School Psychology International

The recognized importance of acquiring and applying the perspectives of children and youth about conditions affecting their lives has significantly increased through growing support for children's rights during the last period of the 20th century. This article presents an overview of an evolving program of surveying the judgements of children and significant adults in their lives regarding the importance and existence of children's rights in homes and schools. During the last 12 years this project has been conducted in 23 nations representing quite diverse conditions. The history, purposes, design, process and general all-country composite findings for the project are provided. Cross-country patterns are identified for some topics judged to be particularly important for school psychologists. Evidence that the school environment, in general, appears to be a place of harsher and less supportive treatment than the home is considered. The article concludes with rationale and plans for refining and expanding this project so that the voices of children will be heard through a systematic and credible program of research.

In the introduction to this article, a brief outline of this small mid-European country and young democracy is given. Also, Children's Parliament is described, as an example of cooperation of the state and of the non-governmental organizations in the field of children's rights. In the main section, main findings of the CrossCultural Study on the Rights of the Child are presented. In the years 1991 to 1992, we interviewed a nationally representative sample of children aged 12-14 years and 16-18 years, their teachers and school counsellors. We found the survey instruments to be reliable and age-sensitive. WVhile developmental differences regarding students are well documented, the adults in our sample did not follow the changes accordingly-middle school students are seen as being just as much 'children' as the elementary school students. A number of other findings are also discussed. In the years 1994 to 1995 we carried out a new pilot study where we tested several possible improvements of the survey instrument. Some of them are used in the questionnaires that are being used in the 2000-2001 survey sweep.

This article analyses young Lithuanian students' (aged 12-14) perceptions of the importance and existence of their rights at home and at school. The analysis includes a comparison of rights existence with rights importance, a comparison between the importance and existence of the various rights in both the home and school setting and a comparison between the findings in Lithuania with those for the composite of the other 20 countries participating in the cross-national research. The research revealed an exceptionally problematic situation for children's rights implementation in Lithuanian schools. Greatest discrepancies between rights' existence and importance in the school are reported by females and students of parents with high levels of education. The rights to self-determination, dissociation when one needs, freedom and respect for thoughts and opinions, protection from hurting one's feelings, living independently when one is ready were estimated by Lithuanian students as the most insufficiently realized for a child in the school. Respect for a child's personality, opinion and feelings and his/her autonomy are the main problems children experience in Lithuania and various other countries as well.

The present study analyses young Portuguese students' perceptions of their rights at school and at home. The sample consisted of 294 male and female students, in Year 7 to Year 9, from several regions in the country. The assessment instrument used was the 'Children's Rights Scale' (Hart, 1993; Hart et al., 1996) and results were related to a number of other questions regarding the following independent variables: (1) school variables (school year, school achievement, teacher's support, violence at school); (2) family variables (parental authority, family cohesion, parents' education); (3) personal variables (age, gender, professional interests). Significant relations were found between the students' perceptions of their rights and these independent variables. In general, Portuguese students declare that their rights exist and are very important. Students who have a greater degree of personal limitations, or who live in worse school or family contexts, are the ones who indicate less importance and perceive less existence of rights at school and at home. The study gives directions to efforts to strengthen projects for the promotion of students' rights by including training programs for teachers and parents, in a close net connection among school, family and significant social agents.

A representative sample of 8th and 9th Grade Icelandic students responded to the questionnaire on children's rights employed in the cross-national ISPA survey, following full parental consultation. The results showed the Icelandic children considered that rights were important but were more likely to be taken into account at home than at school. Nevertheless, the issue of children's rights was shown to be taken more seriously in Iceland than in any other surveyed country, particularly in schools. These findings are seen to be of potential value with regard to the implementation in Iceland of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Research on the perceptions of 12-15 year old Danish students regarding the importance and existence of children's rights in homes and schools was conducted during 1993. The population sampled, from two Danish municipalities, is sufficiently representative of the Danish youth population of this age at that period to give somewhat general value to findings. Overall, the results indicate that Danish childrenjudge the importance of rights in both the home and school and the level of existence or support for those rights in the home to be high, and in all these cases their ratings average above those of the average for the composite of the other countries involved in similar research. However, the existence ofrights in the school on the average was judged not only to be below the level of importance given to them, the usual finding across countries, but also to generally be below the average level of existence found for the all-countries composite, a surprising finding. Specific rights topics of concern to Danish children are identified and preliminary interpretations are provided. An historical context for Denmark and its schools is presented to bring additional meaning to findings.

In this study, 519 early adolescents rated the importance and existence of 40 rights, based on the themes of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in their homes and public schools. From a cross-national perspective, Australian students were similar to stu-dents from a majority of countries in the priority they gave to survival and development, health and medical care and emotional and family support in the home setting. These rights were also ranked highly in terms of their existence in Australian homes. Rights emerging as most important in the school arena focused on quality of education, educational opportunities, quality of social relationships and autonomy in choosing social relationships. Australian students were most like students from Denmark, Belgium and the USSR in their stronger emphasis on the school peer context as an arena in which to establish rights to freedom of association and expression. Discrepancies between ratings of importance and ratings of existence revealed that for between 25 percent and 28 percent of the sample, students felt that their rights to advocacy, privacy and fair treatment received little or no support in schools. The results of the survey make a significant contribution to understanding the views of Australian adolescents as a first step to their inclusion, in a consultative manner, in educational programs regarding rights for children. They may also aid school psychologists and teachers in their endeavours to identify ways in which school environments can be enhanced to support the psychological, as well as educational, growth of students.