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The purpose of this paper is to use SEM to explore the effects of enabling school structure (ESS) and academic optimism (AO) on school achievement (SA).

A sample of 58 urban schools, including 42 elementary schools and 16 middle schools in a southeastern district in the USA were included in this study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the effects of three exogenous predictor variables (ESS, elementary status, and socio-economic status (SES)) on a latent mediating variable (AO) and a latent dependent variable (academic achievement).

Findings confirm that three factors; collective efficacy, faculty trust in clients, and academic emphasis come together to create the general latent construct referred to as AO by Hoy et al. (2006). Findings also support the importance of ESS in establishing a culture of AO. Together ESS, AO, elementary school level, and SES explained 77 percent of the variance in SA, with AO having the most significant effect above and beyond the effects of SES.

This study was based on a sample of schools in the Southern portion of the USA. Findings may not be generalizable to other areas. The lack of availability of individual student achievement data prevented the use of hierarchical linear modeling.

Findings from this study point to the importance of administrators establishing flexible rules and regulations and engaging in a leadership style that is collaborative. It appears that ESS not only promotes the establishment of AO but contributes to increased SA and is likely to be critical for upper levels of schooling.

Reform efforts need to involve parents and community members. AO may provide an appropriate lens to further explore parent and community perceptions of reform efforts and relationships with administrators and teachers. ESS may assist in creating the structures necessary for increased parent and community involvement as well as increased perceptions of AO.

This study is one of only three studies known to explore the effects of ESS on AO and is one of the first known studies to explore these effects in a middle school setting.

This research aims to add to the literature on Academic Optimism, a composite measure composed of teacher perceptions of trust in students, academic press, and collective efficacy by exploring a similar set of constructs from the student perceptive. The relationships between student trust in teachers, student perceptions of academic press, and student identification with school were examined as well as how they were individually and collectively related to student achievement in the schools in an urban school district.

This study assessed the perceptions of students in 49 elementary, middle, and high schools in one urban district. The measures used included the Student Trust in Teachers Survey (Adams and Forsyth), the Identification with School Questionnaire (Voelkl), and an adaptation of Academic Press (Hoy, Hannum and Tschannen‐Moran). Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to explore whether these three observed variables would form a latent variable called Student Academic Optimism. Finally, the relationship of Academic Optimism to student achievement, controlling for SES, was examined using SEM.

Strong and significant relationships were found between all three of the observed variables. A CFA analysis confirmed that they formed a latent variable the authors called Student Academic Optimism. Student Academic Optimism had a significant direct effect on student achievement (b=0.73, p<0.01) while SES (percent of students eligible for the free and reduced lunch program) had a significant negative effect on student achievement (b=−0.37, p<0.01). Together student academic optimism and SES explained 67 percent of the variance in student achievement with student academic optimism making the largest contribution to the explanation.

The findings that Student Academic Optimism was unrelated to SES and that Student Academic Optimism has a significant effect on achievement over and above the effects of SES and student demographic characteristics leads the authors to consider the possibility that SES may not be as influential as once thought when other conditions of the school environment are taken into consideration.

This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by focusing on the perspectives of students and by linking the measures of three important dynamics within schools to form a new construct: Student Academic Optimism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between academic optimism (AO) and elementary reading achievement (RA).

Using correlation and hierarchical linear regression, the authors examined school‐level effects of AO on fifth grade reading achievement in 29 elementary schools in Alabama.

Correlational analysis revealed that AO was positively correlated with RA (r=0.78, p<0.01), as were all the components of AO, namely: collective efficacy (r=0.70, p<0.01); faculty trust in students and parents (r=0.83, p<0.01); and academic emphasis (r=0.58, p<0.01). Percent free and reduced lunch, which was a proxy for socio‐economic status (SES), was negatively correlated with all the variables in the study. Hierarchical linear regression revealed that academic optimism had a significant effect on RA (b=0.52, p<0.01) and accounted for approximately 18 per cent of the variance in reading achievement above the effects of SES.

Limitations include the small sample size of 29 schools and the fact that these schools were a part of a sample of convenience. Findings support the conceptualization that AO has a positive effect on RA.

While SES has been often seen as an insurmountable factor, this research suggests that the contextual conditions of trust, efficacy, and academic emphasis create an environment conducive for higher academic achievement, despite the level of poverty in the school.

The paper confirms prior studies that have found AO to be linked to achievement and further demonstrates the positive relationships between AO and RA in a sample of elementary schools.

The purpose of this study is to investigate employee trust in the leader as the underlying mechanism between transformational leadership and employees’ organizational identification and their continuous improvement efforts.

Survey data were collected from 282 employees, working in 8 different private and public sector organizations from the banking, higher education, telecommunications and health sectors in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses.

The results support the hypothesized relationships showing that trust in the leader partially mediates the relationship of transformational leadership with organizational identification and continuous improvement efforts.

This study relied upon cross-sectional data, which does not satisfy the conditions to establish causality.

The results of this study will help organizations and practitioners to understand the importance of trust between transformational leaders and followers, which ultimately results in higher organizational identification and continuous improvement.

Using the broader framework of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), this study contributes to the extant employee – organization relationship literature by proposing and testing trust in the leader as an underlying psychological mechanism that can explain the impact of transformational leadership on employees’ organizational identification and their continuous improvement efforts.

Rooted in adult fear, adult authority aims to protect and control youth (Gannon, 2008; Valentine, 1997). Continuously negotiating for freedom, youth search for adult-free public spaces and are therefore extremely attracted to social networking sites (boyd, 2007, 2014). However, a significant portion of youth now includes adult authorities within their Facebook networks (Madden et al., 2013). Thus, this study explores how youth navigate familial- and educational-adult authorities across social networking sites in relation to their local peer culture.

Through semi-structured interviews, including youth-centered and participant-driven social media tours, 82 youth from the Northeast region of the United States of America (9–17 years of age; 43 females and 39 males) shared their lived experiences and perspectives about social media during the summer of 2013.

In their everyday lives, youth are subjected to the normative expectations emerging from peer culture, school, and family life. Within these different and at times conflicting normative schemas, youth’s social media use is subject to adult authority. In response, youth develop intricate ways to navigate adult authority across social networking sites.

Adult fear is powerful, but fragile to youth’s interpretation; networked publics are now regulated and youth’s ability to navigate then is based on their social location; and youth’s social media use must be contextualized to be holistically understood.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the catalytic impact of perceptions of politics in organizations on the relationship between perceived unfairness and deviant behavior at work.

To test the proposed research model, the authors collected field data in a public sector university located in Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan. A two-wave questionnaire was distributed to 400 employees. In the first wave, the questionnaire was used to collect data on participants’ perceptions of perceived injustice and organizational politics. After two weeks, the second wave of data collection was conducted by sending another questionnaire to the same respondents to collect data on their organizational and interpersonal deviance.

Empirical findings revealed that perceived interactional injustice results in interpersonal deviance, and perceived distributive and procedural injustice results in organizational deviance. Moreover, the direct relationship between perceived injustice and deviant behaviors was stronger when the perception of politics factor was high.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to test the detrimental effect of perception of politics on deviance in a public organization in Pakistan.

This bibliography of multidisciplinary periodical literature focuses on white supremacy ideologies and on several groups that espouse white supremacy, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups like Aryan Nations and The Order, and skinheads. In compiling both scholarly and popular periodical material, the authors were surprised by the relatively low number of recent scholarly articles in the social sciences literature. Nevertheless, some important scholarly sources are cited. Also, although there is voluminous published material covering racism, the authors included only material judged specifically related to white supremacy, a sometimes difficult distinction because the roots of racism and current white supremacist thought are so intertwined.