Lastly, factors related to school climate, the integration of community partners into the school setting, the limited availability of culturally sensitive evidence supported interventions, and policy and structural factors all contribute to intervention effectiveness (Cummings et al., 2023; Eiraldi et al., 2015; Frank et al., 2022; Langley et al., 2010; Richter et al., 2022; Splett et al., 2022). Studies have indeed shown that youth are more likely to receive mental health interventions when they are provided at school, and they have greater levels of adherence and engagement with these interventions when compared to youth who receive prevention and treatment in other settings (Evans et al., 2023; Langer et al., 2015; Sanchez et al., 2018). Although measurement refinement is needed, there is evidence from this study and from other ongoing work (Lyon et al., 2018) that organizational factors are related to the implementation of EBIs in schools. Finally, although the SIC definition of program startup (i.e. delivering the intervention at least once) has been used by several studies (e.g. Nadeem et al., 2018), this is a necessary but insufficient condition for schools to achieve sustained use of CCAL. Furthermore, the study provides some evidence to suggest that spending more time preparing for implementation may allow schools to be better prepared for the implementation phase. To achieve this, we (a) present quantitative SIC data and (b) describe case examples of the implementation process for representative schools that demonstrated successful and unsuccessful program startup.
The Assessment Phase of the Intervention Research Framework: The Measurement Instrument and Data Collection
Tier 3 supports target the 3-5% of https://www.nj.gov/education/esser/arp/ students with the highest support needs in the school. Typically, schools deliver Tier 2 supports to 5-15% of the student body. Tier 1 supports are delivered to all students and emphasize teaching prosocial skills and behavior expectations.
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Schools can play a pivotal role in promoting students’ mental health and their social, emotional, and behavioral development (Barnes et al., 2003; Fisher, 2006; Mendelson et al., 2010). This review demonstrates the promise of incorporating mindfulness interventions in school settings for improving certain youth outcomes. The highest quality evidence (“A Grade”) across outcomes indicated that MBSIs increased prosocial behavior, resilience, executive function, attention, and mindfulness, and decreased anxiety, attention problems/ADHD behaviors, and conduct behaviors. Coders rated each study numerically per study design as 1 + + (RCT with a very low risk of bias) to 4 (expert opinion) and across studies for the corresponding evidence letter grade, from highest quality (“A Grade”) to lowest quality (“D Grade”) evidence. Specific Tier 2 interventions focus on social skills, self-management, and academic supports.
This includes more advanced modeling techniques to examine mediators and moderators of student outcomes within hierarchical structures. For example, individuals’ perceptions of a school tend to be highly correlated, showing a high degree of within-group agreement, yet aggregating at the school level can mask some systematic variation in perceptions (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). If individual-level data show a high degree of within-group agreement, a case can be made for aggregating the data to represent a group-level construct, but only after a full examination of the data.
Benefits of a Mindfulness-based Intervention at School from the Perspective of At-risk Children
Objective assessments of competence in the intervention (e.g. role plays) are one indicator of proficient organizational cultures, which require sufficient staff knowledge of the intervention being delivered. Future work should examine additional predictors of sustained EBI use after achieving initial program startup. Another limitation is that the absence of variability in pre-implementation activities prevented examination of relationships between specific pre-implementation activities and implementation success. In addition, organizational culture and climate subscales were analyzed independently in the current study, but a larger sample size would have allowed for a more thorough and holistic examination of organizational culture and climate, as conducted by Williams et al. (2019).
- The development of links with community agencies and services has been argued to be the most essential component of the health-promoting school approach (Goltz et al. 1997; Lister-Sharp et al. 1999; WHO 1996).
- It is critical to consider the local culture and context throughout the decision-making process to ensure equitable outcomes for all students and staff.
- There is also a need for investment in professional development and learning for building organisational capacity in adopting a whole school approach to social and emotional learning.
- This work is crucial for bridging the gap between research and practice, ultimately aiming to improve mental health outcomes for diverse student populations.
- We identified 10 published studies on this topic that were representative of a range of stakeholders (e.g. teachers, students with ESN, SWPBIS coaches) across all geographical regions of the United States.
We also contacted the first authors of these studies to request recommendations for studies that were not identified through our search process or that were currently in press. We also conducted hand searches of 11 journals with a history of publishing research on students with ESN and/or SWPBIS (complete list of journals available upon request). To identify studies published after the first call to action in the RPSD special issue, we limited the search to studies available in 2006 or after.