The population of California continues to become increasingly diverse, and graduate programs in counselor preparation are dedicating more focus to curriculum and instruction that provide an inclusive space to explore diverse experiences and develop multicultural competence. One specific group contributing to the diversity of the national landscape…

Raising a child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is associated with increased family chaos and parent distress. Successful long-term treatment outcomes are dependent on healthy systemic functioning, but the family impact of treatment is rarely evaluated. The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS) is a social…

Match Beyond, launched in late 2013, offers accelerated degree programs through a pioneering approach that combines online education--provided by a partner, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)--with intensive coaching and support, including job-placement counseling. This small-scale strategy exposes the need for flexibility and personal…

This study sought to establish pupil and teacher views about a six-hour, whole-class mindfulness programme called Paws.b. Pupil post-intervention focus groups and teacher semi-structured interviews were used to ascertain what was interesting and useful about Paws.b, and how it could be developed. Audio recordings were transcribed and thematically…

This article presents the results of a small-scale research project that aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a part-time nurture group recently established in one primary school. Qualitative interviews were used to gather staff, pupil and parental perceptions about the nurture group. These focused not only on what difference the nurture group…

This paper examines what goes on in an improvising jazz combo in a secondary school in Scotland, where teaching follows Rogoff's three-stage sociocultural process, moving from an initial apprenticeship model through one of guided participation to one of participatory appropriation. Using a case study research design and interpretative…

This case study examined competence in two third-grade classrooms where teachers centered children's mathematical thinking in instructional decision-making. Offering a synthesis of sociocultural characterizations of competence, and drawing from a variety of data sources including classroom video, student work and assessments, and teacher…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a universal social skills program, the Social Skills Improvement System Classwide Intervention Program (SSIS-CIP; Elliott & Gresham, 2007), for students in first grade. Classrooms from 6 elementary schools were randomly assigned to treatment or business-as-usual control conditions.…

Efforts to improve the achievement gap between low-income children and their more affluent peers has led to the development of classroom interventions and curricula to increase executive functioning (EF) and social-emotional skills (SE), thought to be foundational for learning. The Second Step Early Learning (SSEL) curriculum is a commercially…

Children with autism demonstrate early deficits in joint attention and expressions of affect. Interventions to teach joint attention have addressed gaze behavior, gestures, and vocalizations, but have not specifically taught an expression of positive affect such as smiling that tends to occur during joint attention interactions. Intervention was…

Recent research has empirically demonstrated that young adults today are different from prior generations in their decreased empathy, increased narcissism, and decreased civic engagement. The formative years of young adulthood are a critical period for the development of civic values and civil ideologies, a time when college-age adults need to…

Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) is an empirically validated behavioral treatment for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The purpose of the current study was to assess the efficacy of PRT for ten cognitively-able preschool-aged children with ASD in the context of a short-duration (4-month) treatment model. Most research on PRT used…

The study reported here examined the effects of age, gender, and 4-H involvement in clubs on life skill development of youth ages eight to 18 over a 12-month period. Regression analyses found age, gender, and 4-H involvement significantly influenced life skill development. Results found that females have higher levels of competencies in life…

This research provides preliminary results of an exploratory case study conducted of the Camps on TRACKS program in an inclusive, municipal day-camp program in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Positive changes are demonstrated in the social skills of nine day campers with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who participated in the program. In this…

Social stories are a commonly empirically evaluated and implemented procedure to increase pro-social behaviors and decrease aberrant behaviors for individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Despite their widespread use there have been questions raised to the soundness of the research methodology and the results which have been…