Analysis of a double-layered support system

This analysis focuses on the support functions of a social network consisting of the families, educational staff, and peers of 33 adolescent females. These women were lower-class school dropouts who joined the Israeli Army and--toward the end of their service--participated in a six-month intensive program of educational upgrading. The program was administered by the Israeli Army and operated by female soldiers close in age, but not in social background and education, to the program's participants. Data were collected by a semi-structured interview and analyzed in terms of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral support functions of the social network. Analysis shows that (1) whereas the educational staff and the peers provide the young women with all three types of support, their parents' is limited to some aspects of emotional support, and is conditional (to success); (2) the educational staff also induced the peers to act as supporters; and (3) as a result, the participants had access to a "double layer" of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral support, and benefited from being both recipients and providers of support, in the coping-enhancing conditions of sociocultural and situational similarity.     

In the Eyes of the Beholder: how Adolescents,Teachers and School Counselors Construct Adolescent Images

This study had two objectives: (a) to examine the adolescent image teachers and school counselors construct (category-based images) by comparing it with the adolescent's self-image (self-as-target based), and (b) to explicate the discrepancy between category-based adolescent images as constructed by teachers, counselors, and adolescents by underlying social cognitive processes. To this end, 269 eighth-grade adolescents and 104 junior high school teachers and school counselors responded to the self-image questionnaire for young adolescents (SIQYA). Adolescents responded either to self-image questionnaires or to an adolescent-your-age version and school staff to an eighth-grader image version. One-way MANOVAs comparing the nine SIQYA scales indicated that overall, teachers' and school counselors' adolescent images were less positive than adolescents' adolescent images (as reported both regarding the self or another adolescent). These findings were interpreted in terms of two social psychological processes: positive illusion and adolescent stereotypes. Discussion also addresses the implications of these findings for educators' knowledge regarding normal adolescent processes and psychological hardships intensified during adolescence.     

Adolescents' orientation toward the future: Sex role differentiation in a sociocultural context

The present study examines sociocultural variations of gender differences reflected in the future orientation of Israeli Jews and Arabs as cases of modernity vs. transition to modernity, respectively. One hundred and twelve Jewish adolescents (61 males and 51 females) and 116 Arab adolescents (67 males and 49 females), all high school seniors in a college-bound program, responded to an open-ended future orientation questionnaire and listed their hopes and fears for the future. These responses were categorized into eight life domains (school and matriculation, military service, higher education, work and career, marriage and family, self, others, collective issues) and each domain was analyzed in terms of salience (i.e., importance and interest, assessed by number of pertinent statements) and specificity (i.e., extent of detail and concreteness, rated on a 1–3 scale). Results supported the hopothesized instrumental-expressive division between Jewish males and females and the primacy of higher education for Arab females. Analysis employing U. Bronfenbrenner's (The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) ecological model of development suggests that these gender differences are sustained by the developmental settings of Jewish and Arab adolescents.     

ADOLESCENTS'ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN'S ROLES

To examine Israeli Jewish and Arab adolescents'attitudes toward women's roles, 319 Jewish and 276 Arab adolescent males and females from private, highly prestigious high schools responded to an attitudes toward women's roles questionnaire. The hypotheses that Jews (modern), females, and older (12th grade) adolescents express more liberal attitudes toward women's roles than do Arabs (transition to modernity), males, and younger (9th grade) adolescents were generally supported by the findings. The greater liberalism expressed by older Arab females indicates that their transition to adulthood is marked by a widening gap between the attitudes toward roles held by Arab males and females. Thus, Arab females striving for personal advancement may experience less support from their male peers than do their Jewish female counterparts.     

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel: a psychology of adolescence perspective

Jewish and Arab high school seniors (61 Jewish boys and 51 Jewish girls, 57 Arab boys and 49 Arab girls) participated in a study of future orientation and described their hopes and fears for the future. The present analysis focuses on part of the data pertaining to the respondents' cross-ethnic references. More Arab than Jewish adolescents referred to the other ethnic group. The cross-ethnic references contained hope for peace and fear of war; the Arab statements, however, also showed discontent with Israeli authorities. More Arab than Jewish adolescents referred to collective issues (the people, the state, the world). The percentage of Jewish and Arab adolescents concerned with Jewish-Arab relations relative to the number addressing other aspects of collective concerns were similar (12% for Jews and 16% for Arabs). For Jews, this small number was related to adolescents' egocentrism and for Arabs, to adolescents' ethnocentrism.     

Tracks and Transitions—A Comparison of Adolescent Future-oriented Goals,Explorations, and Commitments in Australia,Israel, and Finland

It has been suggested that age-related normative demands and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, identity explorations, and commitments. In order to study this, 71 Australian boys and 49 girls, 23 Israeli boys and 23 girls, and 36 Finnish boys and 66 girls aged between 16 and 17 were investigated. They filled in the Hopes and Fears Questionnaire measuring the content and temporal extension of goals, and the Exploration and Commitment Inventory. The results showed that developmental tasks, role transitions, and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, explorations, and commitments. Due to earlier school transitions, Australian adolescents expected that their hopes related to education and work, and education-related concerns, would be realized earlier than Finnish and Israeli youths. In turn, because of military service commitments of several years, Israeli youths expected that both their hopes and fears concerning education would be realized later in life than Australian adolescents. On the other hand, Finnish adolescents expected goals concerning their future family to be actualized earlier than Australian and Israeli youths. They also showed more exploration and commitment concerning their future family than did Australian adolescents.     

How the Future Orientation of Traditional Israeli Palestinian Girls Links Beliefs About Women's Roles and Academic Achievement

A model in which future orientation links perceived fathers' and girls' beliefs about traditional women's roles and academic achievement was tested on data collected from traditional Israeli Palestinian girls  ( N = 295)  attending a Moslem all-girl senior high school. LISREL analyses estimated two empirical models pertaining to educational and family future orientation. The estimated models showed that fathers' perceived beliefs were directly linked to academic achievement and future orientation partially mediated the relationships between girls' beliefs about women's roles and academic achievement. Girls' beliefs were negatively linked to the educational future orientation and positively linked to the family future orientation, and the educational model explained a larger percent of the variance of academic achievement than did the family model.