Evaluation of a mental health literacy educational intervention for elementary teachers

Nature and scope of the project: Over 16% of children ages two to eight have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. However, there is an 11-year delay between the onset of symptoms and subsequent intervention. The project’s objectives are a 10% increase in teachers’ overall score on the Mental Health Literacy and Capacity Survey for Educators (MHLCSE) from T1 to T2, a 10% increase in teachers’ overall score on the Gatekeeper Behavior Scale (GBS) from T1 to T2, and a 5% increase in the utilization of the Bridge Program referral pro cess from T1 to T2. Synthesis and analysis of supporting literature: Yamaguchi et al. (2020), Baxter et al. (2022), and Liao et al. (2023) support the importance of mental health literacy (MHL) interventions for teachers, highlighting substantial improvements in knowledge, stigma, intention to help, and confidence to help. Project implementation: A 20-minute presentation was provided to teachers in January and February 2024, discussing the symptoms of mental illness in elementary students and how to refer them to the Bridge Program. Evaluation criteria: An evaluation of changes in outcomes to increase MHL and service utilization with baseline survey administration (T1), intervention implementation, and post-intervention survey administration (T2). Outcomes: Statistically significant increases were found for total scores in both the MHLCSE (p < .001, d = 1.6) and GBS (p = .004, d = .7). No statistically significant difference was observed in the number of students or teachers utilizing the Bridge Program. All project objectives were met and largely surpassed between T1 and T2, with a 24.1% increase in MHLCSE scores, an 11.2% increase in GBS scores, a 45.5% increase in the number of students recommended for referral, and a 20% increase in the number of teachers who recommended students for referral. Recommendations: MHL presentations should be provided to teachers annually at the beginning of each school year to ensure sustained effectiveness. It is reasonable to extend MHL education to secondary school teachers by adapting the presentation accordingly

Youth Organizers As Essential Partners In Teacher Education: Implications From A Community-Based Action Research Project

The primary purpose of this critical qualitative action research project is to analyze the possibilities, contradictions, and limitations of youth organizers as essential partners in teacher education. More specifically, this research project examines the impact of designing and implementing a community-based social studies methods course alongside youth organizers and their adult allies. There is limited research in teacher education literature about partnering with youth-centered and youth-led grassroots organizations. In addition, research pertaining to community-based teacher education does not adequately affirm and center the voices and lived experiences of youth organizers who are social change agents in schools and communities. In turn, this action research project acknowledges and disrupts existing systemic barriers in order to bring teacher candidates and youth organizers together through dialogue and reflection for transformative action. This process enhances teacher candidates’ understanding and use of community-based pedagogy while supporting youth organizers in their social justice work within schools and communities. Informed by participatory and community-based methodologies, the findings of this action research project provide implications for teacher educators who are seeking to foster collaborative partnerships with youth-centered community organizations and intergenerational community members. In this way, teacher educators may curate community-based teacher education programs that are stimulated by and benefit local schools and communities. Importantly, the collection and analysis of data sources is reciprocal and accountable to participants in order to support their ongoing efforts to grow as organizers, educators, and community members. Such practices are informed by place-conscious and culturally sustaining pedagogies in order to seek and sustain transformative social change through education

Problems in Extremal Graph Theory

This dissertation consists of six chapters concerning a variety of topics in extremal graph theory.Chapter 1 is dedicated to the results in the papers with Antnio Giro, Gbor Mszros, and Richard Snyder. We say that a graph is path-pairable if for any pairing of its vertices there exist edge disjoint paths joining the vertices in eachpair. We study the extremal behavior of maximum degree and diameter in some classes of path-pairable graphs. In particular we show that a path-pairable planar graph must have a vertex of linear degree.In Chapter 2 we present a joint work with Antnio Giro and Teeradej Kittipassorn. Given graphs G and H, we say that a graph F is H-saturated in G if F is H-free subgraph of G, but addition of any edge from E(G) to F creates a copy of H. Here we deal with the case when G is a complete k-partite graph with n vertices in each class, and H is a complete graph on r vertices. We prove bounds, which are tight for infinitely many values of k and r, on the minimal number of edges in a H-saturated graph in G, for this choice of G and H, answering questions of Ferrara, Jacobson, Pfender, and Wenger; and generalizing a result of Roberts.Chapter 3 is about a joint paper with Antnio Giro and Teeradej Kittipassorn. A coloring of the vertices of a digraph D is called majority coloring if no vertex of D receives the same color as more than half of its outneighbours. This was introduced by van der Zypen in 2016. Recently, Kreutzer, Oum, Seymour, van der Zypen, and Wood posed a number of problems related to this notion: here we solve several of them.In Chapter 4 we present a joint work with Antnio Giro. We show that given any integer k there exist functions g1(k), g2(k) such that the following holds. For any graph G with maximum degree one can remove fewer than g1(k) ^{1/2} vertices from G so that the remaining graph H has k vertices of the same degree at least (H) g2(k). It is an approximate version of conjecture of Caro and Yuster; and Caro, Lauri, and Zarb, who conjectured that g2(k) = 0.Chapter 5 concerns results obtained together with Kazuhiro Nomoto, Julian Sahasrabudhe, and Richard Snyder. We study a graph parameter, the graph burning number, which is supposed to measure the speed of the spread of contagion in a graph. We prove tight bounds on the graph burning number of some classes of graphs and make a progress towards a conjecture of Bonato, Janssen, and Roshanbin about the upper bound of graph burning number of connected graphs.In Chapter 6 we present a joint work with Teeradej Kittipassorn. We study the set of possible numbers of triangles a graph on a given number of vertices can have. Among other results, we determine the asymptotic behavior of the smallest positive integer m such that there is no graph on n vertices with exactly m copies of a triangle. We also prove similar results when we replace triangle by any fixed connected graph