Gifted boys’ perceptions of their academic underachievement

We examined how six gifted boys perceived the onset and development of their academic underachievement and what they identified as contributing aspects. Across the six boys’ experiences, a similar pattern of onset and development of academic underachievement emerged. The boys discussed a lack of academic challenge, investment in hobbies, issues with time management and self-regulation, family transitions, and peer relations as contributing to their academic underachievement. These aspects influenced the boys’ value beliefs (e.g., not caring about grades) or maladaptive beliefs about themselves (e.g., lower self-worth), which contributed to disengagement and underachievement according to students.

Housing and family trajectories of young adults in five countries: Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Serbia: Sequence analysis of European social survey data

The aim of this paper is to analyse housing and family transitions among the young and young adults in five countries: Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Serbia, representing the Social-democratic, Conservative, Liberal, Mediterranean and (SEE) Post-socialist models of welfare regimes. For the purposes of our analysis, we used round 9 of European Social Survey data. The focus of our analysis was on the rotating module ?Timing of life? which aims to capture the views of European citizens about their life courses and their strategies to plan their own lives, as well as measures the timing of key life events. Variables from this module were used to construct life trajectories of respondents which are statistically modelled as sequences. Interpretation of the obtained results leads to two important conclusions. First, the differences in the types of family transitions of young people between countries are significant. Second, these differences can be explained both by individual characteristics and by the social and cultural context that determines the horizon of opportunities for young people. Even after controlling the effects of individual characteristics such as gender, age, education, parental education, religious affiliation, statistical differences between countries persist, indicating that a significant part of variability cannot be explained on an individual-level but exclusively by social and institutional context.

Old Bonds, New Ties: Contextualizing Family Transitions in Re-partnerships, Remarriage and Stepfamilies in Asia

The continued emphasis on a decontextualized nuclear family in Asia has often obscured experiences of re-partnered individuals and stepfamilies, wherein transitions including couple dissolution and remarriage or cohabitation have had particular implications for family well-being and social mobility. The eight papers in this special issue expand scholarship beyond acknowledging the increasing prevalence of re-partnership and stepfamilies seeking to facilitate cross-cultural comparisons within the region, and between Asia and the West where notable advancements have been made in theorising diverse family processes. The pertinence of extended family ties and the cultural pressures of collectivism advance shared perspectives of re-partnership and stepfamily formation across East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. At the same time, drawing from quantitative and qualitative methodologies, these papers direct attention to the heterogeneity in re-partnership pathways where broader social categories such as class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and historicity differentially intersect across national and socio-political contexts.