Good Sports and PYD

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SuperStarters Tennis & Teamwork Activity

Ellen Markowitz is a social entrepreneur who uses sports to help youth become their “super selves.” She studied Sport Psychology and Positive Youth Development through sport at the Curry School of Education. She founded SuperStarters Sports which offers sports-based youth development programs and consulting. Markowitz received a BA from Yale University, an MBA from New York University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, in 2010.

Playing sports as a young girl, changed my life. When I was in high school, being part of a team helped me feel good about myself, and gave me tools to connect with others. So it has been my passion to help other girls feel connected and competent through physical activity and sport.

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SuperStarters Tennis & Teamwork Activity

In the ‘90’s, when I started working in the world of after school programs in New York City, there were no acronyms like “PYD” or “SBYD (sports-based youth development).” Practitioners and researchers understood that after school programs could provide many diverse opportunities — as safe spaces for youth to connect with peers and adults, as growth places for youth to explore new activities and identities, and as home bases where youth could learn skills and competencies that could open doors to unimagined futures.

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Seven Key Principles Identified in New Report on Self-Regulation Development

Kids_at_Kubota_Garden_2003

“Kids at Kubota Garden 2003” by Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

We are pleased to share the first in a series of four inter-related reports on Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress from the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. In the current report, the authors introduce and describe a set of seven key principles that summarize their understanding of self-regulation development in context.

Aleta L. Meyer, Ph.D., of the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, conceived the project, led the effort, and is the project’s program officer.

Key Authors:
Desiree W. Murray, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, Scientist and Associate Director of Research, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Desiree.murray@unc.edu
Katie Rosanbalm, Ph.D., Research Scholar, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University. Katie.rosanbalm@duke.edu

Self-regulation has become increasingly recognized for its foundational role in promoting wellbeing across the lifespan, including physical, emotional, social and economic health and educational achievement.  Given this growing knowledge base and a desire to inform on-going services for children and youth from birth to young adulthood, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families commissioned a series of four inter-related reports from a team at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University; the series is titled Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress.

The first report from that series, Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation from an Applied Developmental Perspective, is now available and provides a comprehensive framework for understanding self-regulation in context, using a theoretical model that reflects the influence of biology, caregiving, and the environment on the development of self-regulation from birth to young adulthood. In that report, the authors introduce and describe a set of seven key principles that summarize our understanding of self-regulation development in context:

  1. Self-regulation serves as the foundation for lifelong functioning across a wide range of domains, from mental health and emotional wellbeing to academic achievement, physical health, and socioeconomic success. It has also proven responsive to intervention, making it a powerful target for change.
  2. Self-regulation is defined from an applied perspective as the act of managing cognition and emotion to enable goal-directed actions such as organizing behavior, controlling impulses, and solving problems constructively.
  3. Self-regulation enactment is influenced by a combination of individual and external factors including biology, skills, motivation, caregiver support, and environmental context. These factors interact with one another to support self-regulation and create opportunity for intervention.
  4. Self-regulation can be strengthened and taught like literacy, with focused attention, support, and practice opportunities provided across contexts. Skills that are not developed early on can be acquired later, with multiple opportunities for intervention.
  5. Development of self-regulation is dependent on “co-regulation” provided by parents or other caregiving adults through warm and responsive interactions in which support, coaching, and modeling are provided to facilitate a child’s ability to understand, express, and modulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
  6. Self-regulation can be disrupted by prolonged or pronounced stress and adversity including poverty and trauma experiences. Although manageable stress may build coping skills, stress that overwhelms children’s skills or support can create toxic effects that negatively impact development and produce long-term changes in neurobiology.
  7. Self-regulation develops over an extended period from birth through young adulthood (and beyond). There are two clear developmental periods where self-regulation skills increase dramatically due to underlying neurobiological changes– early childhood and adolescence – suggesting particular opportunities for intervention.

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YN Helps Military Connected Youth

Military Child Education Coalition

By Ellen Daniels, Youth-Nex Communications Director

Related posts are available under Research

Youth-Nex, has teamed up with the Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC), an organization that seeks to ensure quality education for military youth, to fund four early career scholars to investigate topics to help military-connected youth.

The researchers, two from military families themselves, will focus on a range of issues to improve academic achievement such as mental and physical health, skill building, and problem solving. Continue reading

What’s New in the Research on Childhood Obesity?

2030: Adult Obesity Rates if the Current Trajectory Continues

Trajectory of Adult Obesity Rates in the U.S project Virginia to be 50%-55% Obese by 2030. Research shows obese children are very likely to become obese adults.

 Arthur Weltman presented “Obesity in Children and Adolescents: Effects of Lifestyle Intervention” at the September’s Works In Progress Meeting.

Related posts are available under Research, Works In Progress Meetings, Health

Presentation Audio and Slides

Key Points from Weltman’s Talk:

  • Obese youth who do not show signs for Metabolic Syndrome are still at risk for several health conditions. A Type 2 diabetic diagnosis is just “the tip of the iceberg” with many health problems lying below the surface. There is a constellation of risk factors are already there. Continue reading

Study Addresses Lack of Research on Adolescent Drivers with Autism

By Daniel J. Cox, Youth-Nex associate director, University of Virginia professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, Internal Medicine, and Ophthalmology; and Ann Lambert, post-doctoral fellow, Virginia Driving Safety Laboratory, University of Virginia Medical Center.

The researchers’ study seeks to gain a better understanding of driving and
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) by surveying parents/caregivers
of adolescents/
young adults with ASD who were
currently attempting, or had previously attempted,
to learn
to drive.
Daniel Cox Driving simulator

Related posts can be found under Research and Driving.

Optimizing Independence of Adolescents with High Functioning Autism

Driving has major implications for independence, employment and socialization. It also represents potential risk to personal health and the health of others. Safe operation of a motor vehicle is a responsibility that involves controlling a two-ton vehicle traveling through time and space, at high speeds, multi-tasking negotiating traffic, signal, road and weather conditions. Continue reading

Eye Tracking, Food Labs and More – New Funding Announced

Mock up of school whose architecture is designed to encourage healthy habits

Related posts can be found under Research and Seed Funded Research.

By Ellen Daniels, Youth-Nex Communications Director

Youth-Nex has awarded funding to four teams of researchers who will study a range of
issues from how innovative school architecture can affect healthy eating to increasing
bullying awareness through student video production.

This is the third time the center has seeded University faculty research promoting positive youth development in the past three years. Patrick Tolan, center director, said projects were also chosen because of their collaborative nature and potential for growth.

“We are already seeing external funding applications growing out of the first rounds. We think there is great potential for similar success from this excellent set of seed grants which also represent multidisciplinary efforts across U.Va.,” said Tolan.

The 2012 funded projects are: Continue reading

“Conflict and debate?! Okay, I’m listening!”

Laurie Jean, Adolescent Educator at SARA, the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, gave us her thoughtful insights on the bullying prevention conference co-hosted by Youth-Nex, this summer. She was one of 500 teachers, law enforcement personnel and others, who attended the statewide event held at Charlottesville High School.

Bullying Prevention conference slide

Related posts can be found under Bullying.

Walking past tables covered in white paper and coffee urns, I expected little from yet another conference as I entered the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center. I rarely find much useful substance amid conferences’ broad, non-targeted material. As I settled into a folding seat in the back of the theater, a wave of empathy for my students came over me as I recalled many of the sensations of attending a mandatory high school assembly. Continue reading

Positive Mentor Relationships Predict Better Outcomes for Girls

By Angela Henneberger, YN researcher (PhD, Applied Developmental Science, ’12)

Group of YWLP girls

Related posts are available under Research and Community.

Nancy Deutsch has been Director of Research for the Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) a combined group and one-on-one mentoring program for middle school girls, since 2004. She is interested in the contextual study of adolescents’ lives and identities.

In a recent paper on YWLP (Deutsch, Wiggins, Henneberger, & Lawrence), to be published in The Journal of Early Adolescence, she uses a mixed methods approach to examine group processes that contribute to mentees’ satisfaction with their one-and-one mentoring relationships and their mentoring groups. Interestingly, there were no differences between groups on girls’ reports of how satisfied they were with their experiences in their mentoring groups. Continue reading

Critical Considerations in a Capability Focused Approach to Intervention Design and Evaluation – YN Panel Video

Nancy Deutsch

Related posts available under YN Working Conference April 2012

View the video for this discussion looking at methods, broadly and integratively, through a Positive Youth Development lens.

Panelists used four guiding questions:
1. How do we bring in developmental theory as we design evaluations of programs? Specifically, how do we relate Positive Youth Development processes and constructs to expected outcomes. How do we resolve the tension between evaluating competencies— promotion, and measuring problem behavior—prevention? Continue reading

Psychology Conference Focuses on Youth Organizing and Desegregation

By Valerie Futch, Postdoctoral Fellow at Youth-Nex.

Related posts are available under Conferences, Research

Changing Societies

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 9th biennial conference of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (APA Division 9). The theme for the conference was Changing Societies: Learning From and For Research, Social Action, and Policy. As part of the presidential programming, I had the great fortune to organize an invited panel on desegregation stories in the South and chair an invited panel on youth organizing for educational engagement and justice. These two panels turned out to be just one of many that featured youth development and youth organizing throughout the conference. Continue reading