School‐based prevention: current status and future challenges

Abstract

The field of school-based prevention of behavioral problems and promotion of caring and competence has grown dramatically in the past decade. This article provides a brief summary of current progress in the field and a discussion of future challenges and directions in research and practice. The article presents four future directions for research in the field of school-based prevention and health promotion: building the science of implementation and sustainability, building greater integration between educational policy and prevention, understanding factors influencing program integration with ongoing programming in schools, and the continued development and refinement of new programs and models. These future directions are driven by two significant research-to-service challenges faced both by practitioners and researchers that involve systems integration across developmental stages and levels of care. There is little question that further advances in the development and application of effective prevention practices and policies with schools and communities will require a much greater degree of collaboration in which researchers learn from educators and vice versa. A central part of this collaboration includes greater attention to the important role that prevention programs and policies can play in both increasing academic performance and resilience, and improving the quality of life of communities.

Australian and Maltese teachers' perspectives about their capabilities for mental health promotion in school settings

“…If current policy directives are to situate initiatives to promote students' positive mental health (such as social and emotional education) in school classrooms, is it acceptable that teachers' and schools' capabilities for enacting that new curriculum are considered, by the teachers themselves, to be less than optimal? Current literature on the science of sustainability point out that new initiatives that are poorly valued and poorly implemented at the school level are likely to fail, either in the short term, or as time passes and start-up resources such as project officers and additional funding are withdrawn (e.g., Greenberg, 2010;Scheirer, 2005;ShediacRizkallah & Bone, 1998).…”

“…Reports indicate that well-designed school-based programs that are well-implemented can have positive impacts on students' mental health (Adi, Killoran, Janmohamend, & Stewart-Brown, 2007;Greenberg, 2010;Weare & Nind, 2011). For example, a review by Wells, Barlow and Stewart-Brown (2003) identified evidence of effectiveness for programs that adopted a whole-school approach, were implemented continuously for more than a year, and were aimed at the promotion of mental health as opposed to the prevention of mental illness.…”

Why and How to Promote Adolescents’ Prosocial Behaviors: Direct, Mediated and Moderated Effects of the CEPIDEA School-Based Program

“…Personality psychologists, for instance, have pointed to a basic trait like agreeableness (i.e., the tendency to be likeable and harmonious in relation to others) as a major determinant of prosocial behavior (Caprara et al 2012;Graziano and Eisenberg 1997). Values related to self-transcendence, which emphasizes accepting others as equals and displaying concern for their welfare (i.e., universalism and benevolence), are also important motives for prosocial behaviors (e.g., Schwartz 2010).…”

“…In viewing self-efficacy beliefs as knowledge structures able to drive and sustain prosocial behavior, we placed special emphasis on their effects in enabling children to build positive interpersonal relationships with their peers in the classroom context. In addition, we also evaluated the effects of the CEPIDEA program on participants' agreeableness because it can be conceived as the dispositional tendency that may predispose adolescents to behave prosocially (Caprara et al 2012;Graziano and Eisenberg 1997 In addition, we considered the decline in aggression as a relevant outcome one may expect from promoting prosocial behavior. As stated above, previous findings suggest that prosocial behavior may exert a positive role in mitigating the destructive consequences of aggression on adolescents' development (Kokko et al 2006).…”

Relationships between students’ mental health and their perspectives of life at school

“…Schools are central in the lives of youths and families, can capitalise on the availability of children and youth, and have staff with the professional expertise to recognise and respond to the systemic and developmental nature of students' social and emotional needs (Greenberg, 2010;Pullmann et al, 2013;Weare and Gray, 2003).…”