Welcome to the special edition on wellbeing and the prevention of violence in young people. This edition is special in two ways. It is the first edition since the name change of the Australian Guidance and Counselling Association (AGCA) to the new name of Australian Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools (APAC). Second, this edition has been supported by the Flinders Centre for Student Wellbeing & the Prevention of Violence (SWAPv; http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/swapv/), which draws together a number of major streams of research being undertaken within Flinders University, situated in Adelaide, South Australia. The Centre also calls upon the expertise of staff members in other parts of the faculty and across the university, in collaboration with national and international researchers and colleagues. The work of the Centre focuses on research that spans the fields of mental health and wellbeing, and violence prevention, primarily in education settings. The Centre is dedicated to making a difference to the wellbeing of young people's lives, focusing on promoting mental health and preventing violence in educational settings. The Centre represents the multiple research, consultancy, professional learning and higher degree research supervision interests of its members, and is broadly inclusive of a rich and varied mix of approaches to undertaking research in the particular fields that provide the foci of the Centre.

Welcome to the first edition of 2013. This particular edition has been compiled differently due to new technology afforded us by Cambridge University Press. In the past, authors have had to wait for their accepted paper to be published when the next edition was due, which could be up to 6 months. However, Cambridge is now able to publish the paper as soon as it is accepted, online, in what is known as First View. When it is time for the printed journal to be published, the articles on First View are selected and reorganised to group papers together and printed. This is a great advantage for those authors wanting their paper to be out there so that their results are publicised. Hopefully, this will make the journal even more attractive for the best possible papers to be submitted.

The rise in popularity of Response to Intervention (RTI) as a method of identifying Learning Disabilities (LD) is partially due to the psychometric and theoretical issues inherent to the use of IQ tests in the once popular discrepancy method of identification. However, both RTI and discrepancy theories have their shortcomings, and criticisms directed at either method are usually applicable to both. This conceptual article puts forward a justification for using tests of the cognitive processes that are implicated in LD as a better method of LD identification. Although the unsuitability of the discrepancy method to accurately identify LD students is well established, it does represent the construct of LD well. Therefore, the discrepancy method can be used as an effective baseline measure against which improved identification procedures based on cognitive processes can be measured. Once these cognitive processes are more clearly defined, tests of these processes offer promise for LD identification.

During the transition from primary to secondary school, students typically experience a new social environment, moving from primary school with small intact classes throughout the day with one main teacher, to a larger secondary school with teachers, classrooms and often classmates changing throughout the day. During this time, students report a reduced sense of connectedness, which has been associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety. This study investigated the temporal association between feeling connected to school and mental health prior to and over the transition period. Data were obtained from 3,459 students in a longitudinal study of adolescents’ knowledge, attitudes and experiences of bullying victimisation and perpetration during the transition from primary school to secondary school. Students completed a questionnaire at four time points from Grade 7 to the end of Grade 9. Path analysis was used to model relationships between school connectedness, depression and anxiety. The findings suggest reciprocal relationships between connectedness and mental health where increased connectedness to school is associated with decreased depression and anxiety; conversely, increased depression and anxiety is associated with decreased connectedness to school. The significant reciprocal associations found in the cross-lag models in the first two years of secondary school indicate the need to intervene during the transition period to improve students’ social and mental health outcomes.

The case is presented of a professional learning project through which a school counsellor was assisted in her work with a child who she admitted ‘rattled her cage’ due to his complex needs and behaviours and the effect these had on her and the other children in her social skills group. As a result of a combination of mindfulness and therapeutic storytelling the child was able to gain an insight into his behaviour, which helped him feel a new sense of calm, safety and belonging. While the story of ‘The Red Beast’ provided the therapeutic content, the counsellor's transmission of mindfulness into the story telling space allowed it to be absorbed as wisdom to be drawn upon later by him and the other children in the group. This case demonstrates that school counsellors can benefit from professional development in mindfulness practice that supports them to become more attuned to the needs of vulnerable children through becoming more aware of their own emotional energies. It also shows that a therapeutic story's effectiveness can be enhanced if the teller is mindful of the right moment, manner and context in which to tell it.

Two tests of intellectual ability were compared in terms of quantitative measures and professional utility in the context of 41 students who were referred for psychoeducational investigation of their learning. Full-scale, Composite, and Factor scores from The Stanford Binet Intelligence Scales — Fifth Edition (SB5) and the Das Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) were compared and individual profiles were examined. The SB5 is the latest version of a traditional test referenced to the Cattell-Horn-Carroll factor model of intelligence, while the CAS was developed from an information processing theory of intelligence. Full-scale measures of intellectual ability were found to differ significantly, with the SB5 approximately 8 points higher than the CAS. Analysis of the profiles assisted in understanding specific learning abilities and guided interventions. The implications of this for the relative utility of the two instruments, their interchangeablity, the meaningful interpretation of results, and their complementary contribution to practice are discussed.

A repeated measures design, with randomly assigned intervention and control groups and multiple sources of information on each participant, was used to examine whether changing the method of delivery of a school's homework program in order to better meet the students’ needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence would lead to more positive student attitudes to homework, and whether there would also be a positive change in overall motivation. The participants were 104 male students aged 10 to 12 years who attended a single sex high school. There was no overall intervention effect on motivation; however, the intervention appeared to have a protective effect on the quality of motivation.

The aim of the study was to obtain adolescents’ perspectives about why young people offend. Twenty-four Australian male and female offenders and non-offenders offered insights about what, according to them, motivates young people to become involved in crime. Without the use of sophisticated language, participants offered explanations that were well-aligned with the ‘big three’ theories suggested by Cullen and Agnew (2003) as major criminological theories — namely, control, differential association, and strain theories. Participants also provided explanations that corroborated Carroll, Houghton, Durkin, and Hattie's (2009) reputation enhancing goals theory. Participants’ explanations were consistent with empirically supported criminological theories, suggesting that young people involved in crime, or associated with known offenders, have insights about the causes of crime. An extrapolation of this notion would suggest that they might also have some insight into what measures could be taken to reduce or prevent offending. Notwithstanding further research, it is proposed that young people should be given more voice in criminal justice matters.

Readiness for change (or treatment readiness) is a core concept of many rehabilitation programs for adult and juvenile offenders. The present study examined the experiences of six young people aged 13 to 17 years who participated in Mindfields®, a 6-week self-regulatory intervention aimed at enhancing life skills and goal setting among youths who present with challenging and/or risky behaviour. This article investigates the extent to which: readiness for change influences individual responses to the Mindfields® program; external factors influence the achievement and maintenance of program success; and goal achievement leads to perceptions of self-efficacy and personal control over one's behaviour. Prior to, and on completion of the intervention, participants completed the Mindfields® Assessment Battery that measures goal commitment, social competence, self-regulation, life satisfaction, delinquent involvement, and readiness for change. Findings show the importance of participants’ motivation to make life-changing decisions, but this motivation and promising goals can be compromised by factors external to the individual. Our findings prompt future research into ways in which young people can maintain their motivation and readiness for change, and draw encouragement from less successful outcomes than might have been expected.

Educators are at the heart of educational reforms, such as the introduction of mental health promotion initiatives into early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Good quality implementation of reforms requires educators to engage in high quality professional learning: If educators have not had opportunities to gain appropriate knowledge and expertise, new initiatives may be poorly implemented and may consequently achieve limited outcomes. This article reports ECEC educators’ perspectives about the impact on their knowledge and practices of the professional education component of the KidsMatter mental health promotion initiative. Educators from 111 ECEC services across Australia contributed a range of types of data, including questionnaires about their knowledge and self-efficacy, feedback about each professional education session, and photo stories about their changed professional practices. Participants indicated that their professional learning led to changed practices in areas such as interpreting children's behaviours, interacting with children, approaching parents, and collaborating with colleagues. Participants’ photo stories illustrate how professional education that focuses on content, active learning, coherence, and collaboration can positively influence knowledge and practices. However, if such gains are to last beyond relatively highly resourced start-up phases of initiatives, professional education needs to integrate with, and draw from, the ongoing availability of other professionals such as guidance and counselling staff, who have complementary knowledge and expertise; be recognised and embedded as a core component of ECEC educators’ roles and their workplace practices; and be culturally and contextually situated. Staff accounts of the impact of their professional learning on their practices can highlight to policy-makers the practical outcomes of strong investments in professional education. Awareness by other professions of the affordances and constraints faced by ECEC educators may contribute to interdisciplinary synergies among the range of professions involved in mental health promotion in educational settings.

The purpose of the present study was to examine direct and indirect relations among social problem-solving, depression, and aggression, as well as the mediating role of depression in the link between social problem-solving and aggression among Turkish youth. Data for the present study were collected from 413 adolescents. The participants’ age ranged from 14 to 17 with a mean of 15.74 years (SD = .97). Results indicated that social problem-solving was significantly and negatively associated with both depression and aggression. Also, depression significantly and positively associated with aggression and depression appears to act as a mediator in the relationship between social problem-solving and aggression. Findings suggest that social problem-solving and depression are important factors in understanding aggression among Turkish youth.

School guidance counsellors worldwide seek ways of providing appropriate professional assistance to all students. While young people integrate online technology into their daily lives and go online for information and to communicate with each other, school counsellors in Australia are not offering online support to students. This cross-sectional study reported on the reluctance of school counsellors to offer online counselling and the reasons for this. A survey was developed focusing on the intention to offer online counselling based on indicative factors favouring the use of this initiative. 210 school guidance counsellors completed the survey online, which showed that there is conditional support for the introduction of online counselling into the school setting. Counsellors indicated that they would use online counselling if students accepted its use in the school setting though they question how genuine students would be in its use. Most respondents reported a lack of confidence in understanding the ethical and legal implications of online counselling. However, the majority of participants were prepared to undertake further professional development in this mode of counselling. Additionally, they sought confirmation of the effectiveness of counselling students online before committing themselves to it. The implications for school guidance practice are discussed.

The present study investigated the effects of supervision on the management of vicarious traumatisation among telephone and online counsellors on BoysTown Helplines. BoysTown Helplines include Kids Helpline, a 24-hour national counselling service for young people aged 5–25 years of age, and Parentline (PL), a counselling service for parents in Queensland and Northern Territory. The services provide telephone and email counselling services and Kids Helpline also provides web counselling. All counsellors (100%) worked as Kids Helpline counsellors (N = 38) and 42.1% (n = 16) as PL counsellors. The counsellors conducted 50,979 counselling sessions in 2008, of which 38,703 were completed over the telephone and 12,276 online. Of these, approximately 44% involved trauma clients, putting the counsellors at risk of suffering some level of vicarious traumatisation. The findings from 38 supervised telephone and online counsellors showed that vicarious traumatisation fell within normal limits and positive coping strategies were above average. While correlations did not prove to be significant between supervision and vicarious traumatisation, the size of counsellors’ trauma caseload proved to be strongly related to both vicarious traumatisation and negative coping style.

Students with disabilities are at increased risk of experiencing mental health difficulties, but may not be recognised as an at-risk population in the design of school-based prevention and intervention efforts. Understanding the link between disability and mental health is important for school psychologists and guidance counsellors, teachers, and special education personnel who are in a position to provide targeted opportunities for social and emotional learning and to ameliorate the potential for marginalisation and isolation. This article reviews research related to mental health in students with disabilities, with a focus on understanding potential pathways between disability and mental health difficulties and examining the evidence for effective universal and targeted interventions. The research reviewed highlights the need for mental health promotion in schools to incorporate targeted approaches for at-risk students within the context of universal, whole-school approaches, and in particular to consider the mental health needs of students with disabilities.

In this article we report Maltese primary and secondary students' perspectives about their school experiences and their mental health. Questionnaires were completed by 281 students. Relationships emerged between students' reports about their involvement in bullying, mental health status, and a range of typical features of school environments. A conservative non-parametric Jonckheere-Terpstra test indicated significant unidirectional differences, from non-involved through to bully/victim groups, for six selected variables that have the potential to be influenced by schools' policies and practices, namely, positive school community, coping with school work, social and emotional education, friendships, safety, and teachers' responses to bullying events. Effect sizes ranged from small to medium. This study illustrates identifiable patterns of students' social, emotional and academic wellbeing. It highlights the need for intervention programs that are conceptualised to meet the needs of different student groups, in this case, involvement in bullying as a victim or as a bully. It also highlights how a range of school-based influences may operate together to affect the wellbeing of students, and points to the need for multi-disciplinary collaboration and approaches to mental health promotion in schools.

Counsellors need to be able to understand perfectionism in students, and the different forms that this perfectionism may take, in order to provide their students with the appropriate counselling services. This study investigated gender differences in perfectionism, and examined the relationship of perfectionism to general self-efficacy, life-satisfaction, academic achievement and satisfaction with academic achievement among a sample of 419 high school students (47.0% female, 53.0% male). Data were collected using five scales: (1) The Almost Perfect Scale — Revised (APS-R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001); (2) the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES; Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995); (3) the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985); (4) a single item scale for measuring satisfaction with academic achievement; and (5) a demographic information form. Results indicated that females are significantly more perfectionist than males. Adaptive perfectionists had higher self-efficacy, satisfaction with life, academic achievement and satisfaction with academic achievement than did both maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists. Furthermore, there were no significant differences between maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists on any of these variables. This implies that prevention and intervention programs should be designed to enable high school students to set realistically high standards.

This study investigated the personal, career and learning skill needs of first-year university students, their preferred counselling sources, and compared South African and international students. Respondents completed a structured questionnaire (N = 567) with more than half reporting a moderate to high need for assistance with their concerns. Women had a significantly greater need for assistance with the bulk of listed concerns than men. International students had a significantly greater need for assistance than South African students and were particularly concerned about xenophobia. These results may assist administrators and counsellors to develop strategies to address identified student needs.

The two articles in the Applied Practices section of the current journal provide interesting contrasting views of the role of school psychologists and school counsellors. In the article ‘Lest We Forget’, the negative ramifications of budgetary constraints on the services of Guidance Counsellors (as they are known in Ireland) are fascinating, complex and timely in considering similar issues that have arisen or are threatened in a number of school counselling jurisdictions. McGuckin and O'Brien also point out the potential advantages of professional associations such as the Australian Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools (APACS), which is the new name of the association that publishes this journal.

School-based guidance and counselling provision suffered significantly in the austerity measures announced as part of the Irish national Budget for 2012. Through an exploration of the rapid changes visited on the profession in Ireland, this article offers a timely warning to international colleagues to engage in a service-wide reflective process regarding the nature, organisation, and efficacy of their role and profession. Highlighted are the central issues that have been experienced in Ireland, with suggestions for how colleagues could reflect upon the robustness of the profession in their own country.

Families, peer groups, and schools are important environments for children's positive growth and development. A theoretical model that linked children's perceptions of parenting, sense of connectedness to family, peers and school, along with peer group type, to adjustment was developed and tested. Data were collected from students and their parents. The model was supported and explained 56% of the variance with respect to children's reports. Family, school, and peer connectedness all independently predicted child reported adjustment. Differences were apparent between children's and parents’ reports, and the model did not convincingly predict parental views of their child's adjustment. There was evidence that non-familial social environments can have a positive, compensatory impact on children's emotional functioning — a most important finding for school personnel interested in student wellbeing.