How ‘other people matter’ in a classroom-based strengths intervention: Exploring interpersonal strategies and classroom outcomes

Interventions that identify and develop character strengths have been shown to benefit well-being, academic engagement and achievement. Strengths research within positive psychology has focused primarily on individual outcomes with less attention on group or relationships effects. This study (N?=?193) examined the effect of a classroom-based strengths intervention on class cohesion and friction, relatedness, engagement, well-being and strengths use. A six-session programme was trialled with 9–12-year-old students. Students learned to recognise strengths and practised strengths-related goal setting. At three-months post-test, multi-level modelling indicated that intervention group participants scored significantly higher on class cohesion and relatedness need satisfaction, and lower on class friction than the non-randomised control group. Programme participants also reported higher levels of positive affect, classroom engagement, autonomy need satisfaction and strengths use. School-based strengths interventions may influence individual perceptions of class climate, engagement and student relatedness in addition to individual well-being.     

Is Charismatic Leadership Effective When Workers Are Pressured To Be Good Citizens?

Prior research has explored how employees’ perceptions of their leaders impact their work attitudes and behaviors. Studies have shown that charismatic leaders motivate individuals to be more engaged and to exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors. This study considers how a moderator, citizenship pressure, affects how charismatic leaders might inspire their followers to go above and beyond and be more engaged in their work. Using a sample of 243 workers, this study's findings show that charismatic leadership has a stronger positive effect on job engagement when employees perceive less citizenship pressure. Citizenship pressure did not moderate the relationship between charismatic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Implications of this study include an examination of the moderating influence of citizenship pressure, a relatively new construct. Practically, the implications may shed some light on leadership factors that encourage increased effort from employees and greater employee engagement. More specifically, findings suggest that persons are motivated to exhibit more OCBs to meet high expectations of charismatic leaders. However, when seeking engagement, feeling pressure to perform these OCBs has a reverse effect as more job engagement results with less citizenship pressure. Future research suggestions and limitations are discussed.     

Extracurricular Participation and Course Performance in the Middle Grades: A Study of Low-Income,Urban Youth

The transition to middle/junior high school is associated with declines in students’ academic performance, especially among low‐income, urban youth. Developmental psychologists posit such declines are due to a poor fit between the needs of early adolescents—industry, identity, and autonomy—and the environment of their new schools. Extracurricular participation during these years may act as a buffer for youth, providing a setting for development outside the classroom. The current study examines participation within and across activity settings among low‐income, urban youth in New York City over this transition. Using the Adolescent Pathways Project data, this study explores how such participation relates to course performance. We find that a large percentage of youth are minimally or uninvolved in extracurricular activities during these years; that participation varies within youth across time; and that the association between participation and course performance varies by activity setting. Youth who participate frequently in community or athletic settings or have high participation in two or more settings are found to have higher GPAs in the year in which they participate and youth who participate frequently in the religious setting are found to have lower GPAs. High participation in more than two settings may be detrimental.     

Central load reduces peripheral processing: Evidence from incidental memory of background speech

Is there a trade‐off between central (working memory) load and peripheral (perceptual) processing? To address this question, participants were requested to undertake an n‐back task in one of two levels of central/cognitive load (i.e., 1‐back or 2‐back) in the presence of a to‐be‐ignored story presented via headphones. Participants were told to ignore the background story, but they were given a surprise memory test of what had been said in the background story, immediately after the n‐back task was completed. Memory was poorer in the high central load (2‐back) condition in comparison with the low central load (1‐back) condition. Hence, when people compensate for higher central load, by increasing attentional engagement, peripheral processing is constrained. Moreover, participants with high working memory capacity (WMC) – with a superior ability for attentional engagement – remembered less of the background story, but only in the low central load condition. Taken together, peripheral processing – as indexed by incidental memory of background speech – is constrained when task engagement is high.     

Can Facebook Informational Use Foster Adolescent Civic Engagement?

The findings on the association between Social Networking Sites and civic engagement are mixed. The present study aims to evaluate a theoretical model linking the informational use of Internet‐based social media (specifically, Facebook) with civic competencies and intentions for future civic engagement, taking into account the mediating role of civic discussions with family and friends and sharing the news online. Participants were 114 Italian high school students aged 14–17 years (57 % boys). Path analysis was used to evaluate the proposed theoretical model. Results showed that Facebook informational use was associated with higher levels of adolescent perceived competence for civic action, both directly and through the mediation of civic discussion with parents and friends (offline). Higher levels of civic competencies, then, were associated with a stronger intention to participate in the civic domain in the future. Our findings suggest that Facebook may provide adolescents with additional tools through which they can learn civic activities or develop the skills necessary to participate in the future.     

Student Voice for School‐Climate Improvement: A Case Study of an Urban Middle School

This case study used a student voice program in an urban middle school in the southeastern United States to examine the validity of three theoretically derived pathways through which student voice may affect positive school climate. First, using a youth participatory action research process to identify barriers to learning, analyse their root causes, and advocate for solutions to school administration allowed students to influence minor school policies and implement anti‐bullying, classroom‐behaviour‐monitoring, and experiential‐learning initiatives. However, there were challenges to making these policy and practice changes systemic. Second, relationships were formed and strengthened as a byproduct of student participant and staff collaboration in program activities. However, the program may have contributed to an ingroup–outgroup dynamic between participants and other peers. Third, students who participated in the program developed citizenship competencies, and their development may have promoted broader prosocial norms among the student body, though evidence was inconsistent. Study findings suggest that future research examine how variations in the implementation of student voice initiatives can maximize the contribution to a positive school climate in urban schools. Findings also suggest that practitioners should ensure that student teams be representative of a multitude of student identities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing extrinsic and intrinsic motivation as explanatory variables for the safety climate–safety performance relationship among long-haul truck drivers

The paper tests the proposition that the organizational climate-behavior relationship is based primarily on extrinsic motivation induced by climate perceptions. Using safety climate as exemplar, the effect of climate-induced extrinsic motivation was compared with that of engagement-induced intrinsic motivation on safety behavior and subsequent injury outcomes. Using a sample of long-haul truck drivers representing lone employees, (individual-level) safety climate perceptions and employee engagement predicted safety behavior, which mediated their effect on subsequently measured road injury outcomes. Consistent with meta-analytic evidence suggesting a non-symmetric compensatory relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, high safety climate undermined the effect of engagement on safety behavior with the reverse being true under low safety climate. This resulted in a moderation effect of engagement on the strength of relationship between climate perceptions and safety behavior. Theoretical and practical implications for climate, engagement, and lone work research are discussed.     

Change-oriented behavior: A meta-analysis of individual and job design predictors

We propose and meta-analytically test a theoretical model of individual and job-based predictors of change-oriented behaviors. Meta-analytic tests (106 effect sizes, N = 28,402) demonstrate that employee's proactive personality is a stronger predictor of change-oriented behavior than the five-factor model (FFM) personality traits of openness and extraversion. Also, enriched job characteristics (autonomy, complexity, and task significance) are more important in predicting change-oriented behavior, than un-enriched job characteristics (routinization and formalization). Finally, we establish work engagement as a mediator that provides an explanation for how and why proactive personality and enriched job characteristics predict change-oriented behavior. We provide both theoretical and empirical integration of the literature with practical implications for managing change-oriented behaviors, which are increasingly recognized as important to both organizational effectiveness and employee career management.     

Structure also supports autonomy: Measuring and defining autonomy‐supportive teaching in Japanese elementary foreign language classes

Recent discussions of autonomy have included the perspective that, as a basic human need across cultural environments, it includes not only choice but also personal endorsement of action. The present study focused on the cultural experience of autonomy‐support in Japanese elementary school foreign language classes. Three studies were conducted to investigate how students understand autonomy‐supportive teaching. In Study 1, exploratory focus groups defined cultural perspectives on autonomy‐support and structure. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that clarity, pacing, and teachers' positive affect correspond to students' perception of supportive teaching. Study 2 investigated teacher support in relation to in‐class engagement using longitudinal structural equation modeling. The results indicated a strong relationship between perceptions of support and classroom behavioral engagement, with stable effects over time. Study 3 longitudinally investigated teacher support in relation to students' perceptions of personal autonomy, relatedness, and competence need satisfaction. Findings show a strong positive relationship between teacher support and need satisfaction with high test‐retest reliability. Discussion focuses on how autonomy need satisfaction is experienced in different cultures with differing social norms.