As a doctoral student in Educational Psychology-Applied Developmental Science, I wrote new APA Division 15 Policy Brief and am now sharing it as a video blog.
I argue that racial disproportionality in school discipline in the U.S. has contributed to gaps in outcomes—including lower academic achievement, risk of drop-out, and involvement in the juvenile justice system.
In this video, I provides recommendations for policy and practice, including providing professional development for all educators in race, bias, and equity.
Education is a fundamental right. However, the public school system continues to fall short in delivering on its promise to provide an equal education to all students. One of the ways in which this happens is through racial disproportionality in school discipline.
While causes of the discipline gap are complex, researchers have found implicit bias, differential selection and processing, and negative racial stereotypes are greatly to blame:
Differential Selection and Processing: There is evidence that students of color are more likely to be “selected” for harsher discipline, despite similar behaviors exhibited by classmates.
Implicit Bias: Infractions that require subjective instead of objective interpretation (e.g., disrespect versus drug possession) account for a great deal of the discipline gap, as they allow implicit bias to drive decision-making.
Negative Racial Stereotypes: Researchers found that behaviors cited most commonly for Black girls’ discipline referrals aligned with racial stereotypes of behavior, such as being too loud or having a bad attitude.
Scholars argue that the goal of equitable education for all students cannot be realized while racial disparities in school discipline persist, including not only who gets chosen for discipline, but also the harshness of that discipline. Read more from this research brief online.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Theresa Pfister is a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology – Applied Developmental Science from Friendship, Wisconsin, studying adolescence, the importance of relationships, and equity. An educator first and foremost, she believes deeply in the importance of working in partnership and utilizing research as a tool of empowerment. Before coming to the University of Virginia, Theresa was a teacher-trainer with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, a 4th grade teacher in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and a College Advisor at SEO Scholars in Manhattan.
Have you ever found yourself at a gathering fumbling to find the words to describe your academic work to family and friends? Do you find it difficult to communicate your scholarship to, and build partnerships with, non-researcher audiences? Are you an early career or seasoned researcher interested in disseminating research to practitioners, policymakers, or community members but struggling to find the best way to do so? Or are you a senior researcher mentoring a trainee through this process?
If your answer to any of these questions is “YES!”, then read on! Writing research briefs is an instrumental part of professional development but, for many researchers, not a formal aspect of training. Drawing on our experience writing research briefs, here are some tips for the challenging, but rewarding, process of translating your research into a brief.
Research briefs deliver the essence of research findings in a relatable manner to a non-researcher audience. Briefs can
Broaden your research’s impact by disseminating findings to non-researcher audiences, including communities historically marginalized in research
Strengthen university-community partnerships and relationships by transparently communicating with partners
Facilitate future partnerships and employment through increased visibility
What Exactly IS a Research Brief?
A research brief is a concise, non-technical summary of the key takeaways from a research study. Briefs communicate research insights to the public, thereby translating research and evidence-based practices into real-world settings.
The focus of a brief varies depending on the intended audience. Provide explicit recommendations for practice if you want to reach a practitioner audience. Explore policy and infrastructure needs when writing for a policymaker audience.
Plan to share briefs in diverse settings. Share briefs with research partners (participating districts, schools, teachers), professional networks (at conference presentations), and broader audiences (on personal websites).
Lead researchers on our research team are part of a statewide partnership to support the dissemination of the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework. This partnership involves researchers and representatives from the Maryland Department of Education, a large behavioral health organization, and all school districts within the state. Researchers regularly write and share briefs with the statewide group, taking into account evolving needs and interests. Check out some of the briefs here.
Briefs Should Be…
Brief. Condensing a full-length manuscript into a two-page document is challenging. But doing so helps distill the study’s real-world implications and identify steps for future work. Two pages is optimal as it can be easily shared as a one-pager when printed.
Accessible. Graduate-level coursework in statistics should not be required to understand a brief. The usual audience for briefs will not have the time or energy to absorb methodological details or nuanced theory. Write as if you were presenting to a family member or your favorite high school teacher.
Visually appealing. A visual representation of an idea will capture attention better than text and help with brevity. Your paper likely already has some type of visual (for example, a logic model) that you can tweak. If not, pull from your visual-making skills you have already honed when creating posters and conference presentations! This process may have you re-thinking how you visually present your research, even in peer-reviewed publications.
A team effort. Individuals bring diverse skills and strengths to the research team. The study’s lead author may be able to articulate results, but a co-author may have the vision to creatively illustrate these findings in a figure. Make use of each member’s skills by making brief-writing an iterative, team effort.
Tailored to your audience.If you are developing a brief for a specific audience, ensure that key takeaways and recommendations are relevant and actionable. In some cases, you may have a more technical audience to whom you may present the data more formally. In our own experience, district partners have sometimes asked for more numbers and statistics.
Building Expertise with Brief Writing
Training in doctoral programs, which often encourages lengthy, detail-oriented writing, runs counter to the skills inherent in writing research briefs. While certain programs offer training for writing for non-academic audiences, we advocate for a greater focus on this skill during graduate training. All of the post-doctoral authors of this blog got their first exposure to writing research briefs on this research team. Inspired by our own on-the-job training, we provide the following recommendations for mentors:
Frame writing the brief as an opportunity. Briefs may feel tangential to the graduate student research mission and challenging to existing skillsets. Thus, the process should be framed as an opportunity to develop an integral set of skills to advance professional development. This will help with motivation as well as execution.
Provide a template for the brief that can be easily tweaked and tailored, so that graduate students have a model for the finished product, minimizing formatting issues. Publisher and Word have visually appealing templates for flyers that can be easily populated and organizations that publish briefs may provide templates and layouts.
Know your audience and their interest in the work. The audience should be well-defined (for practitioners, policy makers, or other researchers) and their perspective and interests well-understood. Although knowledge of the audience could come from prior work experience, direct communication with the audience is desirable to gain a firm grasp on their lived experience. If direct interaction is not feasible, mentors should “think aloud” to mentees about which details, words, and images would be most effective and appealing for this audience.
Early scaffolding should be followed by continued support. After being a co-author on a brief, a graduate student can transition to writing their own brief. They may still need support to complete this task autonomously, with continued feedback from mentors and co-authors.
Provide graduate students with targeted experiences and formal training opportunities to facilitate proficiency and efficacy in brief-writing. This might include:
University-based or paid workshops for students and early career faculty focused on writing for non-academic audiences
Opportunities to interface directly with practitioners
Concluding Thoughts
Writing research briefs is a key translational activity for educational researchers, but for many, requires skills not cultivated in formal training. Our research team has embarked on the journey of developing and sharing research briefs regularly over the past few years. This is an evolving and rewarding process for all of us. We hope this post has provided some helpful information as you continue your journey to be brief!
*Note: Authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to the preparation of this post.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bios:
Summer S. Braun is a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will be joining the Psychology Department at the University of Alabama as an Assistant Professor.
Daniel A. Camacho is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development.
Chelsea A.K. Duran is a postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will be starting a position with the University of Minnesota in the summer of 2021.
Lora J. Henderson is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and postdoctoral research associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. She will soon be starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University.
Elise T. Pas is an Associate Scientist (research faculty) at the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In September 2021, Youth-Nex hosted a virtual panel with some of the authors of this report. You can view this panel discussion online.
Highlights:
Over the past decade, there have been remarkable changes in the social, political, and legal status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, especially in the United States.
There are over 11 million LGBT individuals in the U.S., but many data collection efforts lack measures that capture the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity.
To address these and other issues, I co-edited a new report that identifies the need for heightened attention to the social and structural inequities that exist for LGBTQI+ people and argues for new research on the full range of sexual and gender diversity.
In the fall of 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a landmark report on the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer, intersex (e.g., persons with differences of sexual development), and other sexual and gender diverse people (LGBTQI+). The study updates and considerably expands a 2011 National Academies’ report on the health of LGBT people by also examining life experiences in multiple domains, such as law, education, public policy, and employment.
In a recent opinion piece for JAMA Pediatrics, my colleague and I shared the report’s review of the current state of knowledge on children and youths in several areas and offer some considerations on these subjects for pediatricians and other healthcare providers who work with children and youth. I highlight here a few areas of focus that may be of interest to educators, developmental psychologists, and other researchers.
Demography
Demographic data on sexual orientation and gender identity for people younger than 18 years remain sparse, since many data collection instruments still fail to assess these in pediatric populations. However, surveys that do collect this information show a consistent pattern of increasing disclosure of sexual orientation and gender identity (coming out) by adolescents over time. For example, findings from 10 US states using the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System show significant increases in adolescents (ages 14-18 years) identifying as nonheterosexual (lesbian, gay, bisexual, other, or questioning) over time (ie, 7.3% in 2009 and 14.3%in 2017). This change reflects greater affirmation of minority sexual and gender identities by younger people. This is happening in a context of growing societal acceptance of sexual and gender diverse individuals that has been characterized by increased visibility of sexual and gender diverse populations, more positive media coverage, improved legal protections, and more supportive school policies.
Education
By reinforcing societal expectations of sexual and gender normativity in behavior and appearance, schools play vital roles in the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children and youths. Educational environments that are not inclusive, supportive, and protective of sexual and gender diverse students expose them to stigma, violence, abuse and other mistreatment that may promote negative academic outcomes, such as delinquency, lower academic achievement, and lower high school graduation rates. For example, a study matching 900 LGBTQ students with a comparison group of heterosexual youths found a higher rate of school suspensions among LGBTQ students that were not explained by punishable behavior at school. In contrast, schools that offer supportive policies and practices, training for teachers and other school personnel, and support for gender-sexuality alliances (sometimes called gay-straight alliances, or simply GSAs) have been shown to have less bullying. In these schools, LGBTQ students report feeling safer and having higher self-esteem, fewer mental health problems, less substance use, and less suicidal ideation.
Health
Consistent with earlier studies, recent research on the physical health of LGBTQI children and youth reveals their earlier initiation and higher prevalence rates of cigarette smoking, use of alcohol and other substances, as well as higher risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. There has been a significant increase in research and knowledge of mental health over recent years. These data extend earlier findings of significant disparities in depression and suicidality, demonstrating higher rates of anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and suicide attempts compared with heterosexual youths. In addition, there is now evidence that mental health disparities in adolescence can persist into adulthood, increasing the risk of LGBTQI adults for mood, anxiety, and eating disorders.
Final Thoughts
The current report underscores the urgent need to integrate measures of sexual and gender diversity into major public and private survey instruments. The report also emphasizes that while acronyms such as LGBTQI are used to describe this population, LGBTQI people actually have many other identities as well, and they are more diverse than this acronym suggests. I hope that our report will deepen understanding of the experiences of these youth and help to support constructive discussions among LGBTQI youngsters and their family members.
To read the full report and highlights from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, please see Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations. Note that the report can be downloaded free of charge from the National Academies Press website.
References
Patterson CJ, Sepúlveda M-J, White J, eds; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations. The National Academies Press; 2020. doi:10.17226/25877
Sepúlveda M, Patterson CJ. LGBTQI Youths Today—New Knowledge, Better Understanding. JAMA Pediatrics. Published online May 24, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.0893
Youth-Nex also hosted a virtual panel discussion on this topic on September 17th, 2021. The video from this panel is now available online. You can also download a copy of the slide deck (PDF).
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Charlotte J. Patterson is a Professor in the UVA Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on the psychology of sexual orientation, with an emphasis on sexual orientation, human development, and family lives. In the context of her research, Patterson has worked with children, adolescents, couples, and families; she is best known for her studies of child development in the context of lesbian- and gay-parented families.
In the spring of 2016, Zyahna Bryant, a 15-year old high school student at the time, wrote a petition to City Council calling for the removal of the Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee and the renaming of Market Street Park (then still named Lee Park) in downtown Charlottesville. Although the park has changed name twice (first to Emancipation Park, and then to its current name, Market Street Park), the statue remains in place despite calls for and multiple attempts at its removal.
In addition to being home to the statue, Market Street Park was the main site of the 2017 Unite the Right rally where members of white supremacist and affiliated groups gathered to protest the statue’s removal. At the time, this was one of the largest and most violent U.S. gatherings in decades.
In April 2021, the Supreme Court of Virginia issued an opinion to reverse previous circuit court rulings that had prevented the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue. As the City of Charlottesville starts a process to act on the monument removal, Youth-Nex is revisiting new research findings about adolescents’ perceptions of the Unite the Right rally that occurred in their own town, during the summer of their middle school years.
Dr. Joanna Williams, a Youth-Nex faculty affiliate, was interviewed by Kalee De France and the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) to explain this unique and important research of how young adolescents were making sense of the events that unfolded within their community.
Question: What, in your opinion, is the main takeaway of the article?
Williams: I’ll start by saying there’s like a lot of context to this paper. All of the authors were living in Charlottesville in 2017 when the Unite the Right rally happened. We were about to start year two of a mixed-methods project that was focused on investigating diversity and social relationships in early adolescence. The Unite the Right rally happened in August of 2017, about two weeks before the school year started and, because of the focus of our project, we decided to ask students about their understanding of what had happened.
One of the key takeaways is that we should expect heterogeneity in how youth process events like this. There was a lot of heterogeneity in how kids interpreted and were responding to the Rally. One group of students said things along the lines of “Yeah, I know what happened, but it’s not really on my radar.” A second group knew a lot of the details of what happened but didn’t feel personally impacted – they sounded like news reporters in their accounts.
Another group of students had spent a lot of time processing and talking about what happened. And for some of them, their processing led to disillusionment, like “I can’t believe that stuff like this still happens” or “I thought we were beyond racism”.
There was a fourth group who were feeling, either at the time or a few months later, a sense of fear and vigilance. They said things along the lines of “We know why the KKK was here, and I’m Black. And I know that they were here because of people like me”. These students shared feelings of anger, fear, or just general concern. And, finally, there was a smaller subset of students who were sort of dismissive—they felt like people were overreacting to the situation. They said things like “I’m embarrassed to live in Charlottesville because we’re getting so much attention because of things like this”
The second type of heterogeneity that we saw was in relation to who belonged to these groups. On one hand, the group of students who expressed fear and vigilance were all students of color and most identified as Black. On the other hand, there were also many Black and other students of color who did not express any personal stress or concern, but there were White students in this group as well. White students made up the bulk of students who sounded like reporters or who expressed disillusionment or sympathy. The small group of dismissive students all identified as White.
It’s important to make sense of this heterogeneity in the context of what we know about young adolescents: they’re making meaning of important and abstract concepts, like racism and white supremacy while also trying to make sense of their own identities.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
By Ariana Gueranmayeh & Annabell Lee, University of Virginia students
This blog post is the fourth in a Media & Black Adolescents Series by youth analyzing movies that reflect the experiences and identity development of Black adolescents. For more posts, please visit our blog. Special thanks to Dr. Valerie Adams-Bass for her support of this series and the youth in her classes.
Highlights:
Undergraduate students taking a “Media Socialization, Racial Stereotypes and Black Adolescent Identity” college course were asked to critique movies and television series, analyzing the media content and applying theory or research.
This Media & Black Adolescents Series reflects on a spectrum of experiences for Black adolescents that are grounded in racial and media socialization reflected in the movies. These blogs address racial stereotypes as they relate to contemporary social issues and the identity development experiences of Black youth.
For this fourth of five posts in the series, the two youth writers review “Moonlight,” a coming-of-age film that follows the life of Chiron who is navigating his complicated identity as both a Black and gay man from growing up in Miami into adulthood.
For parents or educators who may choose to use this movie as a teaching/learning tool, here are some possible discussion questions:
What impact, if any, does the setting of the film (mainly in Miami and briefly in Atlanta) have on the storyline? In other words, if this were set elsewhere, like a small town for example, in what ways would the movie differ?
Would Moonlight have received the same praise and recognition for its new and daring storyline if it were released a decade or two earlier? What impact does the political climate in the United States have on conversations about this film?
What are some of the ways in which this movie combats stereotypes?
Are there any characters, scenes, or themes that you believe play into stereotypes? What role/purpose do you think these stereotypes play in this movie if any?
The movie Moonlight is a 2016 coming-of-age film that follows the life of a young Black man named Chiron who grew up in Miami, Florida. The film follows three chapters of Chiron’s life (Little, Chiron, and Black) that chronicles his childhood, teenage years, and adulthood. Moonlight offers a contemporary and emotional take on many realities that represent Black American life. Specifically, it shows society’s stereotypical expectations of Black men and the subsequent damage that has been done to them. Chiron’s story is told through breathtaking cinematography and emotionally rich score, capturing scenes that are both moody and dark, yet lit with fluorescent pastels that reflect Miami perfectly (Aguirre, 2016).
Each of the three chapters in the film brilliantly captures Chiron’s daily life and its complexities. Moonlight “undoes our expectations as viewers” as it centers around Chiron who we meet as a quiet young boy and just beginning to explore his gay Black masculinity (Als, 2016). He yearns to escape his home life where his mother has fallen to a drug addiction, leaving a void in his life that of Juan, a dope dealer, and his soft-spoken partner Teressa fill. Chiron finds solace when he shares an intimate moment with his friend Kevin, taking a step into unexplored waters. This moment is pivotal and leaves a mark on him in the decade that follows until he reconnects with Kevin in his adult life. Moonlight breaks the stereotypical boundaries media has created for Black characters, especially that of a young Black man, and reintroduces humanity. Chiron is an exemplary character who demonstrates several boundary-breaking characteristics and is an outstanding character to focus this discussion around. The themes of sexual identity, masculinity, and identity development will be explored through the lens of Chiron’s character.
One question I found myself asking was “Why does this movie feel different?” I believe that it was different on many levels. On an individual level it made me realize my own expectations of “Blackness,” and how this movie disrupted that. I recognize the idea of “Blackness” as a superficial representation that has been perpetuated by the media. According to Adams (2011): Blackness is defined as a superficial symbolic representations of cultural preferences, norms, expression, dress, language, mannerism and communication styles that are treated as representations of African American cultural and ethnic identities that have been defined by mainstream society and media.
This movie also feels different on a normative level, as movies typically don’t go against cultural stereotypes, rather, they perpetuate them. From a young age we are repeatedly shown images from the media that create this superficial image of what it is to be Black.
As Tynes and Ward say in their 2009 paper, “The Role of Media Use in African Americans’ Psychosocial Development,” the gradual exposure to stereotypes portrayed in the media causes us to take these representations and see them as reality. This is known as cultivation theory (Tynes and Ward, 2009). The implications of this for African Americans is especially dangerous as the media has chosen to portray them as one-dimensional characters reduced to either comic relief or the tough gangster, cops or robbers. This covert racism against Black people has primed viewers to have these expectations about the characterizations of Black characters.
-Annabell Lee, a 4th year student at the University of Virginia originally from McLean, VA.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Ariana Gueranmayeh is currently a third-year student at the University of Virginia originally from Richmond, Virginia. At UVA, she is studying Youth and Social Innovation with a minor in Public Policy and Leadership. Ariana is aspiring to use her academic pathway at UVA to lay the foundation for the work she hopes to do in our nation’s public schools. It is her hope that she can spearhead meaningful and lasting education reform that will positively impact our students. In her free time, Ariana enjoys hiking, cycling, and photography.
Author Bio: Annabell Lee is a fourth-year student at the University of Virginia majoring in Media Studies and Psychology, originally from McLean Virginia. She is interested in the effect of media on psychology and vice versa. In her free time she enjoys reading, writing, and roller skating.
By Anya Pfeiffer, Kennedy Eagle, Olivia Burke, Kate Price, & Alexis Allen
Highlights:
Youth Action Lab (YAL) helps young people develop social science research skills to transform their lives and communities.
YAL uses a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework to engage youth as researchers who systematically explore community issues they care about.
In this article, undergraduates serving as mentors in the YAL reflect on their experiences working with local high schoolers to design research studies, gather and analyze data, and take action to address the issues they explored.
Source: Students participating in YAL created this video to explain the YPAR framework.
As Youth and Social Innovation (YSI) majors, we joined Youth Action Lab (YAL) as our community-engaged project for the YSI capstone class, an accumulating applied course required for all seniors in the YSI major. The goal of YAL is to equip young people with research skills to transform their lives and communities.
Youth
Participatory Action Research
In YAL, we used
a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework where youth become
researchers, systematically exploring issues that impact their schools and
communities. Building on their lived experiences and expertise, our high school
students develop research questions, design social science studies, gather and
analyze data, and then take action to address the issues they explore. YAL uses
a mentor-led approach, where we, as undergraduates at the University of
Virginia, teach a YPAR curriculum through interactive lessons tailored to meet
each group’s needs and objectives. By building community and promoting equity
and inclusion, YAL empowers youth through research and collaboration.
Tackling
Virtual Learning
One of our
first tasks for YAL was researching best practices for virtual learning. Some strategies
we found helpful were using digital collaboration tools and providing
opportunities for flexibility and student choice. Collaboration tools (such as using
breakout rooms and Padlet) allowed students to work together in smaller groups
and participate in interactive experiences.
Allowing
students to co-construct our lessons by asking what they’d like to learn or how
we could support their project also created a more engaged learning
environment. Sometimes, this looked like just showing up to listen and provide
a space to discuss current events instead of a lesson. Most importantly, we
learned to make a plan but be open to adjusting — extending a meaningful activity
or discussion is much more important than doing scheduled activities.
YPAR in
Action
We applied our
research on virtual learning as we started working with two high school student
groups, Charlottesville City Youth Council and Albemarle High School Black
Student Union. Throughout the year, our team meets with each group biweekly
to help guide them through lessons that support the research process.
Youth
Council (YC) decided to
explore why some students attend private middle schools instead of Walker and
Buford but then return to Charlottesville City Schools for high school. Here are
some highlights from their research project:
The
students created a survey to ask local high school students about their middle
school experiences and perceptions of different schools. The survey received
over 70 responses.
YC is
now in the process of interviewing adult stakeholders including parents and
school board members. Conducting a mixed methods research project has allowed
them gain experience with surveys and interviews and engage with different
community stakeholders.
By
the end of the year, YC will present their research findings to City Council
and/or the Charlottesville City School Board. YC hopes their research will push
the City to implement more programming to address the stigma around public
middle schools.
Our team of
facilitators have loved working with this group. They are wise beyond their
years and show a high-level understanding of societal issues including classism
and racism which they are mindful of in their research.
Black
Student Union (BSU) is
a student organization focused on sharing and supporting the culture and
experiences of Black students at Albemarle High School. During our first
meetings, BSU identified several issues at their school and decided to examine the
lack of racial/ethnic diversity in Dual Enrollment (DE) and Advanced Placement
(AP) classes. Since most BSU students have experienced being one of few Black
students in higher-level classes, they had a personal connection to the issue. Here
are some highlights from their research project:
With
support from their principal, BSU recently sent surveys to students, teachers,
school counselors, and families and are planning interviews to help identify
potential solutions.
One
idea they have is a summer program that will serve as a bridge to prepare
students to transition to more advanced classes. BSU’s overall goal is to make
higher level courses more accessible and ensure students of color are prepared
to succeed.
BSU
plans to present their research findings to the Albemarle High School staff and
leadership and are also exploring the possibility of presenting to the
Albemarle County School Board.
In addition to conducting
this research project, BSU continues to advocate for Black students and has held
multiple events for their school community to celebrate Black culture and
history. Our team has been beyond impressed by this group of motivated and
passionate students.
Final
Thoughts
Working with
two very different and incredibly inspiring groups of high school students has
been such a wonderful opportunity. As YAL facilitators, we teach high schoolers
how to frame and investigate real world issues through social science research,
but we undoubtedly learned just as much from them about framing and addressing problems
in our own lives and communities.
YAL is supported by the Equity Center and Youth-Nex. We are always looking for new partners interested in bringing YPAR to the youth they serve. To learn more about YAL and YPAR resources, please visit our website.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Anya Pfeiffer is a fourth year Youth & Social Innovation Major and a first year candidate for a Master’s of Public Policy and Leadership from the Batten School. After graduation, she hopes to work on education or housing policy.
Author Bio: Olivia Burke is a 4th year Youth and Social Innovation major and Public Policy minor who is passionate about education research. Next year she will pursue her M.Ed. in Quantitative Analytics at UVA.
Author Bio: Kate Price is a fourth year student majoring in Youth & Social Innovation in the School of Education. She is extremely interested in applying youth developmental frameworks to practical settings which help prompt adolescents to critically reflect, use their voice, and make a difference in their communities.
Kennedy Eagle and Alexis Allen are also YSI students.
Group mentoring programs can be effective in fostering at least short- term improvements in a broad range of youth outcomes.
The multiple types of relationships between and amongst peers and mentors in group mentoring programs contributes to youth’s experiences in, and outcomes from, group mentoring.
Limiting the size of the mentoring group (i.e., the ratio of mentors to mentees) and incorporating practices that foster peer support among the mentors can support program quality.
January is National Mentoring Month. When you think about mentoring, you probably picture an adult who has volunteered to take an active and supportive role in a young person’s life. If you’ve heard of programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters, you’re probably familiar with the one-on-one approach to mentoring. But whereas one-on-one mentoring programs are widespread, did you know that group mentoring programs actually now serve more youth than one-on-one programs?[i] Group programs come in various shapes and sizes but are differentiated from one-on-one programs in that one or more adults work with multiple youth.
This may sound like a lot of settings you see every day, like after-school clubs, sports teams, or arts programs. Indeed, the basic ingredients for group mentoring exist in many places where multiple youth and one or more adults interact together over time.
But what makes group mentoring different from other programs that involve adults and youth is that it must include intentional mentoring activity and group processes, including meaningful, two-way interactions between one or more mentors and at least two mentees.
Formal programs that match mentors with groups of youth are very popular, with estimates that 35% of youth mentoring programs use a group format and an additional 12% use a combination of one-on-one and group mentoring.[ii] In other group settings, like after-school programs, sports teams, and classrooms, specific efforts may be needed to systematically foster mentoring relationships between the adults and youth.[iii]
The first type includes programs in which all activities occur in a group or team-like setting. An example of the first type is a program in San Francisco, CA called Project Arrive, where groups of six to eight students who are vulnerable to dropping out of school meet with mentors each week throughout their 9th grade year to build a sense of belonging in school and a supportive peer network.
The second type of group program blends the popular one-on-one approach to mentoring with group activities. An example of this second type is the Young Women Leaders Program based here at UVA.
The third type of program occurs in existing youth programs, like sports or arts organizations; these programs incorporate intentional elements of mentoring into existing youth programs, and usually include specific training of the adult leaders in topics related to youth development and mentoring and time during the program for explicit mentoring activities.
As group mentoring grows in popularity it is important for researchers and practitioners alike to be attuned to both the potentials of this program format for supporting young people, and also the recommendations that have been identified by the field so far for best practices (see, for example, the recently published supplement to the Elements of Effective Practice for Group Mentoring). In terms of the potential of such programs to have a positive impact on young people, our review uncovered evidence that group mentoring programs can be effective in fostering at least short- term improvements in a broad range of youth outcomes, including those in the behavioral, academic, emotional, and attitudinal/motivational domains. Evidence of longer-term effects is still limited. It should also be noted that there is limited evidence on incorporated programs, as most research has focused on conventional or blended group mentoring programs.
In terms of who benefits the most from group mentoring, our review found some isolated evidence suggesting that group mentoring is particularly effective for youth exposed to higher risk, but group mentoring appears to be potentially effective for youth from a variety of backgrounds.
Program effectiveness may be influenced by the socioemotional and relationship skills and histories that mentors bring to the program, and group facilitation skills is an important additional skill for mentors in group programs. Two features of programs that appear to be important for program quality include limiting the size of the mentoring group, or the ratio of mentors to mentees, and incorporating practices that foster peer support among the mentors.
Group mentoring shares many features of more traditional mentoring programs, but what makes group programs unique is the presence of peers and, often, multiple mentors. This allows for multiple types of relationships between and among mentors and peers that can contribute to youth’s experiences in, and outcomes from, group mentoring. In addition, attributes of the group, such as cohesion and belonging, mutual help, and a sense of group identity, may also contribute to youth outcomes. Researchers and practitioners are often concerned with the potential for negative outcomes, or “negative contagion effects,” particularly when youth exposed to significant risk are grouped together. Our review found that the potential for negative contagion in group mentoring programs does exist, but the presence of strong group facilitators and training for mentors in group programs, as well as intentional planning of assignment of mentees to groups, helps guard against negative consequences. Overall, group mentoring appears to be a promising approach to extend the reach of mentoring to a larger number of youth (and maybe even at a lower cost) than one-on-one mentoring, and to open up new avenues for promoting important skills and social connections that young people need.
Citations
[i] Garringer, M., McQuillin, S., & McDaniel, H. (2017). Examining Youth Mentoring Services Across America: Findings from the 2016 National Mentoring Program Survey. MENTOR The National Mentoring Partnership.
[ii] Garringer, M., McQuillin, S., & McDaniel, H. (2017). Examining Youth Mentoring Services Across America: Findings from the 2016 National Mentoring Program Survey. MENTOR The National Mentoring Partnership.
[iii] Banister, E. M., & Begoray, D. L. (2006). A community of practice approach for Aboriginal girls’ sexual health education. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry / Journal de l’Académie Canadienne de Psychiatrie de l’enfant et de l’adolescent, 15, 168–173.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Nancy Deutsch is the director of Youth-Nex, the UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development at the School of Education & Human Development. She is a Professor of Research, Statistics & Evaluation and Applied Developmental Science and is also affiliated with the Youth & Social Innovation (YSI) Program. Deutsch’s research examines the socio-ecological contexts of adolescent development, particularly issues related to identity. She has focused on the role of after-school programs and relationships with important adults, and is especially interested in the process of adolescent learning and development as it unfolds within local environments for better understanding about how to create settings that better support youth, especially those at risk due to economic or sociocultural factors.
Author Bio: Gabe Kuperminc is Professor of Psychology and Public Health and Chair of the Community Psychology Doctoral Program at Georgia State University. His research focuses on 1) understanding processes of resilience and positive youth development in adolescence and 2) evaluating the effectiveness of community-based prevention and health promotion programs. He is studying the effectiveness of innovative approaches to youth mentoring, including group mentoring and combining mentoring with other youth development approaches (projects funded by the Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). He also works with youth-serving non-profit organizations at local, state, and national levels, studying the effectiveness of prevention and youth development programs. A common thread in his work is an interest in understanding how cultural factors play a role in developmental processes and health behavior.
Mentoring programs are essential resources in many communities and one of the best supported approaches for fostering positive youth development.
However, despite a long record of empirical support for their positive impact, little is known about how mentoring benefits are rendered or the specific processes by which mentoring relationships work.
Presented here is recent work to help assess five key mentoring processes with the hope that when used this survey can reveal what makes some mentoring programs more effective than others.
Over the past 30 years, there have been numerous studies that show mentoring can help reduce youth risk of substance use, school failure and delinquency, and can increase their sense of support, connection, and self-efficacy. Not all programs show these benefits, with some even showing null or negative impacts. The question still remains:
What makes some programs beneficial and how do these benefits occur?
This requires looking into the processes that make up mentoring interactions; to understand the “how” of mentoring. Through reviewing theoretical and practical literature on mentoring we identified a set of 5 processes that were commonly mentioned as occurring within mentoring relationship and developed an assessment tool to capture them (See the original research article in the Journal of Community Psychology at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22408).
Five Key Mentoring Processes
The follow five mentoring processes are measured by the Mentoring Process Scale (MPS):
Role Modeling – Activities and discussions that provide the mentee opportunity to experience the mentor as a role model or figure of identification, those in which the effect may be to evoke admiration, respect, felt positive similarity and connection, or emulation.
Advocacy – A process by which the mentor speaks up for or supports the mentee to others, connects the protégé with resources, and/or helps the mentee seek and access skills and opportunities, helping support navigation of social systems.
Relationship and Emotional Support – Instances where the mentor provides open and genuine positive regard and companionship to the mentee in ways that would be expected to lead the mentee to feel supported and cared for by the mentor. This process is characterized by regular and open communication, with empathy and/or reciprocity prominent.
Teaching and Information Provision – A process by which the mentor teaches new things to the mentee and/or provides information that might aid the mentee in managing social, educational, legal, family, and peer challenges.
Shared Activity – The mentor and mentee engage in activities together (e.g., cooking, playing sports, going out to eat, watching tv) or simply spend time together.
Our goal was to capture and understand these processes from both the adult mentor and youth mentee perspectives. Our study validated these five components as distinct and important factors making up the overall scale and showed that these processes relate to other important characteristics of effective mentoring, when rated by adult mentors. For youth, the items formed as a single general positive mentoring activity scale.
We think the scale can help reveal how mentoring works, what differentiates effective and ineffective mentoring, and what might be important training targets and skills for mentors.
This
scale also has promise to help address inequities in access to quality
mentoring. Presently, too often, the quality of mentoring available is
dependent on economic and social resources, with little guidance on critical
components of the mentoring relationship. If we can learn what makes mentoring
effective, then training can concentrate on those skills and activities. The
scale and the practices it measures can be used to help guide initial and
ongoing training. It can also be used to highlight if and how mentors might be
applying learned skills in their daily work with mentees. By better
understanding the mechanisms of positive influences, disparities in mentoring
program quality can be better identified and remediated, thus ensuring a
greater likelihood for successful mentoring impacts across communities.
Mentoring in COVID-19
Finally,
in a world of physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, mentoring
programs must adapt to new ways of engaging youth. They must find ways to
successfully maintain the mentoring relationship and address new and unique
needs of youth and communities. By considering what processes to emphasize and
assessing variation in engagement and outcome as different ones are emphasized,
we can learn how to ensure effective mentoring in these new circumstances. These
five key processes can be helpful in guiding program adaptation to ensure that
important components of the mentoring relationship are still maintained,
regardless of the modality through which contact is made.
For more information about this research and the MPS, please see:
Tolan, P. H., McDaniel, H. L., Richardson, M., Arkin, N., Augenstern, J., & DuBois, D. L. (2020). Improving understanding of how mentoring works: Measuring multiple intervention processes. Journal of Community Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22408
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Julia Augenstern, M.Ed. is a fourth year doctoral student in the Curry School of Education and Human Services Clinical and School Psychology Program. She studies positive youth development and social emotional learning in a Youth Nex affiliate lab and is a recent Curry Innovative, Developmental, Exploratory Awards (IDEAs) grant recipient.
By Karis Lee, Juliana Salcedo, Jack Wren, & Lily Zhang
Highlights:
Adolescents explore different identities as they begin to figure out who they are and want to be.
Identity development is impacted by one’s social environment including family, peers, community, and online activities.
Even with the switch to online learning, adults can implement strategies to support students’ identity development.
Source: Curry School of Education & Human Development
Identity development in adolescents begins with their personal backgrounds and changes as adolescents encounter new experiences, ideas, environments, and people. Adolescents begin to answer “who am I?” by thinking about themselves in various contexts and from different perspectives. Adolescents may identify themselves in many ways such as race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, and family. Younger adolescents are more sensitive to external feedback whereas older adolescents learn to hold stronger identity stances and consider themselves in broader contexts. There are many ways to navigate identity formation during adolescence that are relevant to education and distance learning.
Why Identity Development is Important in Adolescence
According to Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, adolescence (ages 13-19) marks stage five of development and is key in the lifelong process of identity construction. During this period, individuals grapple with identity versus role confusion, and they focus on organizing their skills, interests, and values into a core sense of self. These tasks are also supported by key changes that occur in the brain during this time period, such as abstract processing, consideration of multiple perspectives and possibilities, and the reasoning of truths. Adolescents engage in the identity “search process,” in which they explore different identities and eventually commit and follow through. Adolescents spend a significant amount of time in school so peers and curriculum both play crucial roles during this search process. Since many students are engaging in distance learning at the moment, peer-interactions, online activities, and community support are elements educators must consider when building an identity-based learning environment.
Adolescence is also the period in which individuals process their beliefs and attitudes about their ethnic-racial identity (ERI) membership. ERI is multidimensional, and it is impacted by how one’s racial identity is regarded by others, how identities are formed based on racial beliefs (or how a group “should” act), and the internal reconciliation of these various perspectives. It can be a combination of the maturity of one’s self-perception and the broader contexts that affect that self-perception. According to William Cross’s model of ERI development, a racial or ethnic “encounter” often catalyzes one’s processing. The “encounter” and how that impacts students’ ERI is especially important to keep in mind, as it could be affected by both the move to online classes and the current Black Lives Matter movement.
Adolescents Shifting to an Online Environment
Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the move online may affect adolescents’ identity development by restricting their autonomy. In-person school can provide a needed environment in which students can engage in the identity search process, where they can “try on” different identities without familial identity constraints or pressures. For example, schools can provide a needed social outlet for LGBTQ students to learn about their sexual or gender identity. Online learning, however, constricts students to their home environments and thus limits the search process. Students may not feel as comfortable exploring their identity with the influence of their parents and their parent’s beliefs surrounding them as they are learning.
In an online learning environment, teachers can continue to support identity development through assignments that have students engage with their interests. Teachers will likely need to rely on parents and families to engage with students through this process. However, not all students have the same access to resources at home so flexibility should be a guiding principle.
Building an Identity Focused Online Environment
Here are some suggestions for building a identity focused online learning environment that teachers could consider:
Have students read books that are of interest to them and form reading circles to share.
Create playlists of music, podcasts, or documentaries that relate to class material and introduce students to new ideas and perspectives.
Encourage students and parents to work together to engage with their community by walking around to historical sites and landmarks, or exploring historical sites online. Students can use this activity to talk with parents and/or other family members about their own identity.
Have students reflect on current global and social events, such as the role of social media during COVID-19, being GenZ, the Black Lives Matter movement and Supreme Court cases.
Continue school-sponsored activities online so students have the opportunity to stay connected with others and gain support for organizations that are important for identity development.
Provide flexibility and freedom when doing identity-based work so that students are not constricted by labels.
Cultivate cognitive routines with a set of prompts allowing the teacher to guide the activity rather than directly transfer knowledge (this helps students to develop their own opinions and think for themselves).Use prompts such as: “What was the biggest surprise?” or “I used to think ____. But now I think ___.” It is important to let students showcase their interests and knowledge!
In sum, the school environment plays a crucial role in adolescents’ exploration of identity, and their interactions both inside and outside the classroom help them answer the key “who am I?” question. It’s important for teachers to be aware of how the transition to online learning can impact this exploration and develop class strategies that allow students to continue engaging with the identity search process.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: Juliana Salcedo is a graduate student in the Curry School of Education and Human Development working on her master’s in teaching for secondary science education. She is a recent graduate of the College of William & Mary with a degree in Biology and Chemistry.
Author Bio: Karis Lee is a student at the Curry School of Education working towards her masters in teaching secondary language arts. She is a recent graduate of the College of William & Mary, where she studied English and history.
Author Bio: Lily Zhang is a graduate student in the Curry School of Education and Human Development working on her master’s in teaching for secondary English education. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2019 with degrees in English and Psychology.
Author Bio: Jack Wren is a graduate student in the Curry School of Education working on a master’s in teaching for secondary Mathematics education. He recently graduated from UVA in May 2020 with a degree in Mathematics.
As the COVID-19 threat wreaks havoc on our lives, all of us are coping with the utterly unpredictable and traumatic circumstances as best as we can. For parents, in particular, who have been thrust into the role of a full-time stay-at-home mom and/or dad and full-time teacher, this new world is especially terrifying.
Source: Andrew Kaufman Blog
John Dewey, the famous educational
philosopher and founder of experiential learning, said that “All genuine
learning comes through experience.” And, thanks to COVID-19, just about
every household in our country has just become an experiential learning classroom.
As a parent with a seven-year-old and
four-year-old now at home full-time, I know what it feels like. I’m
also a teacher with a background in experiential learning, a teaching
philosophy that puts students face-to-face with real life and then
guides them through the process of learning from those experiences.
A decade ago, I started teaching a class called Books Behind Bars
at the University of Virginia, where my students meet regularly with
youth at a juvenile correctional center to have deep conversations about
Russian literature.
It was an experiment. Such a course
had never been attempted before. There were no roadmaps and no
guarantees of success. What success would even look like was unclear. It
was if I were attempting to build the Mayflower while sailing on it
toward a destination I wasn’t even sure existed.
Sound familiar?
Many of the principles of
experiential learning apply to the situation faced by parents across the
country right now, so here are a few of my recommendations to help you
navigate this new reality.
If you’re a parent, you’re already a teacher.
There’s a mystique surrounding the
word “teacher,” but don’t let yourself become intimidated by the term.
Some of the greatest teachers I’ve had never worked in any kind of
formal classroom in their lives. They were the people I encountered
growing up who were patient, cared for my well-being, motivated me to be
better, encouraged me to take risks, taught me not by words but by
example, and truly listened to me. Take heart in the fact that you’ve
already been using these effective teaching methods for years. It’s
called being a parent.
Don’t teach by lecture, listen.
Active listening is probably a
teacher’s greatest tool. Listening deeply to what another person tells
us allows them to listen to themselves, to access their own creativity,
and to find their own solutions—which will teach them more in the long
run than anything you could possibly tell them. In order words, don’t
feel like you have to lecture at your kids to teach them.
Do the exact opposite by staying
present and being curious. Ask them questions you truly want to know the
answers to, not the ones you already have the answer to. Listen to them
as you’ve never listened before, and they will learn more from this
experience than ten hours of lecturing could ever give them.
Co-create the curriculum with your son or daughter.
From day one of my Books Behind Bars
class I told my university students that we would be co-creating this
class together. I needed them just as much as they needed me in order to
make it work. Those weren’t just inspirational words—they were the
truth, and it took a lot of pressure off of me as a teacher. Approaching
your new job as a homeschooling parent in a similar spirit will remove
the pressure from you, as well.
Sit down with your child. Ask them
what they are interested in, what they would like to learn more about,
what inspires them, what would they like to do? Listen to the answer
without judgment. If they tell you that they want to run around outside
all day in your yard and play Gaga ball
with their younger brother, work with that. Go on the internet with
them and learn about Gaga ball. If your child can read, then have them
do the research themselves. Reading lesson accomplished.
As for math, ask them to find out the
recommended size of a Gaga ball field. Do you have enough space in your
yard to accommodate that? It’s a multiplication problem. If your child
wants to play Gaga ball badly enough, he’ll do the math. And you do it
with him.
Have your child teach you.
It’s okay that you’re figuring this
out together. You don’t need to be a know-it-all. In fact, you shouldn’t
be a know-it-all. Consider yourself lucky that your child is interested
in a subject you know nothing about. Have her teach you about the
subject. Not only will you learn something, but she will learn even
more.
As every teacher knows, you learn a
subject the best when you’re trying to teach it to someone else, so turn
your child into the teacher. Have her teach you one new thing about her
favorite subject each day. Not only will this take the pressure off
you, it will fill her with a sense of pride. And she’ll learn her
favorite subject like she’s never learned it before.
Forget perfectionism.
Perfectionism in teaching, as in
everything else, is the enemy of the good. To give you a personal
example: Like thousands of other college faculty across the country, I
was recently told by my administration that I had to take my courses
online within a week.
The very core of Books Behind Bars—relationships
between my university students and the correctional center
students—will likely cease suddenly and completely. I don’t mean just
the face-to-face relationships. I mean the relationships, period. The
correctional center students are not allowed to have access to
technology, so virtual teleconferencing isn’t a possibility. And after
the semester is over, the so-called “no-contact rule” prevents further
contact between the two groups of students for five years.
Imagine how traumatic this is all for the students on both sides.
If I set myself the goal of creating
an awesome class through all this, I’m doomed and so are my students.
Some college administrations are putting pressure on faculty to maintain
the same high standards in the online version of our courses that they
expect us to have in the traditional classroom format. Such pressure is
not only unethical but ludicrous, when people have mountains of pressure
on them already.
Now is not the time to be a perfect
parent or a perfect teacher. Now is the time to radically adjust our
expectations, and give one another—and ourselves—permission to be human
and imperfect.
Your most important teaching goal right now should be the well-being of your child.
There’s a saying in teaching circles that you start with the student, not the subject. This is more true now than ever.
The most important thing that should be on your mind in this traumatic moment is the well-being of your child.
I am continually reminding my
university students right now that my number one concern is their
well-being first, their learning second. Imagine what college students
must be going through at this moment. Some of them are be living at
home, taking care of ailing parents, looking for work, and still trying
to keep up with their studies. It’s insane. My students aren’t thinking
about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky right now. They’re thinking about real
things, big things, life things.
If my students take nothing more from
my class in five years than the knowledge of how to care and be cared
for in a time of trauma, then this semester will have been a success. It
will have taught them something invaluable.
The same is true for your child. If
throughout this traumatic period they don’t learn one thing about math
or reading, but learn instead that their parents love them deeply and
are always there for them, then consider yourself a success as a
teacher.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email Youth-Nex@virginia.edu. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
Author Bio: A nationally recognized expert on teaching innovation and service-learning, Dr. Andrew Kaufman is currently an Associate Professor and Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia. He supports faculty and teachers across the country in creating profound learning experiences that change the way students think, act, and feel, while making important contributions to their communities.
