Sigrun Adalbjarnardottir

University of Iceland | HI · Centre for Research into Challenges Facing Children and Young People

An adequate response to the environmental and sustainability issues we now face cannot be limited to single perspectives, disciplines, or ways of knowing, and instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. Despite the connections between the fields of citizenship-, character- and sustainability education, they have thus far run parallel to each ot...

Áhersla á mannréttindi hefur á síðustu áratugum komið sterkar fram í menntastefnum vestrænna ríkja og er Ísland þar á meðal. Máttur menntunar er mikill, sér í lagi þegar tryggja þarf mannréttindi og mannúð í síbreytilegum heimi. Því er mikilvægt að menntakerfi leggi áherslu á að börn og ungmenni læri um réttindi sín, ábyrgð og skyldur sem er grunnu...

Human rights, diversity, and democracy are crucial elements of educational policy. The aim of this study is to address these topics by exploring students’ attitudes towards the human rights of immigrants. Their attitudes are explored in relation to their experiences of opportunities for democratic discussions within the classroom, along with their...

The aim of the study is to explore young people’s attitudes towards political participation, both towards social-movement participation, such as taking part in protecting the environment and advocate for human rights; and towards more conventional participation such as voting. Their attitudes are examined in relation to their understanding of democ...

Í bók þessari er fjallað um íslenskar rannsóknir á heilsu og velferð ungs fólks og gerður samanburður við önnur lönd. Ljósi er varpað á ýmis krefjandi viðfangsefni og áskoranir, sem ungmenni standa frammi fyrir. Togað er í ungt fólk úr mörgum áttum. Iðulega berast andstæð skilaboð frá samfélaginu annars vegar og foreldrum hins vegar og valda togstr...

For the past decade discussion about the importance of promoting young people’s civic engagement has increased both within the academic world as well as in the society. The aim of this study is to explore young people’s perceptions of parenting styles in relation to their attitudes towards people’s civic participation in a democratic society. Here,...

Dropping out of school generally has negative consequences for both individuals and society, and the decision to do so has been described as a crucial developmental task of adolescence. This longitudinal study examined the contribution of parenting practices to students' completion of upper secondary school through their school engagement. Icelandi...

We address how to conceptualize and measure intentional self-regulation (ISR) among adolescents from four cultures by assessing whether ISR (conceptualized by the SOC model of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation) is represented by three factors (as with adult samples) or as one “adolescence-specific” factor. A total of 4,057 14- and 18-year-o...

Students' different educational pathways were examined in relation to their disengagement during adolescence. The participants were Icelandic youth (N = 832) who were followed from age 14 to 22. Based on their academic achievement at age 15 and educational attainment at age 22 they were classified into groups that took expected versus unexpected pa...

A formative measure for coding the way educators view material that asks them to explicate their own pedagogical philosophy, specifically with respect to two areas: 1. how to engage youth in understanding the relationship of historical case studies to their own lives 2. how to engage youth in understanding the nature of social conflicts in classroo...

Umfjöllun um lýðraeði og mannréttindi er um þessar mundir ofarlega á baugi menntamála. Markmið rannsóknarinnar er að kanna viðhorf nemenda til mann-réttinda sem snúa að réttindum og möguleikum innflytjenda með hliðsjón af því hvaða taekifaeri nemendur telja sig hafa til þátttöku í lýðraeðislegum umraeðum í bekkjarstarfi og hve virka þeir telja sig...

“My calling is to help and try to benefit others” Young people’s views on volunteering Abstract The past two decades have seen increasing amounts of research on young people‘s civic engagement (Sherrod, Torney-Purta, & Flanagan, 2010). The main focus, however, has been on their political engagement, rather than on their volunteerism that aims to he...

In this chapter the author discusses how educational settings are value-filled. She calls for greater awareness about the basic human values that are important to cultivate constructively among the youth and for a serious focus within education on visions and ways to foster children’s and adolescents’ social, emotional, ethical, and civic growth. I...

Adolescents' perceptions of parenting style and parental involvement in their education were examined longitudinally and related to school dropout among Icelandic youth (N = 427). Results indicated that adolescents who, at age 14, characterized their parents as authoritative (showing acceptance and supervision) were more likely to have completed up...

This article focuses on a school leader's professional awareness in promoting students' intercultural competence. The context is how societal challenges and changes-in this case the rapid increase in immigration to Iceland-provide opportunities for school development. Icelandic principals and teachers, like those in many other countries, face the n...

Each september, for more than a decade, a group of between fifteen and twenty elementary school teachers in Reykjavík, Iceland, assembled to take part in a yearlong professional development program titled "Fostering Students' Interpersonal Competence and Skills."1 The aim of this teacher professional development program was to help the participants...

Across the chapters of this book, we have used the term "risk" in several ways. In the name we gave our basic developmental framework in chapter 4, it refers to "the uncertainty of outcome that children face as they make decisions about how to act within interpersonal relationships." When we speak about "risk factors," however, the term has an inhe...

This study explores how antisocial behavior among adolescents at age 14 is related longitudinally to their daily smoking, heavy alcohol use, and illicit drug use (hashish and amphetamines) at age 17. The sample of 9th graders (n = 1293) attending compulsory schools in Reykjavik, Iceland participated in the study and in the follow-up 3 years later....

Based on a psyschosocial developmental framework, this study used a mixed model design, including both quantitative and qualitative methods, to examine the relationship between adolescents' psychosocial maturity and their alcohol use. A sample of 1,198 10th-grade students (51% female) was surveyed and followed up two years later. Both concurrent an...

The relation between parenting style and adolescent substance use (tobacco, alcohol, hashish, and amphetamines) was examined concurrently (at age 14) for licit drug use and longitudinally (from age 14 to 17) for both licit and illicit drug use in a sample of 347 youth from compulsory schools in Reykjavik, Iceland. After controlling for adolescent p...

A sample of 9th-grade students (1,293 individuals, 51% girls) attending compulsory schools in Reykjavik, Iceland, was surveyed and followed up 3 years later. The relationship between perceived control and substance use is examined concurrently at age 14 for experimentation with tobacco and alcohol and longitudinally (14-17 years of age) for daily s...

A sample of 9th-grade students (1,293 individuals, 51% girls) attending compulsory schools in Reykjavik, Iceland, was surveyed and followed up 3 years later. The relationship between perceived control and substance use is examined concurrently at age 14 for experimentation with tobacco and alcohol and longitudinally (14-17 years of age) for daily s...

School surveys are currently the most important method of collecting data on alcohol and drug use among youth. Although methodological studies suggest that school surveys yield reliable and valid estimates of substance use among youth, it has been argued that results will be affected by the level of perceived anonymity. Longitudinal research design...

The goal of this article is to demonstrate the application of a psychosocial developmental framework-and interpretive method of analysis-to data gathered through in-depth interviews. The article applies this analysis in the context of a case comparative design, drawing on interviews with two 15-year-old Icelandic boys who drank alcohol frequently,...

Integrating psychological theories and educational practice has long been the aim of educational psychologists. This paper contributes to this task by presenting an overview of the results of a three‐step research project: Students’ Sociomoral and Interpersonal Development. Firstly, basic research was conducted, tracing the developmental patterns o...

The purpose of this article is to describe a developmental framework we have constructed to portray the different ways teachers express their own vision of the importance of fostering their elementary-school students' interpersonal competence and skills in classrooms. During their participation in an intervention program focused on this topic, teac...

The role of social anxiety, social withdrawal, and locus of control in the developmental level of interpersonal negotiation strategies (INS) when resolving hypothetical conflicts was examined in a short-term longitudinal study (fall and spring). Applying a balanced design, 96 children aged 8 and 11 from 8 classes participated in the study. At both...

Teachers' reflections are presented on the changes occurring while fostering children's social competence and skills in an intervention program. Classroom discussion on interpersonal relationships and conflict resolution was emphasized as a constructive teaching strategy in promoting children's social growth. The curriculum themes focused on friend...

This study explores whether the social-cognitive competence and skills of elementary school children can be promoted in school. An intervention program, emphasizing discussion among students around conflicting opinions in social interactions, was carried out during one school year. Reflecting the balanced design of the study, 96 children (48 girls,...

Adalbjarnardóttir, S. (1992). Reaching consensus in conflict sitiuations in childhood. Nordisk Psykologi, 42, 116–137.A new model of interpersonal communicative actions (ICA) that integrates elements of Habermas' theory of communicative action and social-cognitive developmental theories is postulated. By the use of hypothetical situations, Habermas...

This study examines the ways that elementary schoolchildren think about everyday situations in which conflicts occur between student and teacher. Applying a balanced design, 60 Icelandic elementary schoolchildren (30 girls and 30 boys) between the ages of 7 and 12 were interviewed twice, one year apart, using two ‘dilemmas’ in which the teacher cri...

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/Open. Í þessari rannsókn voru hugmyndir barna um eigin viðbrögð við gagnrýni kennara og bekkjarfélaga athugaðar. Tekin voru viðtöl með ársmillibili við sextíu börn á aldrinum 7 til 12 ára. Tíu börn voru í hverjum aldurshópi og var skipting kynja jöfn. Tvær...

60 children between the ages of 7 and 12 (30 girls and 30 boys, distributed equally across grades 1-6) were interviewed on 2 "everyday" school-based dilemmas in which a student is communicating with either a teacher or classmate over conflicting opinions concerning the quality of the student's academic work. 57 subjects were reinterviewed 1 year la...

An integration of psychological theories and educational practice has long been the aim of educational psychologists. This article is an attempt to contribute to this task by presenting results from a study on elementary‐school children's communicative actions. The term ‘communicative action’ captures both communicative understanding (the social‐co...

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/Open Tengsl á milli uppeldishátta foreldra og depurðar ungs fólks voru athuguð á 15. aldursári (þversnið) og aftur þegar það var komið vel á 22. aldursár (langtímasnið). Rannsóknin byggir á gögnum úr viðamikilli langtímarannsókn á áhættuhegðun reykvískra ung...

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/Open Í þessari rannsókn var athugað hvort hægt væri að örva samskiptahæfni skólabarna með því að nota tilteknar kennsluaðferðir við að leysa félagslegan ágreining. 96 börn, 8 ára (24 stúlkur og 24 drengir) og 11 ára (24 stúlkur og 24 drengir) úr átta bekkjar...