Child & Youth Care Forum最新文献

Abstract

Background

In an American society where a majority of students are from minoritized backgrounds, a better understanding of the relationship between psychosocial factors and school climate across racial groups is needed to assist schools in providing a supportive and positive learning environment for all students.

Objective

The relationship between school climate and five psychosocial factors—motivation, academic self-concept, goal valuation, attitude towards teachers, and attitude towards school—is explored and a better understanding of how these psychosocial factors predict one’s experience of their school’s climate, both in general and across racial groups is further investigated.

Method

Data was collected through a school-administered survey focused on improving school climate. A diverse sample of 2524 high school students completed the survey, which was administered by school teachers during a school-wide free period with students.

Results

All five psychosocial factors predict students’ having a positive perception of their school’s climate, with medium to large effect sizes. Further, results from a series of stepwise multiple regressions indicate that (a) student attitudes toward their teachers were the most significant predictor of their perceptions about their school’s climate, and (b) the combination of psychosocial factors that best predict student perceptions of their school climate varied across racial groups.

Conclusion

The findings highlight an important first step in exploring how psychosocial perceptions can be leveraged to improve students’ perceptions of their school climate, in addition to considering the importance of teachers and racial considerations within school climate.

Background

Child care quality rating and improvement systems exist to inform child care decisions and improve the quality of care. While previous research has shown QRIS have effects on quality, less is known about how child care providers vary in engagement and improvement within QRIS. In a voluntary QRIS, it is important to understand how providers vary in motivation, engagement, and progress within the system.

Objective

Identify provider characteristics and attitudes that predict QRIS quality advancement. Identify and describe provider subgroups whose rates of quality improvement were different.

Method

A random sample of providers (N = 179) and their coaches were interviewed five times over 2 years. The outcome was change in QRIS levels. Predictors were type of care, personal/professional characteristics, QRIS motivation, and coach perceptions of provider motivation and likelihood to advance. Linear regression was used to model change in QRIS level over five time points. Latent profile analysis was used to sort providers into classes.

Results

Significant overall predictors of QRIS change were providers’ education level and fewer years of experience, and coach’s perception of the provider’s likelihood to advance. Four subgroups in the latent profile analysis varied by rate of advancement, type of care, education, experience, professional engagement, QRIS motivation, and general readiness to change.

Conclusions

Results point to the importance of assessing early and continuing attitudes, engagement, professionalization, and education of participating child care providers. The incentives and needs of providers in most QRIS will vary widely. Technical support geared to provider characteristics will be more effective in improving within QRIS.

Background

The working memory (WM) system is recognized as a crucial cognitive function that underpins the acquisition of new knowledge and the development of foundational skills during childhood. Children’s early literacy and numeracy skills lay the foundation for future academic success in reading and mathematics. While previous research has established a link between WM and early literacy as well as numeracy, the specific contributions of different WM components to the development of various skills in kindergarten-aged children remain unclear.

Objective

This study aimed to investigate the associations between distinct profiles of WM and academic achievements in early literacy and numeracy among kindergarten children.

Method

A battery of memory tests (simple WM and complex WM) were administered to a cohort of 250 kindergarten children aged between five and seven years. Additionally, a range of tasks assessing mathematical and language skills were administered.

Results

Our findings align with our initial hypotheses, revealing differences between profiles of simple WM and complex WM in relation to early mathematics and language skills. Generally, children who exhibited higher WM abilities outperformed their peers who had lower WM capabilities.

Conclusion

This study emphasizes the critical role of WM in early childhood education. Children with limited WM function are at a heightened risk of academic underachievement. Furthermore, both components of WM—simple WM and complex WM—emerge as influential factors in shaping children's proficiency in early literacy and numeracy skills.

Abstract

Background

A brief, parent-led, transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach demonstrated utility among youth struggling with emotional problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Homework completion between sessions is directly associated with psychotherapy treatment outcomes in non-parent-led CBT interventions. The present study sought to examine the relationship between homework completion and treatment response in a parent-led transdiagnostic CBT protocol.

Objective

The first aim was to determine if completion of between session CBT homework was associated with change in symptom severity. The second aim was to determine if pre-treatment anxiety severity, social anxiety severity, and depressive symptoms were associated with treatment outcomes.

Methods

One-hundred twenty-nine parents of youth (ages 5–13) with significant emotional problems received 6 sessions of telehealth parent-led CBT during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on children’s anxiety symptomology, clinical severity, homework compliance, depression, family relationships, perceptions on the impacts of the pandemic, treatment response, and therapists rating of symptom improvement were collected.

Results

Homework completion explained 9% of the variance in symptom improvement at post-treatment. Greater homework completion was associated with a significantly higher odds of treatment response (OR = 1.52, p = .001). Child anxiety severity, depressive symptoms, family relationships, and perceptions on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were not significantly related to treatment outcome.

Conclusions

Completion of homework predicted treatment outcomes in parent-led, transdiagnostic CBT for youth with emotional problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, while controlling for parent-rated anxiety, depression, family relationships, and COVID-related distress. Enhancing and targeting homework compliance between CBT sessions should be a central element of parent-led treatment.

Background

Racism is a public health crisis impacting the health and wellbeing of adolescents. Finding valid tools to measure race-based discrimination, a form of racism, is necessary to accurately assess the effectiveness of programs aimed to reduce those experiences.

Objectives

Our objective was to evaluate measurement invariance of a race-based discrimination scale by gender among a sample of youth (ages 13–19) from historically marginalized groups and to assess associations of race-based discrimination with sexual violence victimization and perpetration.

Methods

We used pooled cross-sectional baseline data from two sexual violence prevention programs from 2015 to 2019. Male and female participants were from Manhood 2.0 (a cluster randomized trial) and Sisterhood 2.0 (a quasi-experimental study), respectively. All participants were recruited through community organizations from the same neighborhoods. In this study, we included all non-white youth with completed responses to the 10-item Perceptions of Racism in Children and Youth (PRaCY) Scale. This study was approved by the University of Pittsburgh IRB.

Results

We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (N = 749) and measurement invariance among male-identifying (n = 560) and female-identifying (n = 189) participants resulting in a unidimensional factor structure with weak factorial invariance by gender. Lifetime discriminatory experiences were common among all participants. Mean discrimination scores were associated with a significant increase in the odds of lifetime sexual violence victimization in males (OR = 3.03, 95%CI 1.43–6.42) and females (OR = 10.80, 95% CI 2.23–52.33), respectively.

Conclusion

We confirmed construct validity of the PRaCY Scale among youth experiencing marginalization and found associations between experiences of discrimination and sexual violence victimization in both boys and girls.

Background

The literature suggests that educators can use parent–educator communication to support parents with engaging their children in home learning activities (Epstein, 1995; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997).

Objective

This study examines the relations between parent–educator communication and preschoolers’ numeracy, literacy, executive function, and vocabulary, and explores if the home numeracy environment (HNE) and the home literacy environment (HLE) was a better predictor of children’s outcomes than parent–educator communication.

Method

Data for this study came from a larger quasi-experimental study evaluating a state-funded preschool program (n = 558). Regression models were run controlling for child’s age, sex, race/ethnicity, family income, group, parental education, and baseline skill scores.

Results

Analyses revealed a significant relation only between parent–educator communication and numeracy skills (β = − 0.14, p = < 0.001). Unexpectedly, more frequent parent–educator communication in preschool were related to lower numeracy skills. Additionally, there was a statistically significant association between all three predictors- parent-educator communication (β = − 0.15, p = < 0.001), the HNE (β = 0.14, p = .016), and the HLE (β = − 0.18, p = .004)- and children’s numeracy skills. Specifically, more frequent parent–educator communication and higher HLE scores in preschool predicted lower numeracy skills. Additionally, the higher quality of the HNE predicted greater numeracy skills in the spring of preschool.

Conclusion

There may be increased communication when the children are performing lower on their numeracy skills than their peers and teachers and parents are working to remediate those challenges.

Background

Foster care homes provide safe and supportive environments for children and young people who are unable to live with their families. Yet, the perspectives of children and young people currently living in foster care are under-researched.

Objective

More needs to be understood about the lives of children and young people currently living in foster care. The aim of this review was to systematically analyse the core thematic categories related to the lived experiences of those in foster care to provide a comprehensive update to inform and improve foster care processes.

Method

A systematic review of qualitative research was conducted to explore children and young people’s perspectives of everyday life in foster care.

Results

After searching three citation databases (PubMed, CINAHL and PsycINFO) and a citation index (Scopus), we identified and evaluated 20 studies. Adopting thematic analysis, four themes were identified: (a) Navigating biological and foster family, (b) Normal children in abnormal circumstances, (c) Searching for belonging and (d) Overcoming trauma.

Conclusions

The findings provide valuable insight into the complex realities of life in foster care. These perspectives of foster care can help inform future research, practice and policy. This includes more collaborative co-designed foster care processes. For a socially conscientious developmental approach to foster care, the voices of the children and young people need to be heard, valued and included.

Background

Rates of mental health challenges among children and youth are on the rise. Physical activity has been identified as a promising intervention to improve mental health outcomes for youth.

Objective

This study aimed to investigate how mental health clinicians perceive and utilize physical activity as a mental health intervention for children and adolescents.

Methods

Seventy-four Ontario mental health clinicians (psychologists, psychotherapists, and social workers) were surveyed about their perspectives and practices related to physical activity as part of mental health care for children and adolescents using a mixed-methods approach. Survey respondents were also asked about barriers to including physical activity in care.

Results

Although 100% of clinicians agreed that physical activity was beneficial to their own and to their clients’ mental health, only 61% reported prescribing physical activity to their clients. Barriers to prescribing physical activity as a treatment option included lack of training, time, and resources. Clinicians who were more physically active themselves were more likely to view physical activity as beneficial for mental health and were less likely to view time as a barrier to discussing and prescribing physical activity in their practice. Many clinicians expressed a need for more training, knowledge, and resources.

Conclusions

The results of this study suggest that with improved access to training and resources, clinicians will be well-positioned to leverage the benefits of physical activity for mental health in their practice.