Welcome to issue 23(3) of the Journal!

Coping style plays an important role in children’s wellbeing. In the first paper of this issue Katie Quy, Jennifer Gibb, Louise Neil, Charlie Owen, and Marjorie Smith describe the patterns of associations between children’s self-reported coping styles and symptoms of anxiety to determine whether particular dimensions are associated with better adjustment. Participants were 2566 children (1268 girls, 1298 boys) aged seven to eleven years attending 15 schools in the South East of England. Results showed that aspects of coping were differentially associated with children’s self-reported anxiety. Patterns of association also varied by age and gender. Dimensions of coping were shown to form distinct adaptive and maladaptive coping styles which were also differentially associated with anxiety. Analysis of these styles indicated that it is the absence of maladaptive coping strategies, rather than the presence of adaptive strategies, that is significant in emotional wellbeing. These findings suggest that interventions designed to reduce or extinguish maladaptive coping styles may be of particular benefit in facilitating emotional wellbeing.

Emotion regulation (ER) is also an integral aspect of emerging adults’ mental health, yet little is known about interpersonal factors that influence ER in during this period. In the second paper Emma C. Woodward and Andres G. Viana examine emerging adults’ desire to emulate parental ER skills in the relation between perceived parental ER and emerging adults’ emotion dysregulation. They conclude that a desire to emulate parental ER skills moderated the relationship between perceived parental ER and emerging adults’ emotion dysregulation in general and low emotional awareness in particular. Their data suggest that emerging adults with an increased desire to emulate parents with lower ER skills report greater emotion dysregulation. They discuss the implications for clinical practice.

Secure accommodation provides extreme forms of control and support for a small minority of society’s most vulnerable children. Within such environments it is unclear how children exhibit or develop self-regulation when external controls affect every aspect of day-to-day life. Gavin Heron and Claire Cassidy provide an insight into self-regulation by examining children’s adherence to the rules associated with a practical form of philosophy, namely Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI). Data was collected from a series of CoPI sessions which took place in secure accommodation and a thematic analysis was used to identify key themes emerging from participants’ rule-adherence. The findings suggest that argumentative dialogue allows children to demonstrate self-regulation in relation to the CoPI rules, although it is often sporadic and variable between individuals. Whilst encouraging argumentation and dialogue can seem counterintuitive, it might promote more adaptive behaviours, which will give children in secure accommodation greater control over their lives.

Reducing fixed term exclusions (FTE) in primary schools is a difficult proposition. Jo Rose, Alex Stanforth, Gwen Gilmore, and Jill Bevan-Brown discuss how a partnership of primary schools developed more inclusive systems to support students previously given FTEs for disciplinary purposes. Longitudinal data from interviews and documentary sources trace the development of an approach amongst primary schools with previously high levels of FTE. The process of developing a model of transferred inclusion (TI) within the partnership led to schools changing practices around behaviour management, thus developing more inclusive systems. The paper elaborates on partnership work around the TI project that opened up discussion and questioning of practice around behaviour, leading to schools thinking about their systemic practice. The benefits of TI, therefore, were a prompt for development, rather than just an intervention to reduce exclusions. Changes in practice supported through the TI process lead to claims that substantive change would not have happened without the TI project.

Despite teacher self-efficacy and burnout’s influence on student outcomes, little research has been conducted on teacher self-efficacy and burnout in residential special schools. Tia Navelene Barnes, Christina Cipriano, Kathleen McCallops, Cara Cuccuini-Harmon, and Susan E. Rivers attempt to fill this need by examining the self-efficacy and burnout of teachers and paraeducators in a residential special (treatment) school in the United States. They explore the relationships between educators’ perceptions of school supports and educators’ sense of self-efficacy and burnout. The results revealed that while educators’ perceptions of school supports were not related to educators’ sense of efficacy, there was a significant relationship between educators’ perceptions of school supports and reported levels of burnout. Educators who reported lower levels of school supports had high levels of burnout. The authors discuss the implications for larger studies on this topic and for supporting educator well-being in residential settings.

The term ‘transition’ is often used to refer to the process of moving from child to adult services. Among child and adolescent mental health services attenders, young people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are less likely to transition successfully, but there is a gap in understanding their views and why they might disengage from services. Tamsin Newlove-Delgado, Tamsin J. Ford, Ken Stein, and Ruth Garside explore the experiences of transition of young people with ADHD in Southwest England using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. Seven young people aged 17–19 years participated. Four key themes were identified: professionals’ roles and relationships with young people; the role of ADHD medication, uncertainties around transition and medication management, and identified needs and increasing independence. Although this study presents the experiences of a small number of people, their stories suggest that best practice around transition is not always being followed. There is consequently a need to better understand the facilitators and barriers to best practice implementation.

Catherine Carroll and Jane Hurry report on a scoping review of the academic and related literature published between 2000 and 2015 that addressed the education provision for secondary aged pupils with social, emotional and/or mental health difficulties (SEMH) conducted over a six week period in 2015. A total of 168 documents met the inclusion criteria for the review, including 110 peer reviewed journal articles. The authors found an emerging evidence base to support more effective provision for pupils with SEMH, but there remains, particularly at the group and individual level a dearth of literature. Underpinning all the successful programmes in this review was a positive approach adopted by teachers and school leaders to pupils with SEMH. There was an overlap in practice between approaches used at universal, group and individual level but, importantly, the majority of effective approaches were common to mainstream and specialist settings.

Identification of children who exhibit emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBDs) has been prioritized in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region including Oman. Preventive measures in school require prediction of EBDs in atypical and typical population in order to provide adequate support services. Research showed that cognitive attribution processes are biased and defective in populations such as students with learning disabilities (LD). Mahmoud Mohamed Emam examined the relationship between school-based attributions including academic and social attributions and the display of EBDs in students referred for having LD and typically achieving students. The attribution profile of students with LD reflected negative symptoms that lead to the display of internalizing and externalizing EBDs. The study findings are discussed in relation to how schools can utilize the cognitive process of attribution in the management of EBDs in school.

I hope you find this issue as thought provoking as I have.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.