Effective School Interventions 3rd edition 9781462526147, 9781462531486

One study found null improvements in reading fluency, so this was characterized as “D Grade” evidence. The highest quality evidence (“A Grade”) showed a decrease in conduct behavior, followed by “B Grade” evidence showing a decrease in aggression. There was no “A Grade” evidence for this domain, and regarding research designs, evaluation designs, and control group types, no studies with active control groups found null/negative effects on psychological stress. The highest quality evidence (“A Grade”) found increased attention, and decreased attention problems and ADHD behaviors, followed by “B Grade” evidence showing increased concentration, and decreased distractibility and impulsivity.

• Out of the 20 schools that had SIC data collected, seven were located in the US and 13 were located in Canada.
• In contrast, School B, located in Canada, demonstrated strong adherence to the pre-implementation phase (Phase 1) activities, but did not complete the implementation phase (Phase 2) activities with fidelity.
• Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development This database of positive youth development programs includes both broad prevention programs and targeted programs for specific needs.
• Additionally, Kurth and Zagona (2018) examined whether SWPBIS coaches (i.e. general education teachers, special education teachers, administrators, related service providers) felt it was possible to include students with ESN across all SWPBIS tiers.
• For the mean effect sizes, it was determined whether the direction of the effect size was positive or negative.

This finding is in contrast to results from previous meta-analyses, one of which reported an 11 percentile gain in academic achievement among students who received a social and emotional learning intervention (Durlak et al. 2011). Results from this meta-analysis revealed whole school interventions did not have a significant impact on academic performance. Previous meta-analyses of universal social and emotional learning interventions have reported higher effect sizes across social, emotional, behavioural, and academic domains (e.g. Durlak et al. 2011; Sklad et al. 2012). Whole school interventions have received significant investment in the past decade; however, their impact remains unclear. Visual inspection of the funnel plots (supplementary materials) showed no evidence of publication bias for the outcomes “social and emotional adjustment” and “behavioural adjustment”.

Core elements of the support system

Research by the developers of this model documents the benefits of community-university partnerships for achieving positive implementation outcomes (Spoth et al, 2007). Yet community coalitions have the potential to have a positive influence on aspects of the implementation support system, such as providing training and technical assistance (Feinberg et al, 2008; Spoth & Greenberg, 2005). Some researchers apply theories of community science to create community-level interventions that target student outcomes such as youth violence and substance use (Wandersman & Florin, 2003). Concepts such as community capacity and empowerment, common in community psychology and participatory research, have not always been given adequate attention in the field of prevention (Wandersman, 2003; Weissberg & Greenberg, 1998a), but they represent macro-level factors that may influence the implementation process within schools. For example, both Illinois and New York have passed legislation requiring that schools develop plans for social and emotional development (Katulak et al, 2008). However, if a new program is adopted without a consideration of how it will fit into the school’s instructional day, teachers may experience burden and stress, which can negatively affect program implementation.

Organizational factors: role of proficiency

Although we might predict that more proximal factors, such as teacher qualifications and attitudes, would have the strongest influence on implementation quality, organizational factors, such as administrative leadership, school culture, and school climate, should not be under-estimated. A natural next step for the field is carefully to develop and test theory-based interventions aimed at specific individual and contextual factors in the proposed model (Pentz, 2004). Han and Weiss (2005) provide a model of how implementer experience of success with an intervention and attribution of student improvements to the intervention influence motivation and skill over time, which, in turn, promotes high-quality implementation and sustainability.

Understanding that the primary mission of schools is academic achievement requires that researchers and program developers highlight the link between prevention of social-emotional and behavioral problems and academic achievement, to illustrate how an intervention helps the school meet its mission (Durlak et al, 2008). There is increasing awareness of the importance of community–university partnerships in promoting use and implementation of evidence-based interventions. Research on the functioning of these groups has focused more on the adoption of evidence-based interventions – rather than implementation – and has produced mixed results regarding their impact (Wandersman, 2003).

Analytic strategies

Researchers primarily used survey methodology to gather perceptual data from stakeholders. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the state of the research literature related to the involvement of students with ESN in SWPBIS. The studies in the review took place across all regions of the United States and all were published in peer-reviewed journals. We identified 10 research studies that varied in design (see Table 1 and Figures 2–6). For example, Kurth et al. (2017) conducted a content analysis of three common SWPBIS evaluation tools to determine their direct and implicit inclusion of students with ESN.

In defining MBSIs, we selected only intervention studies that applied mindfulness meditation including dialectical behavior therapy (Linehan, 1993) and acceptance and commitment therapy (Strosahl & Wilson, 1999) as intervention frameworks since they both focus on acceptance and mindfulness. Likewise, one review that only examined RCTs produced much higher quality evidence (Kallapiran et al., 2015). Finally, previous reviews gambling have not focused on grading the quality of evidence but instead produced the average effect sizes. Therefore, further examination is needed on the consistency of positive outcomes from MBSIs. Although most of the outcomes in most reviews showed small to moderate positive effects, it is noteworthy that some reviews yielded null effects for some outcomes.