis indicated the following: gender, age, economic situation, and exposure were significantly associated with level of symptoms as well as perceived recovery. However, three of these connections (age, economic, and exposure) were partially mediated by SOC which was linked with lower levels of stress symptoms and higher levels of perceived posttraumatic recovery. Unlike our hypothesis, exposure by age interaction was not significantly associated with SOC and the two war outcomes. Results supported the hypotheses that SOC mediates between demographic characteristics and negative (symptoms) as well as positive (perceived recovery) war outcomes.

Elderly People Coping With the Aftermath of War: Resilience Versus Vulnerability

OBJECTIVES The present study compares coping of elderly people and two younger groups 1 year after a war. Coping was determined by stress symptoms and posttraumatic recovery and two levels of resiliency. DESIGN AND SETTING Thirty-six streets (covering most of the city streets) were sampled randomly from the map of Kiryat Shemona (a town next to the Lebanese border) about a year after the end of the Second Lebanon War. PARTICIPANTS The sample constituted 870 adult residents of the town. Participants were divided into three age groups: elderly (age 65 years and older, N = 108), adults (age 46-64 years, N = 252) and young adults (age 20-45 years, N = 462). MEASUREMENTS 1) Stress symptoms measured by short version of Brief Symptom Inventory; 2) Individual resilience measured by Sense of Coherence Inventory; 3) Posttraumatic Recovery Inventory (PTR); and 4) Public Resilience Scale (included a scale for community and national resilience). RESULTS The results indicated 1) The elderly group reported significantly higher levels of stress symptoms and lower levels of PTR; 2) Females in the three age groups reported higher levels of stress symptoms and lower levels of PTR and individual resilience than males; 3) Individual and public resilience negatively predicted stress symptoms and positively predicted posttraumatic recovery across three age groups; and 4) Public resilience has a differential effect on stress symptoms in each of the three age groups but not on PTR. CONCLUSION Results question the division of older people into a vulnerable or inoculated group, indicating that the participants responded concurrently in a more vulnerable and a more resilient manner. Older people were characterized by higher levels of postwar stress symptoms, as well as a higher sense of coherence.

Sense of Danger and Family Support as Mediators of Adolescents' Distress and Recovery in the Aftermath of War

Posttraumatic stress and recovery were investigated among 820 adolescents living on the Israeli-Lebanese border 1 year after the Second Lebanon War of 2006. It was hypothesized that most adolescents would not report serious symptoms, whereas a minority would complain about high-level prolonged postwar symptoms. Another minority would indicate posttraumatic recovery. It was also hypothesized that associations of age, gender, and exposure to war distress with postwar stress symptoms as well as posttraumatic recovery would be mediated by family support and subjective sense of danger. Results generally supported these contentions.

Boyfriend, girlfriend in a traditional society: Parenting styles and development of intimate friendships among Arabs in school

The development of intimate same- and other-sex friendships in Arab children and adolescents in Israel was investigated in relation to their perceived parenting styles. It was hypothesized that girls would show higher levels of intimacy than boys, and that cross-sex intimacy in both groups would increase with age, whereas same-sex intimate friendship maintains rather stable over the school years. We hypothesized further that intimate friendship would be contingent more readily on perceived parental authoritative style rather than on either permissive or authoritarian styles. Participants were 723 Arab students drawn from four schools, and from the 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades. The Parental Authority Questionnaire and Intimate Friendship Scale were employed as measures. Findings indicated that girls were more intimate with their female friends than boys were with their male friends, especially in the higher grades, replicating previous studies. However, boys tended to score higher than girls on intimacy with the other gender. Girls equaled their level of intimacy only at the 11th grade. These findings suggest that traditional societies may foster specific characteristics of intimate friendship. A novel finding is the central role of the authoritative parenting style in determining intimate friendships. Results are discussed in terms of universal aspects of friendship and of their expression in the investigated cultural setting.

Self-Enhancement, Generality Level of Self-Evaluation, and Emotional Adjustment

Three hypotheses regarding self-concept and emotional adjustment were tested: (a) self-concept has a hierarchical structure in which self-evaluations become more positive as they become more general, (b) self-enhancement is positively associated with emotional adjustment, and (c) prediction of emotional adjustment is improved as more general levels of self-enhancement are involved. Three independent samples consisting of 708 students in 7th and 8th grades in Israel participated. The data supported Hypotheses 1 and 3, which were replicated in independent samples, for 2 different content domains of self-evaluation. Hypothesis 2 was partially supported.

Children's Perception of Death and Interpersonal Closeness to the Dead Person

Fifty-four boys and girls of three age groups: six to seven, eight to nine, and ten to eleven, participated in an investigation of the relationship between the comprehension of death and the degree of interpersonal closeness to the dead person. The children responded to a death concept questionnaire tapping their understanding of the deaths of a “brother,” a “cousin,” and “Johnny”—an unfamiliar child. A 3 × 3 ANOVA showed an age × person interaction. While first- and fifty-graders perceived the death of a person to whom they were close on an interpersonal basis less accurately (lower score) than the death of a person of a more distant relationship, no such distinctions were made by the third-graders. In addition, there was a main effect of person and of age. A significant correlation was found between interpersonal distance and death concept scores. The findings were discussed in light of childrens emotional development and the way in which they comprehend and process emotionally loaded concepts.

Ethnic equity and asymmetry in peer acceptance

Abstract Ethnic acceptance was investigated among 613 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students in Israel. Self-reports were used to determine how deeply and intimately they would like to be involved with each of their homeroom classmates. It was assumed that status indicators of the target would gain importance as a function of the relative ethnic status of the respondent and the target. It was found that peers of lower ethnic status were accepted more readily when they scored higher on other indices such as sociability, academic track level, and achievement. The importance of these target qualities was substantially reduced in choosing friends of higher ethnic status. Results are discussed in the context of exchange theory and their implications for school integration processes.

Post-traumatic Recovery to Distress Symptoms Ratio Mediates Relations of Resilience Fostering Resources and Their Predictors.

A large-scale study investigated the direct and indirect effects of demographic predictors and traumatic experiences on resilience fostering resources following a war. The sample consisted of 829 Israeli adults, living in a border town, 1 year after experiencing the 2006 war with Lebanon. Resilience was assessed by measures of individual and public resilience and low sense of danger. Results show that as hypothesized the proportion of post-traumatic recovery to post-war distress symptoms predicts these indices of resilience and partly mediates the direct links between these indices and demographic predictors (age, gender and economic condition) and exposure to war. Research of resilience has proposed several prototypical trajectories that characterize responses to potentially traumatic events. Our discussion suggests that these trajectories and their changes over time can be accounted for by the balance of post-war recovery to symptoms level. Copyright