The concept of child and adolescent social competence is complex and multidimensional. Dodge (1985) has attempted to summarise various aspects of the concept into a parsimonious theoretical model. It is suggested that comprehensive assessment of social competence includes measures tapping into a range of dimensions illustrated by the model. A growing body of empirical data links children's low levels of social competence to various forms of maladjustment in adolescence and adulthood. Clinical and educational interventions directed at improving child and adolescent social competence offer a valuable direction for a preventative approach that should be considered and empirically evaluated. Available social skills interventions emerge from three major theoretical foundations: Behavioural, Cognitive Problem Solving, and Structuralist. Populations targeted for intervention also vary from children or adolescents with identified problems in clinical settings, to whole school educational approaches. Empirical comparison of alternative training approaches has demonstrated that social skills training is effective, and a combination of behavioural and cognitive components is important. Issues regarding child characteristics, outcome measures and consideration of wider systems are also discussed.

This paper addresses the issues associated with providing quality supervision for school counsellors. The variety of tasks that are required of school counsellors makes it essential that appropriate supervisory support is provided by the employer. Clinical supervision should be carried out by a counsellor who has training in supervision methods and techniques, as well as clinical experience in the tasks being supervised. Administrative supervision can be conducted by a member of the school administrative team. School counsellor competence can be developed in the workplace with the support of a colleague or supervisor until expertise develops.

It is accepted that supervision is a crucial part of the professional support for counsellors. Bernard and Goodyear (1992) suggest that supervision serves three basic and important purposes. First, supervision ensures that those entering the profession have appropriate fundamental skills, second, it enhances the functioning of counsellors, and finally, it ensures the quality of service to clients. The supervisor needs to be competent not only in the process of supervision and the specific issues within the educational setting, but also aware of the particular preference of style school counsellors have for supervision, which research has found tends to be quite directive (Usher & Borders, 1993).

Clinical supervision of counsellors is linked to accountable practice and the quality of service to clients. Despite this, there is a gap between the rhetoric of the literature and the practice of clinical supervision. This study, set in the context of the Queensland Department of Education, examined the perceptions of guidance officers and senior guidance officers about the clinical supervision provided for guidance officers by senior guidance officers in relation to their counselling practices. The findings echo concerns expressed in the literature that supervisors have received little training in supervision, and the provision of supervision outside of training settings is less than adequate.

This paper takes as its starting point two major reviews of young people's psychosocial development and considers the outlook for their future. In the context of growing concern about young people's prospects, it is proposed that one way to harness the vitality of youth and avert psychosocial problems is through the development of adolescent awareness and involvement with matters of social concern. It is proposed that by identifying young people's concerns and the development of their coping skills in relationship to matters that are relevant to them, it is possible to deal with stress, increase self awareness, develop communication skills, and empower young people to become altruistic/prosocial participants in the community.

This paper looks at social skills intervention programs for students. The arguments and research evidence for teaching social skills are discussed as well as the issue of which social skills should be taught. Conclusions are drawn about the most effective kind of intervention programs and arguments are presented for educational psychologist to work in collaboration with teachers to present social skills programs. The issue of peer reputations is discussed.

The Internet has revolutionised communication around the globe, and Australia is no exception (Goodheart & Crawford, 1995). At this stage, only a few school guidance counsellors are fortunate enough to be able to “surf the Net”, although this is rapidly changing, with some Australian schools already connected and others about to join up shortly. The pace of change is rapid indeed, with developments like EdNA and OpenNet offering further possibilities. Those who do “get wired” will know just how deep a source of riches this can be. The purpose of this article is to outline some of the relevant discussion groups of interest to counsellors.

According to official figures, most of the trouble in schools is caused by boys. This is because boys are more openly disruptive and overtly aggressive. However, recent research has uncovered forms of aggression more common among girls. This paper reports on a study in South Australian schools which explores gender and developmental differences in aggression. A peer estimation scale was administered to students in years 2, 6, 9 and 11 in two high schools and four primary schools. Boys were found to be more physically and verbally aggressive than girls but girls used more indirect forms of aggression during the high school years. The gender differences in aggression are linked to gender differences in friendship patterns. Implications for schools are briefly discussed.

NSW School Counsellors were surveyed regarding their attitudes towards homosexuality and their experience and willingness to work with gay and lesbian students. Most counsellors showed low to moderate homonegativism, but 16.6% scored in the high range. Less knowledge, experience, and past training on homosexuality issues were significantly related to homonegativism, as was unwillingness to participate in future activities and workshops dealing with lesbian and gay students' issues. Many counsellors had a poor knowledge of existing support services. Counsellors who were willing to provide supportive services for gay and lesbian students expressed a need for resources, information kits and curriculum material, inservice training, executive support and a positive Departmental policy.

One of the impressions in the literature on children's social anxiety is that young (preadolescent) children are not socially anxious and that social anxiety begins to manifest itself at adolescence and then increases with age. However there seems to be little direct research evidence to substantiate this claim. A questionnaire to assess feared outcomes in children and adolescents was therefore administered to 1415 children between the ages of 6 and 16 years. The results showed that worry about social threat did not increase with age and the content of the feared social outcomes also remained relatively constant over the age span.

Children and their teachers were asked to nominate social situations that typically lead to children experiencing relationship difficulties with their peers. This information was then used to construct a diagnostic instrument in order to identify the particular social challenges that individual children face. The results of this study were compared to earlier investigations which sought only the views of adults, and not the ideas of the children themselves. The technique for developing inventories of problematic situations for children is explained and the uses of such procedures is also discussed.

In this paper consideration is given to the problem of bullying in Australian Schools which a recent Federal Government enquiry into violence in schools has identified as a major concern. The thrust of the paper is to describe an intervention program based around the acronym P.E.A.C.E. (Preparation, Education, Action, Coping and Evaluation). School based evaluations of the P.E.A.C.E. Programme will be described to highlight its efficacy in reducing bullying in schools.

This study compared the effects on behavioural interactions and achievement of (a) cooperative learning in which members were trained to collaborate to facilitate each other's learning and (b) cooperative learning in which members were not trained but were merely told to help each other. One hundred and ninetytwo, Year 6 children participated in the study. Stratified random assignment occurred so that each four-person group consisted of one high-, two medium-, and one low-ability student. All groups were gender balanced. The children worked in their groups on the same social studies unit, three times a week for 12 weeks The results indicated that the children in the Trained groups were consistently more cooperative and helpful to each other, they used language which was more inclusive, and they gave more explanations to assist each other as they worked together. Furthermore, the children in the Trained groups achieved higher learning outcomes than their peers in the Untrained groups.

For many counsellors and teachers who are concerned about the so-called bully/victim problem in schools, what to do with the school bully is the central issue. One might wish otherwise. It is sometimes argued that if more time and effort were spent in preventing bullying through the development of appropriate policies in schools and the encouragement of prosocial behaviour, the problem would simply not arise. Yet it must be admitted that even with the most enlightened school discipline policies and the most thoughtfully conceived human relations training programs, schools continue to report cases of bullying and harassment with which they must deal.

Research has demonstrated links between children's poor peer relations and various forms of child and adult psychosocial maladjustment. Social skills training programs have been developed to increase children's social competence and reduce the risk for later problems. The Sheidow Park Social Problem Solving Program is a curriculum based cognitive social skills training program, designed for Australian primary school children. The present research evaluated the effects of this program on a variety of dimensions of children's social competence. Subjects were Reception/Year 1 children in two classes of a South Australian suburban primary school. The teacher of one class implemented the social skills program, while the other class experienced no formal social skills intervention. The results indicated that the various measures of social competence employed were relatively independent of one another, supporting the need for a comprehensive range of measures in social skills training research. The Sheidow Park program demonstrated a significant effect on children's sense of social self-competence and the degree to which they perceived a variety of challenging social situations as difficult to deal with. However, the program had no effect on teacher and peer ratings of children's social competence or on children's satisfaction with their wider social network. The findings are explained within the context of attribution and cognitive dissonance theories, and the strengths and limitations of both the Sheidow Park program and the present research are discussed. Suggestions for future research and modifications to the program are made.

The purpose of this study was to document the school experience of adolescents (n = 20) with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and to identify ways in which they could be better assisted to cope with school. Only half the schools assisted students via organisational changes or individual programs. Parents and school liaison people were seen to be the most helpful and Principals and School Counsellors the least helpful. Impaired memory and concentration negatively affected school experience to a large degree. The results indicated five major needs for schools to address: (1) emotional support and validation, (2) development of individual educational programs to reduce work pressure, (3) administrative flexibility, (4) active maintenance of social involvement with peer group and extracurricular activities, and (5) practical help. These can be facilitated by the appointment of a ‘school liaison person’ to individually assist a student with CFS.

This paper describes a structured problem-solving approach for successfully engaging adolescents having difficulties with social interactions. Counselling is conducted on a 1-to-1 basis and aimed at increasing verbal problem-solving behaviour, such as setting relevant goals and identifying behaviour likely to result in increased, pleasurable contact with peers, consistent with the attainment of the selected goals. In addition to a number of self-report questionnaire measures, a diary was designed to monitor changes in peer interactions. Individual progress data are presented for 3 adolescents who participated in a 10-week program designed to assist them to develop improved prosocial behaviour with their peers. The data illustrate the importance of accurately determining precise goals for each adolescent and developing a collaborative approach between counsellor and adolescent to ensure that these goals accurately reflect the wishes and needs of the adolescent.

While for some young people family life is smooth sailing, for many others it is fraught with turbulence. In this study of secondary students in metropolitan Melbourne the major concerns of children in intact and separated families were compared. The study also compared how young people cope according to their family circumstances. The 238 young people who live in intact households reported fights with parents and happiness as their major concerns. The major concern of the 114 young people in separated households was lack of access to the non-residential parent.

The investigation utilised the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), an 80-item instrument developed and validated over a five-year period as an instrument to measure adolescent coping. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant variation in coping according to gender and a significant relationship between coping and family status. There were significant gender differences regardless of whether the families were intact or separated.

Dr Kaj Bjorkqvist, his wife and research colleague Dr Karin Osterman, and their research team have conducted the major research into gender and developmental differences in aggression in school children. In particular, Dr Bjorkqvist and his colleagues are responsible for pioneering the measurement of indirect aggression, particularly in adolescent females. Dr Bjorkqvist is Professor of Developmental Psychology at Abo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland.