Over the last decade, there has been a visible surge of students participating in and leading different forms of activism. Following the cultural reckoning of 2020, the United States saw a rise in awareness and engagement in activism among young individuals. Continuing this trend, higher education institutions have seen an increase in on-campus demonstrations in recent years. Given the recent increase in activism, political engagement, and the globalization of social issues, this study examined how attitudes, beliefs, individual factors, and prior behaviors relate to undergraduate students’ willingness to engage in different forms of activism (i.e., conventional and high-risk). Across both forms of activism, institutional advocacy (i.e., the behavioral targeting of institutional racism) was the most consistent unique predictor of a student's willingness to engage in activism. Need for cognition and individual advocacy were significantly and positively related to conventional activism, whereas political orientation was negatively related to it. Social justice orientation was significantly and negatively related to high-risk activism.
Social capital represents a relational resource developed through trust, professional networks, collaboration, peer support, and knowledge exchange. In the context of Social Studies Education, social capital can support teachers in accessing information, experiences, and professional resources relevant to professional development and instructional planning. This study aims to analyze the conceptualization of teachers’ social capital, identify its dimensions in relation to teacher professionalism, and examine its relevance to Social Studies teaching practices and instructional planning. The study employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach guided by the PRISMA 2020 framework. The literature analyzed consists of scholarly publications published between 2023 and 2026 in Indonesian and English that met the established inclusion criteria. The data were analyzed through thematic synthesis based on conceptual dimensions, forms of professional relationships, and their contributions to teaching practices. The synthesis indicates that social capital facilitates teachers’ access to information, experiences, feedback, and professional support through networks and collaborative relationships. These resources can strengthen professional learning and pedagogical decision-making relevant to Social Studies instructional planning. However, empirical evidence directly linking teachers’ social capital to the quality of Social Studies instructional planning remains limited. These findings highlight the need for further research on how social capital can be translated into improvements in the quality of Social Studies instructional planning components.
Children's behaviour and social adjustment within the classroom are important considerations. Behaviour can refer to how a pupil engages with learning tasks, follows instructions, works with others and interacts within the classroom. Social adjustment can relate to how children feel they fit in, build friendships, communicate effectively and feel included. Although behaviour and social adjustment are two distinct areas, they will be influenced by each other. This conceptual article will discuss the relationship between behaviour and social adjustment for upper primary school students. Using theories such as ecological systems, social learning and sociocultural. School engagement, friendships and school belonging will also be discussed. It is important to consider how behaviour should be seen as more than just an individual trait. Family factors, teaching style, peer relationships, individual differences and school factors can influence how a pupil behaves. A strength based approach to children's behaviour and social adjustment will be advocated. The article will conclude with key implications for classroom settings and recommendations for future research. Future research should be culturally aware, developmentally appropriate and ethical. This article is theoretical and will not give any findings.
Religious education is often expected to promote tolerance, but respect for religious difference does not necessarily ensure accurate understanding of religious others. This study examines how religious education policies in Indonesia and England emphasize different forms of cognitive tolerance. Using qualitative document analysis and comparative policy analysis, the study analyzes selected legal, curricular, and pedagogical documents through four components: Knowledge of Religious Others, Recognition of Internal Diversity, Critical Reflection, and Understanding Commonalities and Differences. Indonesian policy gives greater relative emphasis to understanding commonalities and differences within religion-specific formation, social harmony, and responsible citizenship. English policy gives greater emphasis to critical reflection and knowledge of religious and non-religious worldviews through shared enquiry. Recognition of Internal Diversity appears in similar proportions in both datasets, but it serves different curricular functions. The findings show differently configured pathways toward cognitive tolerance, combining the same cognitive components with different relative emphases and curricular purposes.
This study examined the relationship between AI companionship- operationalized as attachment anxiety and avoidance toward AI- and psychological well-being among 50 Gen Z adults (aged 18-29) in India. Using the Experiences in Human-AI Relationships Scale (EHARS) and the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, the study found no significant associations between attachment to AI and well-being. These findings, though limited by sample size and design constraints, contribute to the growing literature on human-AI relationships in non-Western contexts.
This study explored attachment-related responses and self-reported relationship experiences among adults. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey was conducted using an online questionnaire; the supplied response file contained 57 records. The questionnaire included demographic questions, 12 attachment-related statements, six relationship-experience statements, and an optional open-ended question about healthy relationships. Descriptive statistics were calculated. For exploratory analysis, four items concerning fear of rejection and reassurance were averaged into an anxiety-related index, and four items concerning emotional disclosure, closeness, and independence were averaged into an avoidance-related index. These researcher-created indices are not validated psychological scales. Spearman rank correlations were used to examine associations with relationship-experience ratings. The six-item relationship-experience composite had a mean of 3.65 on a 1-5 scale. The anxiety-related index was positively associated with the composite (ρ = .315, p = .017), as was the avoidance-related index (ρ = .430, p = .001), contrary to the initially anticipated negative direction. Since the items were not validated, no reverse-scoring was applied, and the sample was a convenience sample with uneven demographic representation, these findings must be interpreted cautiously. They do not establish causation or justify classifying individuals by attachment style.
Emotional contagion refers to the process through which people's emotions may be influenced by the emotional states and expressions of others. This study examined self-reported responses to stress in other people and explored their association with perceived stress. A quantitative, cross-sectional online questionnaire was completed between October 25 and 27, 2026. Of 33 submissions, 32 participants consented and were included in the emotional-response analysis; 31 had sufficient responses for the preliminary perceived-stress analysis. The questionnaire included 15 researcher-developed statements about responses to others' stress and 10 perceived-stress questions resembling the Perceived Stress Scale?10 (PSS-10). Descriptive results showed that 90.6% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they could sense stress in people around them, while 75.0% reported that stress in family, workplace, or educational settings affected their emotional well-being. An exploratory Spearman correlation indicated a positive association between the emotional-response composite and perceived-stress scores (rs = .526, p = .002, n = 31). This association must be interpreted cautiously because the emotional-response questionnaire was not validated and the exact perceived-stress instrument requires confirmation. Findings provide preliminary descriptive insight but do not establish causation.
Social media use among young people has been associated with body dissatisfaction due to exposure to hegemonic beauty standards. This study examined the effect of hegemonic beauty content on body dissatisfaction among Indonesian adults. A true experiment with a pretest-posttest control group design involved 40 participants (20 females and 20 males) aged 18–25 years. Repeated-measures ANOVA showed no significant difference in body dissatisfaction between the experimental and control groups (p = .335). The control group had a higher mean score (44.770) than the experimental group (31.681), although the difference was not statistically significant. These findings indicate that brief exposure to body diversity content did not significantly affect body dissatisfaction. This result may reflect limited exposure duration and participants’ prior experiences with beauty standards. Future research should examine longer exposure periods using naturalistic longitudinal designs that account for individual differences and cultural context in social media use and body image.
While existing literature recognises mentorship as an important strategy for leadership development, there is limited empirical understanding of how women experience and negotiate mentorship as they advance into school leadership in the South African context. Despite policy efforts to promote gender equity, women remain underrepresented in school leadership, and the role of mentorship in addressing this disparity remains insufficiently understood. This study explores mentorship as a relational mechanism through which women negotiate access, leadership identity, and social capital in their advancement into school leadership. An interpretive qualitative design, underpinned by a narrative phenomenological approach and informed by Social Capital Theory, was used to explore the experiences of six purposively selected women leaders from township schools in a single district in KwaZulu-Natal. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews and were analysed thematically. Participants reported that supportive mentoring relationships provided them with confidence, professional visibility, networking opportunities, leadership guidance, and encouragement to pursue leadership positions. Participants with limited access to mentorship described feelings of isolation, reduced access to leadership guidance, and fewer opportunities for professional development. They also reported seeking mentorship through external professional networks and women-centered spaces when support within their immediate school environments was limited. Some participants described mentoring relationships characterised by unequal power dynamics, limited trust, or inappropriate behaviour. Based on these accounts, the researchers interpret mentorship as an uneven, relational, and context-dependent mechanism through which women negotiate access to professional resources, leadership identity, and social capital. The findings suggest that mentorship can facilitate women's leadership development when relationships are supportive and trusting, but may also constrain agency when mentoring relationships reproduce hierarchical and gendered power relations. The study, therefore, extends understanding of mentorship by shifting attention from the mere availability of mentors to the relational, institutional, and power conditions that shape how mentorship is experienced and mobilised. Although limited by its small, context-specific sample, the study provides contextually grounded insights into mentorship and women's advancement into school leadership. It highlights the need for structured, responsive, and gender-sensitive mentoring opportunities.
Abstract Do citizens need to grow up in a democracy to value it? We examine how school education – democratic or authoritarian – shapes long-term support for democracy. Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment in the former German Democratic Republic, where rigid school entry rules and abrupt reforms after reunification created exogenous variation in exposure to socialist schooling, we show that an additional year of such education significantly reduced democratic support in adulthood. To test generalizability, we analyze harmonized survey data from 106 countries alongside new expert-coded measures of educational content and state effort. The results reveal that democratic attitudes are shaped not only by the negative imprint of authoritarian schooling but crucially by the positive imprint of democratic civic education, especially when democracies invest heavily in it. Our findings demonstrate that democracy must be learned to be valued, underscoring the central role of education in democratic consolidation and resilience.
Objective: This study investigates the common characteristics of countries with high happiness index scores using a cluster analysis of 20 nations. Design: The study is an ecological study where the unit of observation is the population in a country. Setting: Data were drawn from the World Happiness Report, World Bank, WHO, and World Population Review (2023–2025). Main outcome measures: The study focused on five variables: social support, GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, crude death rate, and health expenditure. Results: Results revealed that countries in higher-performing clusters exhibited consistently strong social support systems, moderate to high GDP per capita, high healthy life expectancy, moderate crude death rates, and substantial public health spending. Among these factors, social support emerged as the most influential determinant, aligning with recent literature emphasizing the psychological and societal benefits of strong interpersonal networks. GDP alone was not a sufficient predictor of happiness; countries with high economic output but lower investment in health and social infrastructure ranked lower in overall well-being. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that countries with high happiness cannot be characterized by economic prosperity alone. The cluster analysis showed that high happiness may coexist with different combinations of economic, social, and health conditions. The study therefore characterizes countries with high Happiness Index scores as heterogeneous rather than uniform.
In April 2026, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking access to psilocybin and ibogaine for the treatment of serious mental illness. This follows decades in which psychedelics had been vilified as a group of drugs entirely lacking in therapeutic potential, associated with counter-cultural groups such as hippies, and whose use was both criminalised and widely stigmatised. Our central questions are: How have the substances, practices, understandings and relationships that comprise psychedelic use developed, and shifted, over time? And how might we best understand the overall structure and dynamics of such changes? We argue that the recent psychedelic renaissance cannot be understood as the simple ‘discovery’ of a therapeutic potential that previously lay dormant in the substances themselves. It is better grasped as a part-process of longer-term informalisation processes, bound up with shifting balances of power between established and outsider groups and with the changing behavioural and emotional standards – the social canons – through which psychedelic use has become refigured. Drawing on the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias and relational work on substance use and health, we trace the shift in psychedelics from counter-cultural sacrament to therapy and technology of the self. Through dialogue with a multimodal, multi-source evidential base, we develop the concept of ‘pharmaceuticalisation from below’ to characterise both the contemporary uptake of psychedelics and the broader figurational dynamics this expresses.
Sports betting has expanded across sub-Saharan Africa, increasingly intersecting with young people’s aspirations, technological accessibility, and economic insecurity. Although awareness of gambling-related risks may influence young people’s decisions, recognising such risks does not necessarily lead to cessation of betting. This study explored how young bettors understood betting risks in Shibai Street, Buhongwa Ward, Mwanza, Tanzania. A qualitative cross-sectional study employing ethnographic methods was conducted between July and August 2025. Data were collected from 18 purposively selected active bettors aged 18-29 years through in-depth semi-structured interviews, non-participant observation, and informal conversations. Interviews were conducted in Kiswahili, audio-recorded, transcribed into English, and analysed thematically following Braun and Clarke’s approach. The findings were interpreted using Verstehen, strain, and rational choice perspectives. Participants identified financial loss, difficulty stopping, stress and mental distress, relationship conflict, theft, reduced attention to work or learning, reduced work-seeking, dishonesty, deepening poverty, and loss of personal possessions as important betting-related risks. However, awareness of these risks did not consistently result in withdrawal from betting. Some participants continued because betting provided hope, expectations of quick financial gains, peer influence, and a perceived opportunity to escape poverty. The study concludes that understanding betting risks among youth requires attention to the meanings attached to betting and the economic and social circumstances within which participation occurs. Risk education should therefore be complemented by livelihood opportunities, community support, counselling, and appropriate harm-prevention measures.
Background: Rural women in India are often confronted with situations that make it difficult for them to access formal mental health services such as inaccessibility, internalized stigma, believing that suffering is due to external causes and gender inequalities. These barriers delay receiving formal care for mental health and make these women resort to informal ways of coping such as community support and local faith healers. Methods: This study aimed to explore the informal coping strategies and beliefs around mental health among 100 rural women over the age of 18 years residing in Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh, India. Being a qualitative study, the method employed for the survey was focused group discussions and the participants were included through a convenience snowball sampling. The discussions were held in Hindi language for the ease of the participants and were recorded for analysis which was done through a thematic analysis approach. Results: The results highlighted six broad themes: (1) burden of responsibilities and emotional burnout, (2) physiological manifestations of psychological distress, (3) normalization of chronic stress, (4) psychological distress arising from marital conflict and gender-based adversity, (5) reliance on spiritual and informal coping strategies in place of formal mental healthcare, and (6) emotional suppression and silent tolerance. Conclusions: The findings suggest the urgent need to design culturally aligned psychotherapeutic interventions that focus on creating awareness through psychoeducation that could reduce stigma as well as helping rural women deal with their unmet mental health challenges.
The discussion on third gender rights today highlights a significant socio-legal transformation, tracing a path from historical respect through colonial criminalisation to current constitutional acknowledgement. This evolution signifies a growing recognition and validation of third gender identities within legal frameworks, demonstrating a societal shift towards inclusivity and acceptance, as well as addressing long-standing discrimination and marginalisation faced by these individuals. Despite constitutional promises, systemic discrimination, social exclusion and inadequate legal protections continue to deprive transgender persons of civil rights such as voting, marriage, property ownership and access to justice. The article concludes that genuine recognition of gender identity, beyond token legislation, is essential to secure equality and dignity for transgender communities in the contemporary era.
Introduction The purpose of this study was to explore how K-12 Equity Directors seek to build capacity in others for district equity work. Methods Using a sociotransformative constructivist approach, we interviewed 20 Equity Directors in two U.S. states. Results Results indicate the Equity Directors sought to build capacity in others for equity work through engaging in conversations intentionally, collaborating in authentic activity, working towards a sense of equity consciousness, and illuminating social location. Discussion The results may assist other school district office leaders who may or may not have someone designated as an Equity Director to build capacity in others beyond the district office to engage in equity work.
In recent years, retro-style outfits have continued to gain popularity on social media platforms. Clothing styles marked by earlier eras, such as Y2K millennium style, vintage outfits, and retro sportswear, have become widely popular among young people. This phenomenon raises a question worth exploring: why have young people developed such strong interest in “old clothes”? What role does social media play in the transformation of nostalgic emotions into consumption behavior? Taking 2018 to 2026 as the time window, this paper systematically reviews the literature on youth nostalgic consumption in social media environments and discusses it from three dimensions: conceptual definition, activation mechanism, and identity. The review preliminarily reveals the role of social media in the dissemination and diffusion of nostalgic content and also confirms that nostalgic consumption is an important path through which young people respond to identity anxiety and seek group belonging. However, existing studies still have three limitations. First, they lack a systematic explanation of how platform mechanisms promote the transformation of nostalgic emotions into consumption behavior. Second, they pay insufficient attention to how young people continuously construct identity through symbolic practices, community interaction, and consumption choices on social media. Third, the special mechanism of “non-experiential nostalgia” in the digital age has not been fully discussed. Future research may focus on constructing theoretical models that take social media as an intermediary variable and connect the logical path from emotion to behavior and then to identity.
Background Warship crews live and work for extended periods in confined spaces, separated from their families and exposed to high operational demands. While psychosocial risks in naval and maritime work are increasingly documented, little is known about how sailors collectively organize, regulate, and adapt their daily activity aboard combat vessels. To our knowledge, no psychological study has documented collective activity in situ aboard a French warship. Objective Document sailors’ professional practices, collective dynamics, and psychosocial aspects in situ during an eight-day embarkation aboard a French multi-mission frigate. Method This is a descriptive and qualitative study, of the experience report type, carried out in March 2026 during an eight-day embarkation aboard a French Navy European Multi-Mission Frigate taking part in a high-intensity exercise in the Atlantic. Data were collected through unstructured participant observation, from an observer-as-participant position. Inductive analysis drew on grounded theory and work psychology literature. Results Three mechanisms emerged. First, rank-based messes provided spaces for peer interaction, informal regulation, and the expression of tensions. Second, sailors used situational leeway to adapt their activity to operational constraints and develop practical solutions. Third, interactions between experienced and less experienced sailors supported the transmission of knowledge, practices, and norms, contributing to collective memory and professional continuity. Conclusion These findings illustrate how professional practices, collective dynamics, and psychosocial aspects are intertwined in sailors’ daily activity aboard a French warship. Informal collective spaces, opportunities to adapt work activity, and the transmission of the professional genre between experienced sailors and newcomers support professional activity.
Bullying remains a concern at SDN Sindangsono because teasing and name-calling occur in student interactions, while students’ understanding of the forms of bullying is still limited. This community service activity aimed to describe bullying prevention education through a participatory approach for third- and fourth-grade students. The activity involved 64 students, consisting of 34 third-grade and 30 fourth-grade students, and included an initial question-and-answer session, presentation of learning materials, an educational video, discussion, sharing session, written reflection, oral evaluation, and a joint commitment. Evaluation was conducted through the initial question-and-answer session and oral evaluation. At the beginning of the activity, students’ responses were more focused on physical bullying. Fifteen students (23.4%) voluntarily stated that they had engaged in actions they understood as bullying, while all participants stated that they had experienced feeling bullied, mainly through teasing and name-calling. After the activity, students’ responses began to include verbal, social, and social media-related forms of bullying, accompanied by reflective responses regarding peer interactions. All participants also took part in a joint commitment to prevent bullying. The activity indicated a broader understanding of bullying, the emergence of reflection, and student participation in bullying prevention.