Putting It All Together: Guiding Principles for Quality After-School Programs Serving Preteens

Successfully navigating early adolescence depends, in large part, on the availability of safe and engaging activities and supportive relationships with adults, yet many preteens have limited access to positive supports and opportunities -- such as high-quality after-school programs -- that could put them on a path to success. Funders, policymakers and practitioners share the common goal of supporting strategies that will have the most long-lasting positive effects on young people.Recognizing this, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health commissioned P/PV to identify the characteristics of quality after-school programs that are linked to positive outcomes for preteens. Based on the latest research and experience in the field, P/PV developed the publication, Putting It All Together: Guiding Principles for Quality After-School Programs Serving Preteens, along with a companion Resource Guide (http://www.lpfch.org/afterschool/resourceguide.html) that includes links to research and tools to strengthen programs.Putting It All Together focuses on six after-school program components associated with positive outcomes for preteens:Focused and Intentional Strategy: Programs have a clear set of goals, target specific skills, and deliberately plan all aspects of the program with a youth development framework in mind.Exposure: Programs are designed to: a) provide preteens with a sufficient number of hours per week over an extended period of time, that matches program outcome goals; and b) allow preteens to attend a variety of activities.Supportive Relationships: Programs emphasize positive adult-youth relationships regardless of the curriculum.Family Engagement: Programs strive to include families through various strategies, such as clear communication and a welcoming environment.Cultural Competence: Programs have diverse staff whose backgrounds are reflective of participants and who create practices and policies that: a) make services available to and inclusive of a variety of populations; and b) help participants understand and value a broad range of cultures.Continuous Program Improvement: Programs strengthen quality through an ongoing and integrated process of targeted staff training, coaching and monitoring, and data collection and analysis.While a host of factors, including organizational capacity, the needs of the youth served and the resources available, all play a role in determining a program's ability to achieve its goals, research suggests that these guiding principles are essential for program quality. That quality, in turn, is the foundation for positive results for youth.NOTE: This version of Putting It All Together contains a full list of endnotes and references, which we chose to omit from hard copies of the report, in the interest of brevity

Play2Learn: promoting learning through play during the academic day

Education and student success are among the U.S. citizens’ highest priorities. Changes in educational policies have led to academic “push down,” in which children are expected to achieve academic milestones in core subjects (reading, writing, and mathematics) at younger grades. However, although performance expectations have increased, child development sequences and timelines have not changed to support expectations. Various solutions including sensorimotor, educational, and play programs have been trialed, but the academic achievement gap continues to grow. Successful programs include opportunities to develop foundational sensorimotor skills, follow developmental sequence, align with curriculum, and use aspects of a child-driven play-based approach to learning. In response to the need to better prepare students to meet academic expectations, the Play2Learn (P2L) program was developed based on the previous evidence. The program’s premise is to use play as a learning tool with an educational approach to promote student academic success. The P2L is a 6-week program (six educational modules) for occupational therapy practitioners and teachers. Each module includes 50- minute interactive lectures, expert mentoring and practical application. Topics include defining play and its benefits, risk factors of play, strategies and justification for play in the classroom, how to be playful with students, and application of play strategies. With this program, teachers will confidently and effectively use play in the classroom setting to promote learning, adapt familiar lessons to make them developmentally appropriate and playful, and justify how it aligns with the curriculum. Program objectives are to enhance student academic performance and improve behavior, attention, sensorimotor skills, social-emotional skills, language, and processing and cognition. The desired long-term outcomes are to increase play during the school day, changes curriculum design to be more developmentally appropriate, develop new ways to assess student performance, and educate all students regardless of their academic abilities

Teacher education for the middle years of schooling: sustaining quality middle level preparation in Australian universities

The middle years of schooling (Years 5-9) has emerged as a significant field of educational research in the last two decades but investigation of specialised approaches to middle level teacher education has received little attention. The rationale for specialised programs or units is that middle level teachers require specific preparation to be able to meet the educational needs of young adolescents (10-15 years old). This article draws from a doctoral study in which three outstanding teacher educators, with responsibility for middle level teacher education in their Australian universities, were interviewed about their programs (Shanks, 2010). The article identifies and discusses a number of factors that threaten the viability of quality middle level teacher preparation

Preservice teachers' beliefs about young adolescents and their impact on grade level teaching preference.

Middle level education programs need qualified, specifically trained teachers to best address the needs of their young adolescent learners. However, despite extensive information as to what constitutes appropriate middle level teacher preparation, there remains a shortage of specifically educated middle level educators. This study seeks to determine if that shortage is impacted by the beliefs that education majors have of young adolescents. Having validated knowledge of preservice teachers' beliefs about young adolescents and how those beliefs affect their choice of teaching level allows teacher education programs to design experiences that address these beliefs, or may encourage educators to address other reasons for the specifically educated middle level teacher shortage. It also seeks to examine whether preservice teachers' beliefs about young adolescents are impacted by the existence of a state requirement of middle level teacher certification. The major findings indicate that preservice teachers in both locales hold an overall stereotypically negative view of about young adolescents which is not impacted by the state licensure requirement. The study also reveals a greater sense of self-efficacy for teaching at the middle level evidenced by preservice teachers enrolled in a specific middle level teacher preparation program

The impact of media-related cognitions on children’s substance use outcomes in the context of parental and peer substance use

Media-related cognitions are a unique influence on adolescents’ substance use outcomes even after accounting for the powerful influence of parent and peers. This cross-sectional study expands upon prior research by investigating the impact of media-related cognitions on children’s alcohol and tobacco outcomes in the context of parental and peer substance use. Six hundred forty-nine elementary school children (M = 9.4 years of age, SD = 1.1 years; 51 %female) completed self-report questionnaires. After accounting for peer and parental substance use, children’s media-related cognitions were independently associated with three outcomes: preferences for alcohol-branded merchandise, moral beliefs about underage alcohol and tobacco use, and intentions to use alcohol and tobacco. Children’s perceptions of the desirability and realism of alcohol and tobacco ads—and their similarity to and identification with these ads—predicted greater intentions to use. Desirability and identification with alcohol and tobacco ads were associated with stronger preferences for alcohol-branded merchandise, and understanding advertising’s persuasive intent predicted weaker preferences. Media deconstruction skills predicted stronger beliefs that underage alcohol and tobacco use is wrong. Peer and parental substance use were associated with stronger substance-use intentions among children and weaker feelings that substance use is wrong. The findings highlight the role of media influence in contributing to youth substance use and the potential role of media literacy education in the early prevention of substance use