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Aim and Background: Art therapy has been known as an innovative way of growth and development of human’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Through the intricate process of painting and drawing, a child would be able to engage discrete elements of his/her experiences to create the totality of a meaningful work. Within this productive mechanism, a child, in format of artwork, is representing something beyond a simple work which is his/her attempts to display a part of his/her ego as well as how he/she thinks feels, and sees. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of painting therapy on of self-esteem and self-efficacy among unaccompanied children of 5-12 years old in Karaj City, Iran. Methods and Materials: This was a semi-experimental study with pretest/posttest method and control group. The sample was 15 boys and 15 girls at the age of 5-12 years who were randomly selected from unsupervised children at Karaj Welfare. Children and adolescents’ self-efficacy questionnaire (SEQ-C), Coopersmith children and adolescents’ self-esteem questionnaire, and the projection painting were utilized as evaluation tools. In order to analyze the data and test the hypothesis, one-way univariate analysis of covariance, and the average evaluation of two independent groups for differential grading were used. Findings: The intervention in research affected the enhancement of unaccompanied children’s general self-esteem, social self-esteem, and self-esteem total score as well as emotional, social, and general self-efficacy. Conclusions: Painting therapy as a psychological intervention could be used as effective strategy to increase self-esteem and self-efficacy in child advocacy centers.

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Aim and Background: In the last few years, academic engagement has been known as the academic quality indicator and one of the goals of higher education, whose underlying factors must be identified. Therefore, the aim of this study was causal modeling of students' academic engagement based on academic self-efficacy and help-seeking with the mediation of academic buoyancy. Methods and Materials: This study was a correlational research based on structural equation modeling (SEM). The statistical population was all undergraduate students of Esfarayen Higher Education Complex, Esfarayen, Iran, in 2016-2017 academic year. The sample included 304 students (253 boys, 51 girls) who were selected using random cluster sampling. Academic Engagement Scale (Fredricks et al.), Academic Buoyancy Scale (Dehghanizadeh and Hosseinchari), Academic Self-efficacy Scale (Owen and Froman), and Academic Help-Seeking Scale (Ryan and Pintrich) were used to measure the intended variables. Findings: Academic self-efficacy and academic help-seeking had a direct, positive, and significant effect on academic engagement. Moreover, they had indirect, positive, and significant effect on academic engagement through academic buoyancy. Academic buoyancy could predict the student academic engagement positively. Overall, the finding suggested that academic buoyancy had a mediating role in the relationship between academic self-efficacy, academic help-seeking, and academic engagement. Conclusions: Enhancing self-efficacy and help-seeking in students helps them overcome their educational problems, and thus increases their academic buoyancy. These factors together provide the conditions for academic engagement.