Data on Sixth Graders Being Part of a Middle School Peer Reviewed
Proc Natl Acad Sci U Due south A. 2019 Aug thirteen; 116(33): 16286–16291.
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Reappraising academic and social adversity improves middle school students' academic achievement, behavior, and well-being
Geoffrey D. Borman
aSchoolhouse of Pedagogy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, 53706;
Christopher Southward. Rozek
bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305;
Jaymes Pyne
cGraduate Schoolhouse of Didactics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305;
Paul Hanselman
dDepartment of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697
Significance
Without social and emotional support, adolescent students who have recently made the difficult transition to heart school experience decreased social belonging, waning bookish performance, and increased run a risk of dropping out. This randomized field trial, conducted at scale beyond a Midwestern school district, reveals how a psychologically precise intervention for students supported transitioning sixth graders. Intervention materials taught students that middle school arduousness is common, short-lived, and due to external, temporary causes rather than personal inadequacies. Every bit a event, students realized improved social and psychological well-being, fewer absences and disciplinary infractions, and higher class bespeak averages. Implemented at calibration, this intervention holds potential to help to address the widespread academic underperformance past the nation's transitioning eye school students.
Keywords: educational intervention, middle school transition, bookish accomplishment, social belonging, pupil engagement
Abstruse
The period of early adolescence is characterized by dramatic changes, simultaneously affecting physiological, psychological, social, and cerebral development. The physical transition from elementary to middle schoolhouse can exacerbate the stress and arduousness experienced during this disquisitional life phase. Middle school students ofttimes struggle to find social and emotional support, and many students experience a decreased sense of belonging in schoolhouse, diverting students from promising academic and career trajectories. Drawing on psychological insights for promoting belonging, we fielded a brief intervention designed to help students reappraise concerns near fitting in at the start of middle school as both temporary and normal. Nosotros conducted a district-wide double-blind experimental study of this arroyo with middle schoolhouse students (n = ane,304). Compared with the command condition activities, the intervention reduced sixth-grade disciplinary incidents beyond the district by 34%, increased attendance by 12%, and reduced the number of declining grades past 18%. Differences in benefits across demographic groups were not statistically significant, just some impacts were descriptively larger for historically underserved minority students and boys. A mediational assay suggested lxxx% of long-term intervention effects on students' course betoken averages were accounted for past changes in students' attitudes and behaviors. These results demonstrate the long-term benefits of psychologically reappraising stressful experiences during disquisitional transitions and the psychological and behavioral mechanisms that support them. Furthermore, this brief intervention is a highly cost-effective and scalable approach that schools may use to help accost the troubling decline in positive attitudes and bookish outcomes typically accompanying boyhood and the center school transition.
Adolescence introduces a dynamic menstruation of human development, presenting both opportunities and challenges for positive physiological, psychological, social, and cognitive growth (1). A defining feature of this developmental stage is a heightened sensitivity to social acceptance, social comparisons, and sociocultural cues (2, 3). Amidst increasing cocky-sensation and independence, nonkin social networks go larger, more than competitive, and more influential, leaving adolescents to find their place in an expanding social world at the same time they are but beginning to develop competencies to form meaningful and long-lasting relationships and connections to of import institutions similar schools. In particular, increased sensitivity to social acceptance during this menses tin raise questions concerning adolescents' sense of belonging or their perception of having positive connections with peers, trusted adults, and important institutions (4). Since belonging is an essential human need (5), difficulties "plumbing equipment in" during boyhood can have significant and lasting negative consequences (6).
The developmental challenges of adolescence are often compounded by the transition to the new social and academic environment of eye schoolhouse—a particularly disruptive and almost universal experience in the U.s. (7). This transition typically entails the movement from a familiar neighborhood elementary schoolhouse to a new educational environment that is farther from home, larger, more bureaucratic, less personal, and more formal and evaluative (8). Though middle schools were originally designed to meet the specific educational needs of adolescents and to gear up them for the academic rigors of high school, stage–environment fit theory highlights important mismatches betwixt adolescents' developmental needs and the social–organizational context of center school (two). The typical middle schoolhouse environment emphasizes academic evaluation and competition, often reflected in the onset of letter grades and differentiation between more and less avant-garde classes, which encourage negative social comparisons while students are forming their academic identities (2, 8). Social credence by peers and caring relationships with adults exterior of the home are of particular importance to adolescents' positive development, and the physical transition disrupts prior school-based peer networks. Teacher–student relationships tend to go more distant, and potentially negative, as greater emphasis is placed on teacher control and subject area (2, ix, 10). Despite the best intentions of teachers and school leaders, the poor phase–environment fit of middle schools thus threatens students' bookish and relational belonging in school.
Belonging concerns amid the transition to middle school contribute to decreases in bookish appointment and well-existence during this period. Research documents failing academic performance (vii, xi), waning intrinsic motivation (2), rising disciplinary infractions (10), and emerging mental health problems (3) during middle school. Such trends reverberate relatively common struggles of adolescents in schoolhouse (2). Every bit the implications of school functioning for future educational and occupational attainment increase, these declines in adolescents' academic performance and well-beingness accept troubling long-term implications (2, 8). On the other hand, this formative period of adolescence also offers a unique opportunity to challenge and change the potentially damaging personal narratives that students develop every bit they confront academic and relational adversities that can undermine their sense of belonging. In lieu of recent costly interventions to restructure middle schools (vii), there may be ways to enhance psychological supports that schools tin can utilise to reduce the trouble of nonbelonging in the middle school context.
Social–Psychological Intervention to Better Schoolhouse Belonging for Middle Schoolhouse Students.
Although declining academic engagement in middle school is rooted in developmental and social–organizational challenges, the importance of students' sense of belonging in these processes provides a potential signal of leverage for mitigating these trends. Many of the challenges of middle school become detrimental through students' perception that they do not fit in at school. For example, when students encounter cues that raise ambivalence about their belonging in middle school, such equally not existence able to discover anyone to sit with in the lunchroom, they may view these issues as atypical (i.e., they are the only ones feeling this mode) and attribute tenuous belonging to their ain permanent inadequacies (four). This can further demotivate students and lead them to interpret new experiences in psychologically harmful means (12, xiii) as anxiety becomes the leading emotion (xiv). Thus, one way to intervene to promote belonging could be by targeting these attribution errors and encouraging students to reappraise their perspective on their difficulties (13, 15, 16). Proactively instruction students to make targeted shifts in perspective can take substantial impacts on students' self-assessments and motivation in school (iv).
In this study, we test an intervention for eye schoolhouse students that helps them reappraise adversity related to common worries that adolescents take concerning belonging in school. The hypothesized theory of change is summarized in Fig. 1. The primal messages of the intervention are that worries about students' belonging in eye school are normal, that they are short-lived, and that support is available. When students sympathize belonging worries every bit mutual and surmountable, they are meliorate able to interpret adversity as nonthreatening and maintain a motivational orientation that supports better performance (4). The hypothesized immediate impact is that students volition have greater well-beingness in the form of more positive attitudes near school. Increased positive attitudes reduce the cognitive resource devoted to stress management, freeing students' mental capacity for academic piece of work (12, xiv). Next, greater perceived fit at school can atomic number 82 to changes in critical behavioral indicators of academic disengagement, including absences from schoolhouse and instances of acting out (10). Finally, over time, shifts in student behavior and behaviors improve academic performance, which then reinforce those positive beliefs (fourteen, 17). This redirected, recursive cycle has the potential to foster long-term improvements in academic achievement and date in schoolhouse (10, 14, 17).
Theory of change. This figure depicts the recursive psychological and behavioral processes that the intervention is intended to ready in motion to promote a sustained positive effect on bookish and well-being outcomes.
This hypothesized theory of alter draws on inquiry amid higher students that supports the efficacy of targeted reappraisal letters for at least some social groups (13, xv, xvi, 18, 19). However, to appointment, most evidence is limited to selective universities, contexts in which a relatively small grouping of high-achieving young adults is navigating elite postsecondary institutions, and belonging concerns emerge only for specific, underrepresented groups. It is therefore unclear whether comparable reattribution messages are benign during boyhood and the widespread social challenges of middle school. The message that belonging concerns are common and surmountable may be even more critical during such a sensitive catamenia. All the same, developmental features of adolescence nowadays unique challenges to the external letters of interventions (i), and broader issues of stage–environment fit in middle schoolhouse may mute the benefits of intervening on belonging.
In add-on to the question of the effectiveness of promoting belonging during this developmental menstruum, the unique context of the centre school transition highlights two key theoretical questions. The first is the mechanisms of interventions to promote school belonging, especially in terms of ongoing processes that support sustained benefits. Preliminary evidence on belonging in higher suggests intervention impacts may operate through institutional engagement, such as likelihood of living on campus (16). Just even as research begins to elucidate processes integral to higher belonging, nosotros should not wait all of the same mechanisms to employ in early adolescence since theorized processes depend on features of the educational context. An instructive example is students' connection to their teachers. In college contexts where interactions are infrequent and various, initiating any contact with a professor may be valuable (sixteen), but center school students are placed in frequent and involuntary contact with teachers who hold much more than influence over students' twenty-four hours-to-day lives. Pupil–teacher relationships as well tend to exist less positive and personal than in elementary schoolhouse (where students most ofttimes interact with simply one teacher), every bit middle school teachers ready the tone for increased bookish evaluation and more than severe field of study for misbehavior (2, 10). Thus, building positive relationships with teachers is a key to experiencing a safe and more supportive educational environs, with potential consequences for whether and how students engage in middle school. Every bit reflected in Fig. 1, this leads to developmentally specific hypotheses well-nigh attitudinal and behavioral mechanisms, particularly related to school discipline.
Some other key theoretical question raised by belonging interventions in middle schoolhouse is the scope of the impacts of these interventions: For whom are such messages benign? In research in postsecondary settings, benefits are typically observed for groups at greatest risk for belonging worries, such as African American students in an elite establishment (6) and students from lower-income backgrounds at a flagship state academy (sixteen). Theoretically, belonging concerns in these university contexts are consistent with a "cultural mismatch" hypothesis, which suggests that inequality is produced when cultural norms in mainstream university institutions do not match the norms prevalent among social groups who are underrepresented in those institutions (xx). Though majority academy students may experience doubts near their belonging, these concerns are likely less acutely felt than specific, group-based worries of racial/ethnic minority or outset-generation students that "people like me" practice not belong (xvi). These theories regarding belonging at the university transition contrast markedly with those related to the middle schoolhouse transition, which specify a near-universal negative stage fit involving all students navigating new educational environments that do non fit their developmental phase (2).
It is unclear whether racial or socioeconomic factors moderate interventions to promote belonging at the centre school transition. Given social stereotypes employ to adolescents just as they practise to immature adults (21), belonging interventions might confer group-specific benefits for disadvantaged and underserved groups of all ages. However, these differences might instead be muted past more universal concerns about belonging experienced during adolescence and at the transition to centre school, or group differences may vary across multiple local middle schoolhouse contexts. Given ambiguity in potential explanations for moderation effects, it is important to thoroughly test our theory of belonging during the middle school transition for all students and for detail groups of students.
In summary, the challenges students experience in middle school provide an opportunity to address bookish disengagement by reappraising middle schoolhouse–specific concerns near belonging as normal and temporary. Doing so at this critical developmental catamenia (one) may set students on a more than positive trajectory for success precisely at the time when students typically begin a decline in academic engagement and performance at the beginning of heart school that continues through high school and college (xi). Moreover, the unique developmental and social organizational context of eye schools foregrounds important theoretical questions near school belonging and evolution: whether arduousness reappraisal messages are meaningful at this stage, what the diverse mechanisms that back up sustained benefits over time are, and how widely whatever benefits may apply. To test and explore these questions, nosotros conducted a large-scale randomized field trial in which we implemented a centre school–specific intervention, measured developmentally appropriate attitudinal and behavioral mechanisms, and did and then at the calibration of an entire urban school district to test how intervention effects might differ across different groups of students and school contexts.
The Current Study.
Since research done with college students on belonging may not directly employ to the center schoolhouse feel, we extend the broader theory underlying these approaches by testing a belonging intervention designed specifically for students making the transition to middle school, a near-universal milestone when structural changes and identity formation threaten belonging. We conducted our study in all middle schools in a Midwestern public school district (1,304 sixth-grade students). The largest racial/ethnic groups in the district'due south total Chiliad–12 student population were white (44%), Latino (19%), African American (18%), and Asian (ix%). Standardized test scores for the district were boilerplate amidst all districts in the nation, only at that place were very large achievement disparities for historically underserved groups, including African American and Latino students (see SI Appendix for details). Within each of the eleven schools, students were randomly assigned to the intervention or a control condition. The command exercises included the same amount of reading and writing but asked students to write nigh neutral middle schoolhouse experiences that were not related to school belonging.
We collected pre- and postintervention survey data on students' reported social and emotional well-beingness and official school transcripts of student attendance, disciplinary records, and grades. We used these measures to assess the intervention's impact on theoretically important psychological, behavioral, and academic outcomes. We likewise tested how the psychological and behavioral measures served as mechanisms explaining intervention effects on academic achievement. Finally, we used demographic information to exam theorized differences in intervention impacts by racial/ethnic groups and by gender.
Results
Residuum Between Conditions on Preintervention Variables.
All group differences on baseline data for the control and intervention groups were not statistically significantly different from goose egg and were smaller than 0.1 SD, indicating successful randomization to condition (for individual experimental balance tests, encounter SI Appendix, Tabular array S1).
Multiple Regression Models of Intervention Effects.
Analytic details.
To assess the effect of assignment to the belonging intervention, we regressed each issue of involvement on the following centered dissimilarity coded contained variables: experimental group (+1 for intervention and −1 for control), historically underserved minority group (+1 for African American, Latino, Native American, and multiracial students and −one for white and Asian students), gender (+1 for female and −1 for male), and all of the 2- and 3-way interactions between those variables. We as well included a set up of covariates, including English language learner status, inability status, free or reduced-cost luncheon eligibility (a proxy for family economic disadvantage), a preintervention measure of each dependent variable, and schoolhouse fixed furnishings. Random consignment at the student level, blocked by school, profoundly reduces the threat of bias in the study pattern, and the inclusion of additional covariates serves to increase the precision of each estimate. To account for cases missing baseline covariates, we used full information maximum likelihood methods for all analyses. Hither, nosotros written report on the estimated effects of the intervention, and total model results are included in SI Appendix, Table S2.
Results: Manipulation bank check.
To assess whether the intervention exercises had the intended immediate effect on students' reappraisal of adversity (Fig. 1), we included manipulation bank check questions for students at the end of each writing practise (SI Appendix, Appendix B) focusing on academic worries that undermine schoolhouse belonging (practise one) and relational worries (exercise 2). In each example, two questions assessed whether the students' assessments of previous sixth grade students reflected the letters that such worries are one) common and 2) temporary. Results of these manipulation checks indicated that intervention group students reappraised both academic and relational worries as expected by rating previous students' worries as more than common in sixth course and less common in seventh grade than the control group (details in SI Appendix).
Results: Main outcomes.
Results for students' well-being were in the expected directions, with students in the intervention group reporting higher levels of schoolhouse trust (z = 4.37, P < 0.001, β = 0.11), social belonging (z = 3.37, P = 0.001, β = 0.ten), and identification with schoolhouse (z = 2.eighty, P = 0.006, β = 0.06) and lower levels of evaluation anxiety (z = −2.74, P = 0.005, β = −0.07) at the cease of the school year. Fig. 2 displays Cohen'due south d estimates with 95% confidence intervals of the effect of intervention on each outcome. Results presented for individual outcomes using school fixed effects are consistent with results from multilevel models in which students are nested in schools.
Intervention effects on academic, behavioral, and well-being outcomes. Dots are Cohen'southward d event sizes; bars are 95% confidence intervals. SEs are clustered at the school level. Models also include controls for gender, race, prior achievement, disability status, complimentary or reduced-price dejeuner eligibility, English language learner status, and two- and 3-way interactions for race, gender, and experimental grouping. Ds & Fs = number of Ds and Fs received.
The intervention had substantively and statistically significant effects on students' grade point averages (GPAs) and the number of failing (D and F) grades. Results were in the expected direction, with students in the intervention grouping having higher GPAs (z = 2.08, P = 0.038, β = 0.03) and fewer Ds and Fs (z = −two.04, P = 0.042, β = −0.06). There were also effects on behavioral outcomes, such that students in the intervention group received fewer behavioral referrals (z = −2.89, P = 0.004, β = −0.39) and had fewer absences (z = −2.41, P = 0.016, β = −0.49). Behavioral referral results are robust to estimation with a negative binomial regression model. The magnitude of these impacts is small but meaningful. In amass, the intervention group experienced 545 fewer absences, 507 fewer behavioral referrals, and 67 fewer D or F grades across the school commune during the academic twelvemonth following implementation of the intervention (Fig. three). These intervention impacts correspond to a 12% reduction in absences, a 34% reduction in behavioral referrals, and an 18% reduction in receiving Ds or Fs, relative to control group levels, during the measurement period.
Differences in number and rate of absences, behavioral referrals, and Ds and Fs between intervention and control groups. The figure represents unadjusted aggregate intervention minus command grouping differences. Behavioral referrals and absences for each student are top-coded at 35 and 45 incidents, respectively, to account for outliers.
Estimated interactions with student demographics were generally in the favor of greater benefits for racial/ethnic minority and male students but not precise enough to reject the null hypothesis of no difference despite the large sample size in this written report. This may in function reflect relatively broad impacts (and smaller group differences) of the belonging message at this developmental stage when the threat to belonging is a largely universal experience.
Structural Equation Model.
To appraise mechanisms of intervention impacts, we tested elements of our theory of modify (Fig. 1) using structural equation modeling (Fig. 4). In this model, nosotros tested if the issue of the intervention on students' GPAs was mediated by effects on students' attitudes (school trust, social belonging, evaluation anxiety, identification with schoolhouse) and by furnishings on students' behaviors (number of behavioral referrals and absences).
Empirical path model. Path coefficients are standardized. SEs are amassed at the schoolhouse level. Solid lines betoken path coefficients statistically meaning at P < 0.05. Dashed lines signal path coefficients statistically meaning at P = 0.05 to P < 0.10. Path coefficients at P = 0.x or greater are not shown, merely all paths between variables were included in the model. The model also included controls for gender, race, prior achievement, disability status, free or reduced-toll lunch eligibility, English learner status, and 2- and 3-style interactions for race, gender, and experimental grouping. Both student well-being measures and behavior measures were immune to covary.
All predictors in the individual outcome models were included as predictors of each variable in the structural equation model (i.e., intervention; race; gender; interactions between intervention, race, and gender; and demographic covariates). The model included postintervention student behaviors and survey measures of student attitudes as mediators. We report estimates from a simple model omitting preintervention measures of those variables, as including these covariates did non alter conclusions. Our theory informs a fully saturated structural equation model which imposes no restrictions of possible paths. Direct intervention effects on student attitude measures were comparable to regression results reported above (SI Appendix). Below, we focus on the mediation pathways, but full model results are reported in SI Appendix and in SI Appendix, Table S4.
Well-being as a predictor of educatee behaviors.
Our theoretical model posits that positive pupil attitudes lead to fewer behavioral referrals and absences. In support of that hypothesis, we found that higher schoolhouse trust was associated with fewer behavioral referrals (z = −2.46, P = 0.014, β = −0.12) and fewer absences (z = −two.34, P = 0.019, β = −0.09). Higher levels of social belonging were marginally associated with fewer absences (z = −1.73, P = 0.083, β = −0.08).
Well-being and student behaviors as predictors of GPA.
Four independent variables in the model significantly predicted GPA: identification with school (z = 4.08, P < 0.001, β = 0.07), schoolhouse trust (z = 2.17, P = 0.030, β = 0.05), number of behavioral referrals (z = −5.46, P < 0.001, β = −0.23), and number of absences (z = −8.55, P < 0.001, β = −0.19).
Indirect effects and mediation.
Nosotros tested 2 types of indirect pathways. Nosotros kickoff tested the total indirect effect of intervention through well-being measures on beliefs outcomes (i.e., behavioral referrals and absences). The effect on behavioral referrals was mediated by well-beingness pathways (z = −2.50, P = 0.013); the combined indirect effects were 23% of the total outcome of the intervention. The effects on absences were too mediated by well-existence (z = −2.48, P = 0.013)—these indirect effects were xx% of the total intervention touch. 2d, we tested the total indirect effect of intervention through well-being and beliefs variables on GPA. These variables mediated the total impact on GPA (z = two.88, P = 0.004), and these indirect effects were 80% of the total issue, suggesting that much of the effect of the belonging intervention worked through changes in pupil attitudes and behaviors. Recognizing limitations of the SEM approach for identifying causal mediation effects due to confounding influences (22), we conducted supplemental tests of the average causal mediation furnishings for each potential mediator (SI Appendix), which led to a similar determination.
Discussion
The belonging intervention nosotros fielded helped adolescent students making the transition to center schoolhouse adopt a mindset that worries about belonging are mutual among their peers and tin be overcome with time and effort. In doing so, the intervention unlocked greater potential for positive well-existence and bookish outcomes for students. Our results trace how changes in students' perspectives nigh school and stronger appointment in school contribute to improved academic performance.
In that location are several of import implications of these findings. Beginning, although previous studies have focused largely on college students, nosotros show that reappraising adversity tin can exist effective during the earlier, and disquisitional, menses of adolescence. It is notable that brief reappraisal messages were benign given 2 particular challenges of adolescence: 1) a wide array of developmental and environmental belonging challenges that may overwhelm any messages to the opposite (ii, 3) and 2) adolescents' resistance to outside letters about how they should recall, peculiarly from adults (1). However, effectiveness of the adversity reappraisal arroyo demonstrates the value of targeted, contextually appropriate messages both for psychological well-existence, equally reflected in lasting increases in students' fundamental attitudes almost their schoolhouse and their identify inside it, and for ultimate academic success. Because we conducted this test in an entire district that shares demographic and accomplishment similarities with the nation as a whole (SI Appendix), these benefits may utilise in many other settings, but future research is needed to directly test the broader generalizability of these results.
Second, a key contribution of this study is in tracing intervention mechanisms through students' attitudes, behavioral indications of school engagement, and grades. The results advance the theory encapsulated in Fig. 1, highlighting the sequential importance of both a multifaceted psychological sense of belonging in middle school and behavioral engagement. In particular, our findings bespeak that fostering trust and positive relationships between middle school students and their teachers appears peculiarly of import for promoting students' bookish and behavioral outcomes. Connections to primal institutional agents are hypothesized to reinforce lasting psychological change and create recursive benefits of our cursory intervention. Hereafter research should build on this bear witness by exploring how teachers' actions sustain or subvert specific belonging intervention impacts in middle school.
A tertiary important implication of our results is that they suggest widespread benefits of the belonging intervention in middle schoolhouse. Nosotros did non find definitive evidence in support of the hypothesis of greater benefits for more socially marginalized groups. This may reflect about universal benefits of promoting belonging during middles school because it is a period of widespread developmental and environmental belonging challenges, compared with particular postsecondary settings where belonging worries may be most astute for particular groups (vi, 18, 19). That said, our estimates cannot rule out larger benefits for historically underserved minority and male students, and future research is needed to appraise these patterns independently in other settings. We note that the present school district was relatively well resourced, and despite some of the largest racial achievement gaps in the nation, we observed negligible demographic differences in belonging measures before the intervention; both factors may contribute to relatively wide and uniform benefits of increased school belonging.
Layered upon these iii fundamental implications is the novelty of scale in this study—a study of this arroyo across an entire public schoolhouse district—which provides unique insight about policy relevance. The reappraisal intervention was effective at calibration, and if a school district were to adopt the interventions for assistants, the toll for doing and then would be extremely low. Specifically, replication would require the press costs for the exercises and, potentially, the opportunity costs of allocating teachers' fourth dimension to administering the exercises rather than to some other classroom activity. Our estimate of the price of implementing this intervention suggests the typical school system could sustain delivery of the intervention'south 2 exercises at a toll of approximately $1.35 per student per academic year (see SI Appendix for details). This compares quite favorably to the typical costs of other social–emotional learning interventions reviewed by Belfield and colleagues (23), who found average costs of $581 per student across the 6 interventions that they reviewed.
Finally, though these outcomes highlight the practical importance of this intervention for reappraising eye school arduousness, they too call attention to the more prominent issue of addressing the social–psychological needs of middle school students more by and large. Given the significant personal, social, and economic consequences of dropping out of schoolhouse, greater attention should be directed toward preventing the procedure of detachment, which oft takes root at the start of middle schoolhouse. Indeed, poor attendance, misbehavior, and failing grades in sixth grade are early warning flags, which more oft than not predict students' dropping out of high school (24). With timely and credible reassurances of middle school students' belongingness, the intervention tested here tin can be useful for schools as an additional tool in their larger overall tool kit to help students succeed through the hard transition to center school.
Materials and Methods
Intervention.
The belonging materials were based on social–psychological theory (4) and designed by Goyer and colleagues (25), building on previous intervention research on reappraisal and social belonging (4, 13, 26). Small modifications for the local context were fabricated with feedback from preliminary surveys and focus groups conducted with prior sixth graders in the participating schoolhouse district. The concluding exercises (SI Appendix) featured quotations and stories ostensibly from a "survey" of the prior year'south sixth-grade students about their experiences. These accounts were designed to align with students' sentiments in focus groups but were written by researchers to highlight the core messages of the intervention. These letters included 1) reassurance that nearly all students at their schoolhouse feel they struggle to fit in and experience capable of succeeding in schoolhouse at first but, over fourth dimension, come to realize they do vest, 2) advice on and examples of means to engage in the school'due south social and academic environment, and 3) confirmation that other students and teachers are there to aid and support them. The offset do focused on concerns near belonging due to academics, while the 2d focused on concerns about interpersonal relationships with adults and peers. In both cases, to promote internalizing these messages, students were then asked to reverberate in writing on the information they read, because how they could address their own difficulties and how those difficulties volition become easier to manage over time. Ultimately, the intervention was meant to provide reassurance and communication from their peer group that difficulties occur for everyone entering middle schoolhouse (not just particular students or groups) and suggest that they, too, volition overcome these difficulties.
Study Implementation.
Using procedures approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Wisconsin, students were recruited to participate in the study (including student assent and parental consent) in August and September. Participating students were block randomized inside the 11 schools in the commune to the intervention or a control condition with identical embrace sheets; nonparticipating students were provided alternate only like private activities during the same fourth dimension. The 2 administrations were conducted early in the year (September and terminal calendar week of October or commencement week in Nov). The exercises were administered past regular teachers during advisable class fourth dimension (39% in homeroom and 61% in English language language arts classes). Teachers received training and instructions for distributing the materials and returned completed activities to researchers. Teachers were asked to administrate the practise as a normal reflective or gratis-writing activity and to refrain from describing information technology every bit inquiry or an assessment. Throughout all phases of implementation, students, parents, and teachers were non informed of the specific study hypotheses (the study was described generally as an endeavour to learn nigh middle school students' opinions) and were blind to experimental status.
Surveys were administered separately from the writing exercises by research staff to all sixth-grade students in September 1 to 2 wk earlier the first exercise and in May at the end of the school year.
Information.
Data were compiled from commune administrative records and student surveys administered at the kickoff and finish of the school year. Among participants randomized to status, nine% of observations were removed due to missing result data, non differential by status (χ2 = 0.xiv, degrees of liberty = 1, P = 0.71). The resulting sample consists of 1,304 participants for whom data from both fifth and sixth grades were available, representing 73% of the district'southward full sixth-class enrollment. Consistent with prior theoretical interpretations and empirical results (21), we also identified students from historically underserved groups (African American, Latino, Native American, and multiracial, 44% of the sample) every bit most at run a risk for belonging challenges and low academic achievement.
Student survey measures.
The pupil survey assessed the social and emotional well-existence of participants in terms of attitudes related to aspects of school experiences (schoolhouse trust, social belonging, evaluation anxiety, identification with school; ref. 27). All survey items use a five-point Likert scale ranging from one (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). School trust measured the degree to which students believe that adults in the school care most them and treat them fairly (α = 0.74; e.g., "The teachers at this schoolhouse treat students fairly"). Social belonging assessed a student's fit within school (α = 0.78; eastward.g., "I experience like I belong in my school"). Evaluation anxiety measured the negative thoughts students might have about evaluation in schoolhouse (α = 0.eighty; east.g., "If I don't exercise well on important tests, others may question my power"). Identification with schoolhouse captured the degree to which a person places importance on doing well at an activeness (α = 0.78; e.chiliad., "I desire to do well in schoolhouse").
School records.
Students' grades, behavioral referrals, and absences were coded from their official school records. For bookish outcomes (GPA, number of Ds and Fs) we used cumulative records from terms ii to 4 of the study year, which represent grades received later implementing the intervention exercises. For behavior outcomes, we similarly just included incidents that occurred after the implementation of the intervention exercises.
Supplementary Textile
Supplementary File
Acknowledgments
We thank Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen for sharing their belonging intervention materials with united states and for advice during the design of this project and Dominique Bradley, Evan Crawford, Rachel Feldman, Adam Gamoran, Jeffrey Grigg, Erin Quast, Jackie Roessler, and Alex Schmidt for assistance during the projection. Research reported here was supported by grants from the U.s. Section of Instruction (R305A110136) and the Spencer Foundation (201500044). The content is the responsibleness of the authors and does non necessarily represent the views of supporting agencies.
Footnotes
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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6697885/
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