Changing Classroom Climate and Other School Micro-Contexts to Promote Children’s Social-Emotional and Academic Development: The 4Rs Setting-Level Study
Project Summary
One of the most important developmental contexts of middle childhood is school classrooms. Theory and empirical research conceptualizing and testing key features of classrooms as interrelated and dynamic systems is lacking, and little is known about the sensitivity of classroom systems to intervention-related change. In this study, we propose four interrelated domains of a classroom system and test whether and how a whole school social-emotional and literacy intervention, the 4Rs Program, positively influences change in this system. The proposed classroom system includes four domains: (1) Teacher Affective and Pedagogical Processes and Practices, (2) Child Behavioral Dispositions and Normative Beliefs, (3) Teacher-Student Relationships, and (4) Classroom Emotional and Instructional Climate. The 4Rs Program (Reading, Writing, Respect & Resolution) is a universal, school-based intervention that provides training and ongoing coaching for teachers in grades K-5 to effectively teach a comprehensive curriculum in literacy development, conflict resolution and intergroup understanding. The program uses high quality children's literature to provide a pedagogical link between the teaching of conflict resolution and the teaching of fundamental academic skills. The proposed study includes approximately 2400 low income, urban, racially and ethnically diverse children from 270 classrooms in 18 NYC public elementary schools. Advanced multilevel modeling techniques will be employed to estimate the impact of the 4Rs Program and other key school-level characteristics on change in the classroom system. This work will inform future analysis of the impact of the classroom system on child-level outcomes and will have direct implications for policymakers and practitioners both locally and nationally.
Contact
- Principal Investigator: Joshua L. Brown & Stephanie Jones (Fordham University)
- Department:
Funding
Funder: William T. Grant Foundation
Project Amount: $524,251 for August 2006 - August 2008
Opportunities for Student Involvement
Opportunities exist on this project for (1) supervised school-based research experiences including surevy data collection with elementary school childre, their classroom teachers, and their parents, as well as in-depth classroom observations, and (2) data entry, cleaning and management activities.