Bullying is a public health concern warranting policy-level responses. Toward this end, states are enacting antibullying policies that require schools to be inclusive of parents. The current study examines parent-related challenges as schools implement newly amended antibullying legislation in Connecticut. School personnel data were analyzed from…

This exploratory case study aimed to understand how the sudden and abrupt transition to distance education due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic of 2020 highlighted the vast differences in levels of readiness for adopting distance education among the public-school districts throughout the State of Connecticut. It explores the reasons behind the…

Latinx/a/os have significantly increased in number in the US population. The advancement of mid-level Latinx/a/o professionals in higher education is not occurring at the same rate as the increase of the Latinx/a/o population in the country. This study aimed to examine the perceptions of mid-level Latinx/a/os administrators in their workplace…

Background: The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model offers a comprehensive framework for creating safe, healthy, and supportive school environments. However, few studies to date have examined the degree to which school policies represent a comprehensive and integrated approach to this goal beyond nutrition and physical…

This mixed methods approach study examined the experiences and perceptions of educators--both certified and non-certified--in one Connecticut elementary school, which serves students from kindergarten through sixth grade. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire developed by the researcher to respond to a Likert Scale, as well as open…

Practical educational assessment tools for adolescents champion student voice, use technology to enhance engagement, highlight discrepancies in school experience, and provide actionable feedback. We report a series of studies that detail an iterative process for developing a new school climate assessment tool: (1) item generation that centres…

America's urban communities have continued to face many challenges, especially the challenge of education, for several decades. Although factors such as racial injustice and community-driven problems have been used to explain the educational disparities in predominantly Black urban communities, many Black students, particularly males, have been…

Dual-process theories may be invoked to explain how physicians interact with, interpret, and draw inferences from clinical information. Stanovich and West's model articulates two kinds of thinking--intuitive-based System 1 and analytical-based System 2--which have been under-investigated with physicians in training. This qualitative study explored…

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) youth report hostile school climates and sexuality-based harassment, but scholarship has not clearly documented how these climates might be associated with college aspirations among this population. Given college has become a common aspiration for many high school youths, we sought…

In response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions of higher learning locked down their campuses and altered their ways of teaching. This article discusses changes made to courses at five highly varied public universities in New England participating in the multiyear Campuses for Environmental Stewardship (CES) program. The…

Adolescence is a critical period for social development, which COVID-19 has dramatically altered. Quarantined youths had limited in-person interactions with peers. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design to investigate changes in interpersonal dynamics and mental health during COVID-19. Specifically, we investigated whether the…

An extensive faculty partnership at the University of Connecticut (UConn) that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (E-Corps), combines the familiar elements of classroom…

Summer camp can be a setting for positive youth development, yet more understanding is needed about how camps measure youth development outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp--a medical specialty camp-- using the American Camp Association's Youth Outcomes Battery (YOB) over six years.…

Across public and private settings, about 250 preschoolers are suspended or expelled each day, according to a Center for American Progress analysis of the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health (Malik, 2017). The U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection has exposed serious inequities in exclusionary discipline practices.…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…