1. Evaluating a Tier I Resilience Program -- EmpowerU: A Preliminary Analysis
- Author
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Catherine Dorn, Jewel Jones Faison, and Lauren Sayler
- Abstract
Combatting learning loss in schools is as much a mental health issue as an academic one. With one in four students suffering from poor mental health since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for Tier I and Tier II resilience solutions is critical. Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive strategies focusing on academic recovery and prioritizing students' mental, emotional, and psychological well-being. EmpowerU is a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) program that delivers durable social-emotional skills and support at both Tier I and Tier II/III levels and is designed to build student resilience, coping skills and academic persistence. This program was framed using the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behavioral change constructed by Prochaska and DiClemente (1986) to measure pre- to post-student progress on goals students set themselves to improve their well-being, resilience, and motivation. This study focuses on the impact of EmpowerU's Tier I foundational prevention program that allows classroom teachers and other school support staff to deliver proactive instructional interventions that reduce at-risk behaviors, improve academic engagement/motivation, and enhance students' well-being so they can focus and learn. This quasi-mixed measure design with comparison groups (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004) was performed in a small rural school district in the U.S. Midwest (n=75; 38 fifth graders and 37 eighth graders) and suggested a decrease in at-risk behaviors after receiving the EmpowerU curriculum, as measured by the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener (SAEBRS) behavior screening tool. The EmpowerU-Starting Point Self-Reflection Assessment (SPA) tool, a vital part of the Tier I curriculum, was administered to classrooms in a phased implementation of students to compare key resilience indicator improvements of students who had not yet received EmpowerU instruction to those students who had received EmpowerU instruction. The comparison data from the pre-post SPA indicates a significant improvement in behavior among 5th graders (Cohen d= 0.783), and among 8th graders (Cohen d= 0.6634), when compared to their respective control groups. EmpowerU instruction positively impacts students' goals and well-being. However, it is recommended that a more robust experimental design be completed with rigorous statistical analysis to further confirm these preliminary results.
- Published
- 2024