Session Information
04 SES 03A, Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Pupils Prevalence, Prevention and Intervention (Part 1)
Symposium Joint Symposium with NW 16 to be continued in 04 SES 04C
Time:
2008-09-10
14:00-15:30
Room:
AK2 136
Chair:
Carmel Cefai
Discussant:
Paul William Cooper
Contribution
Social, emotional and behaviour difficulties (SEBD) in schools are a major cause for concern for many schools and teachers, with indications of increasing incidence in various countries. The lack of data on SEBD in Malta led to a recent national research project on the nature and distribution of these difficulties in Maltese schools led by the University of Malta and the University of Leicester in collaboration with the Education Division in Malta. The study sought to explore the relationship between the nature and distribution of SEBD and socio-cultural factors as reflected in the school context and family/community factors, and identify the risk and protective factors. A survey was carried out in more than one hundred primary and secondary schools with a sample of 7000 school children and their teachers and parents, amounting to 10% of school children in Malta. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) and teachers’, Heads’ and parents’ supplementary questionnaires were used to collect the data. This paper presents the initial findings of the survey, comparing the means of the Maltese cohorts with those provided by Goodman, and describing the distribution of the scores by type of difficulty, type of school, gender, region, and socioeconomic status amongst others. A Generalised Linear Model with 26 factors was then fitted to establish the most relevant predictors that explained the variations in the total difficulty scores. This helped to draw up a profile of the characteristics of Maltese students most vulnerable for SEBD in school as well as the factors which might protect children from problems in their social and emotional development. Finally the data set was partitioned into three levels of nesting in which students were nested within classes and classrooms within schools to determine the proportion of the total variance explained at each level.
References
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