I was trying to think of a different way to start this issue's editorial instead of welcome to this edition. However, considering that most readers skip this section and go straight to the articles which interest them, I didn't give it considerable thought, so welcome to this edition!
The first section of articles concerns you, the psychologists and school counsellors. In a fascinating but small study Joanne Lindelauf, Andrea Reupert and Kate Jacobs investigated how teachers who work with students with learning difficulties use our reports to them. It could change the way you write reports to teachers. In the second article Soo Yin Tan and Chin Chin Chou evaluated the effects of structured group supervision of 3 hour sessions over 12 weeks for school counsellors in Singapore. Using an experimental design of a before and after single group case study design, it was found that school counsellor's self-efficacy and counselling competency improved. A related article by Kalliopi Kounenou, Sofia Gkemisi, Panagiotis Nanopoulous and George Tsitsas, examined the psychometric properties of the Counselor Burnout Inventory. Two hundred school counsellors in Greece participated. The study found four factors in the scale, exhaustion, deterioration in personal life, incompetence and negative work environment. Younger school counsellors reported more symptoms of burnout than older counsellors.
The next four articles are about students, suicide postvention, refugee youth, fears about transition to high school and cyberbullying. In the first paper Debra Rickwood, Nic Telford, Vanessa Kennedy, Eleanor Bailey and Jo Robinson share the findings of two surveys conducted with secondary school personnel about the need for the specialist service of headspace School Support which assists Australian secondary schools to be prepared for and recover from suicide. The first survey showed that most schools were aware of headspace School Support while the other survey showed schools were satisfied with the service. Continued availability of suicide support to secondary schools was recommended. With the increase in refugee youth in schools, Meryan Tozer, Nigar Khawaja and Robert Schweitzer present an article examining the protective factors associated with wellbeing in youth from a refugee background. It was found that higher levels of school connectedness, acculturation, resilience and having a permanent visa were associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing.
In the next article Stephanos Vassilopoulos, Kleopatra Diakogiorgi, Andreas Brouzos, Nicholas Moberly and Maria Chasioti evaluated a group program for primary students before they transitioned to high school conducted over a 5 week period. The intervention students reported greater reduction in feelings of loneliness, more positive attitudes to school and fewer concerns about the transition than the control group of students. In the last article Fedai Kabadayi and Serkan Sarifound found that resilience was negatively associated with Turkish adolescents who cyberbullied others and those who were cybervictimised. Lack of resilience also predicted cyberbullying perpetration and victimisation.
As always I would love more members to contribute to the journal either in the research section or in the practitioner section. However, as not many people will read this I suppose I am talking to the hand. Hope you all are having a great year both personally and at work.
