Underserved Students Research Articles

Increasing Access and Reach: Implementing School-Based CBT for Anxiety in Students with ASD or Suspected ASD

ABSTRACT Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are at high risk for experiencing clinical anxiety, interfering with friendships, family functioning, and school performance. Many children with ASD and anxiety have difficulty accessing appropriate mental health care and schools are often the ideal location to receive services. The implementation of evidence-based practices to manage anxiety in students with ASD in schools is just beginning. The primary purpose of the current study was to train interdisciplinary school providers to effectively deliver a 13 session evidence-based, group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program adapted for schools [Facing Your Fears – School-Based program (FYF-SB)], to students with anxiety and ASD, or suspected ASD, using a quasi-experimental design. Provider CBT knowledge, feasibility, and effectiveness of FYF-SB were examined. Twenty-five interdisciplinary school providers, from nine elementary/middle urban public schools were trained to deliver FYF-SB. Twenty-nine students (aged 8–14), with clinically significant anxietyASD, or ASD characteristics, participated. Provider CBT knowledge significantly improved following FYF-SB training. Six of 9 school teams exceeded the minimum standard for acceptable treatment adherence (80%) and 8 of the 9 participating teams delivered adequate intervention dosage for student sessions, although parent attendance was more variable. School providers indicated that FYF-SB was feasible, acceptable, and appropriate for participating students. Parents and students reported significant reductions in student anxiety following program participation. Implementation and treatment outcomes are encouraging and suggest that traditionally underserved students with ASD or ASD characteristics may be able to access much needed mental health interventions in their own communities.

Digital Proficiency and Psychological Well-Being in Online Learning: Experiences of First-Generation College Students and Their Peers

The study examines the role of digital proficiency in relation to psychological well-being of a vulnerable population—first-generation college students (FGS)—and their counterparts, continuing-education students, in online learning during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Informed by positive computing and FGS studies, this paper empirically tests a model of three key influencing factors by using a data sample (n = 309) collected from a minority-serving university in the U.S. in April 2020. Our data analysis confirms that FGS underperformed in digital proficiency, compared to their peers. Moreover, digital proficiency had a significant effect on individual psychological well-being, regardless of a student’s generational status. Our paper contributes to the positive computing research by empirically demonstrating the association between users’ technology competence and psychological well-being. Practically, our findings highlight the importance of implementing educational programs and policies to promote the digital skills and well-being of underserved students such as FGS in college education.

Comparing Technology-Based Reading Intervention Programs in Rural Settings

An ever-growing call for the use of evidence-based practice has come up against the logistical hurdles of a lack of resources and expertise, particularly in rural schools that work with historically underserved students. Although integrated learning systems (ILSs)—stable and likely requiring fewer resources than personnel—do not offer a complete solution to this problem, they may serve as a useful resource, particularly for milder literacy deficits. And yet, there is a surprising lack of empirical research on their effectiveness, particularly for contemporary programs. This study examines the effectiveness and efficiency of two popular ILSs, Lexia and iStation, both of which use a blended model of computer and traditionally delivered instruction, and compares them against business-as-usual (BAU) conditions across a variety of outcomes. Results suggest both programs resulted in meaningful growth across an academic year of implementation, although generally no more so than that observed in the BAU condition. However, Lexia yielded the highest level of instructional efficiency. That is, despite comparable growth across conditions, Lexia required less staff time to implement per student participant.

Brillio Technologies and ‘Bringing Smiles’

Firms are under constant pressure to minimize negative externalities and increase positive externalities. These pressures are translating into the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by firms. CSR is emerging as a widespread business activity, and firms are undertaking CSR voluntarily. This case provides a brief discussion of the scenario of CSR in India. It goes on to discuss the educational activities undertaken by firms under their CSR programmes. Brillio Technologies is one such company that has adopted CSR voluntarily, from the very first year of operations, in 2015. CSR actions of Brillio go beyond the legal requirements as it achieved remarkable results in community engagement and employee engagement. CSR activities of companies are internal to the organization, such as reducing and recycling waste, or external to the organization, such as reducing its carbon footprint. While Brillio undertook numerous internal activities, its focus was on external activities through its flagship programme ‘Bringing Smiles’. The programme successfully reached 100,000 underserved students through STEM education by 2020—the company partnered with NGOs and schools to achieve its social goals. Participants need to evaluate the existing programme and strategize for achieving the goals. They are posed with three choices: (a) increase employee volunteering hours, (b) partner with more NGOs and (c) recommend a foundation for taking up CSR activities. These strategies could be a huge drain on the resources, hence there is need for a cost-benefit analysis of the alternatives.

Redefining Basic Needs for Higher Education: It's More Than Minimal Food and Housing According to California University Students.

A student-specific definition of basic needs for higher education is warranted to inform programs and policies for underserved students. The purpose of this study was to: 1) explore how students define basic needs, 2) understand experiences of housing insecurity, and 3) understand experiences of food insecurity within the context of housing insecurity. Qualitative research elicited student perceptions of basic needs and experiences of housing and food insecurity. Focus group discussions were conducted at 5 University of California campuses between February and March 2019. Undergraduate (n = 37) and graduate (n = 21) students were recruited from campus basic needs centers. Each student completed a brief survey. Researchers conducted 11 focus groups using a semi-structured interview guide. Transcripts were coded to identify themes. Students were female (76%), age 23.6 (SD = 5.8) years; 46% were Pell grant recipients; and 52% were first-generation college students. Most had experienced food insecurity (98%) and 26% had experienced homelessness. Eight themes were identified: 1) students define basic needs as more than minimal food and shelter and as the responsibility of students and the university, 2) students encounter multifaceted housing insecurity issues, 3) affording rent is a priority that most often leads to experiencing food insecurity, 4) transportation barriers interfere with meeting students' basic needs to succeed as students, 5) students with nontraditional characteristics, graduate students, and out-of-state students face unique challenges in meeting basic needs, 6) limited financial aid and lack of financial aid guidance are barriers to meeting basic needs, 7) fees contribute additional challenges to students meeting basic needs, and 8) additional university basic needs services are essential. A student-informed definition of basic needs included food, housing, mental health, sleep, hygiene, and transportation. This understanding of basic needs can inform future research, programs, and policy to address housing insecurity in higher education.

Narrowing the College Readiness Gap: Assessing GEAR UP Iowa's Intermediate Impact on Underserved Students

Earning a postsecondary degree or credential is increasingly important for individuals to succeed in the rapidly changing, global economy. College access programs like Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) serve to increase high school graduation and college readiness for underserved youth. This quasi-experimental study examined intermediate GEAR UP outcomes for GEAR UP Iowa 2.0 students (N = 4,845) and non-GEAR UP comparison students (N = 25,926). Among students who had participated in the program from 7th through 10th grade, GEAR UP students demonstrated higher attendance rates and increased standardized test scores with more impact shown among individuals from lower socioeconomic families. The implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

A Higher Calling: Toward a More Spacious Role for Academic Advisors

A Higher Calling: Toward a More Spacious Role for Academic Advisors

The Rural/Nonrural Divide? K–12 District Spending and Implications of Equity-Based School Funding

In the 2013–2014 school year, the state of California implemented a new equity-minded funding system, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). LCFF increased minimum per-pupil funding for educationally underserved students and provided greater autonomy in allocating resources. We use the implementation of LCFF to enrich our understanding of rural school finance and explore the implications of equity-based school finance reform across urbanicity (i.e., between rural, town, suburban, and urban districts) and between rural areas of different remoteness. Drawing on 15 years of financial data from California school districts, we find variation in the funding levels of rural districts but few differences in the ways resources are allocated and only modest evidence of constrained spending in rural areas. Our results suggest that spending progressivity (i.e., spending advantage of higher-poverty districts) has increased since LCFF, although progressivity is lowest in rural districts by the end of the data panel.

Suicidal Ideation among Youths at Risk of School Dropout: Impact of Student Demographics, Stressors, and Academic Self-Concept

In the United States, suicidal ideation is an issue for high school-age youths. Research supports that youths who have learning difficulties and who are at risk of high school dropout are at greater risk for suicidal ideation. Although alternative high schools address both student academics and emotional health, they are underused, nonclinical settings for understanding and addressing suicidal ideation. This study aimed to examine the impact of student identity, external stressors, and academic self-concept on suicidal ideation among sexual and ethnic minority and underserved students enrolled in an alternative education public high school. The student sample (N = 103) completed a onetime survey comprised of the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior, the Cultural Assessment of Risk of Suicide, the Coddington Life Events Scale for Adolescents, and the Piers Harris 2. Results of hierarchical linear regression indicated that identifying as nonheterosexual and experiencing discrimination were associated with greater student reporting of suicidal ideation. Identifying as Latino and other non-White was associated with lower reporting of suicidal ideation. Controlling for student demographics and external stressors, positive academic self-concept was associated with a lower reporting of suicidal ideation. Findings have future implications for health social work, suicide prevention and intervention, and education policy.

A Call to Action: Lessons Learned from a Book Club about Supporting and Mentoring Underrepresented STEM Students

The participation rates of historically underserved students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) remains an important concern, as inequitable access in the form of treatment and opportunities within the education system is a constant struggle. To unpack this issue, a book club was organized as an intervention at a university in the southeastern part of the United States. Findings from the book club intervention suggest that university faculty should (a) understand the importance of continuous early exposure to STEM, (b) nurture underrepresented students’ STEM identities, (c) form collaborations and partnerships with STEM professionals from underrepresented groups, and (d) commit to mentoring STEM underrepresented students. In this article, we argue that these objectives can be accomplished through the exposure to STEM professionals from underrepresented groups and the integration of STEM research in undergraduate coursework. Finally, we share the lessons we learned with respect to how the book served as our call to action in our professorial duties.

Outreach is not a "one-shot”: Critical approaches to outreach

In this column, the author explores how outreach to underserved students can be achieved through a critical librarianship approach, which first requires centering students’ voices in order to properly establish a relationship of trust.

A Look in the Mirror: Unveiling Human Rights Issues Within Social Work Education.

Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, this study explored the financial effect of the field practicum requirement on BSW students. This project was conducted at a mid-sized university in the Southwest region of the United States where current and recent field students responded to surveys and social work field instructors and faculty participated in interviews. The study describes financial burdens and reveals human rights issues affecting nontraditional and underserved students that have answered the call to a career of serving the most vulnerable in society. This study fills a gap in the literature and provides recommendations for further research and anti-oppressive approaches for the academy to employ in the education of future social work professionals.

The neoliberal discourse in Latin American higher education: A call for national development and tighter government control

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), we explored how educational leaders and policymakers in Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Argentina address complex issues while responding to – and in fact, developing – broader understandings (discourses) on the role of higher education in Latin America. Fairclough’s (1993) theory of discourse underscores that language is a social practice, socially and historically situated, and encompassing social identities, relations, and systems of knowledge and beliefs. Therefore, discourses, which are represented by all kinds of texts, exercise power because they can produce, reproduce, and transform social structures, including education policy. This study uncovers the nuances of the tensions that globalized discourses such as neoliberalism in particular face when met with national and local needs in Latin American higher education. These tensions need to be addressed in order to design policies that could effectively close the equity gap in the region amidst massification and the uncontrolled proliferation of private universities in many countries, offering access to underserved students to higher education but of questionable quality. This study suggests research like this is important in order to understand how discourses that are deemed global play out at national and local levels and possibly, to uncover alternatives to the status quo.

Activation of the Multicontext model in a field-based program for traditionally underserved students

This paper presents results from our multi-year NSF-IRES program: a four-week, field-based summer program involving the participation and mentorship of U.S. undergraduate geoscience cohorts to develop knowledge and skills in sedimentary geology while immersed in an international research collaboration. Student participants in our program are predominantly first-generation college students, largely from historically underrepresented groups in STEM, and most have a “high context” orientation. Academic culture (especially in STEM) tends to favor the “low-context” approach of scientific inquiry (task-oriented, linear, individuated), but many students bring different cultural values from personal or community-based experiences that tend to be higher-context (process-oriented, systems-thinking, integrated). Herein we discuss how activating a Multicontext model—one that recognizes and includes a broader spectrum of “knowing and doing”—resulted in measurable advances, especially for higher-context students, from the first to second year of the program in terms of self-efficacy in field and analytical competencies, as well as in student engagement. To balance cultural frameworks, specific implementations in the field curriculum included (1) a non-linear, learning cycle-structured orientation prior to fieldwork that clearly introduces research objectives early, and promotes scientific inquiry and peer-to-peer interaction, (2) frequent discussions during fieldwork to place low-context tasks such as making field measurements into a broader context, and (3) a pre-defined mini-project option that allows students to set an individual intent for growth as a scientist in this experience. Leaders of similar programs to NSF IRES that support undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in STEM research might enhance program quality, student engagement, and inclusivity by recognizing and adapting to a broader spectrum of culturally-based learning perspectives. This study represents a small segment within the Multicontext system for redefining and expanding diversity and inclusion—a theory that has broad implications for the entirety of academic culture.

Constructing authority: Using the ACRL Framework to connect with underserved students

At the community college level, rethinking library instruction in light of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education often feels like a puzzle. But like many things we do at the library, it all comes back to helping our most vulnerable students. In this column, we outline our library’s outreach efforts to engage with two intersecting and underserved groups: returning adult students and students in the LGBTQ+ community. As job markets become more competitive, older adults are returning to community colleges in order to obtain degrees and earn credentials. As awareness and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community increases, so does the need to provide supportive services for these students. At our library, engaging with the Framework provided an opportunity to design innovative instruction and programming.

Agility and Assessment in the Age of COVID‐19: How Fast Can a Community College Dance?

Agility and Assessment in the Age of COVID‐19: How Fast Can a Community College Dance?

Correction notice to Museums an Avenue for Enhancing Engagement and Educational Outcomes for Underserved Students

Correction notice to Museums an Avenue for Enhancing Engagement and Educational Outcomes for Underserved Students

An Analysis of U54 Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity (PACHE) Publications.

Using document review, we identified 963 publicly accessible NIH RePORT publications across the 16 funded U54 Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity (PACHE) center programs. Using the 868 publications that met criteria, we determined the frequency of publications across the funded PACHE programs by longevity; reported the frequency of studies focused on cancer health disparities; determined the proportion of institutions serving underserved health disparity populations, underrepresented students (ISUPS), and co- and lead-authored works; and categorized the scope of studies by commonalities in their reported purposes. The study findings showed that (1) center longevity was not necessarily related to the number of publications; (2) less than 20% of studies focused on cancer health disparities (CHD); (3) ISUPU co-authors appeared in 72% of publications, while lead authors were 48%; (4) 6.07% publications focused on cancer diagnosis, screening, treatment, and risk factors; 57.5% studies were mechanistic; 21.53% focused on the impact of interventions on health promotion, prevention, and quality of life; 5.62% studies were related to educational outcomes; and 9.28% studies were classified as epidemiological/survey outcomes. One of the primary purposes of PACHE centers is CHD research. Thus, we advocate increasing the frequency of CHD-focused publications. We suggest increasing the number of ISUPU lead-authored papers. To align with the PACHE mission, we also recommend increasing the number of studies focused on cancer diagnosis, screening, treatment, and risk factors and the impact of interventions on health promotion, prevention, and quality of life. To demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of training, increasing the number of educational outcome studies is also proposed.

In Pursuit of Engaged Learning with Latinx Students: Expanding Learning beyond Classrooms through Performance-Based Engagements

Background/ContextUrban public high schools serving low-SES communities historically have underserved nondominant culturally and linguistically diverse students by divesting them of social and cultural resources and delivering impoverished curriculum and instruction. Associated with such subtractive schooling, many Latinx youth have suffered from academic disengagement and limited academic success and futures.Focus of StudyThis study investigates one school's efforts to promote Latinx students’ academic and intellectual engagement through a schoolwide system of performance-based assessments (PBAs) that featured meaningful, embodied, discourse-rich activities, many of which occurred beyond classrooms during after-school hours. We examine the scope of PBA opportunity across the school and the ways educators enacted PBAs to optimize nondominant students’ engagement. We also report the organizational structures that enabled the PBA system and some implementation challenges/tensions.SettingThis study features Mario Molina High, a small urban Title 1 public California school serving 262 students, of whom 90% received free/reduced-price lunches, 76% were Latinx, and 33% were emergent bilinguals. MHS emphasized an explicit social justice mission and had a record of some success with Latinx students, as measured by graduation and college-going rates, course completion for admission to California universities, and standardized achievement tests.Research DesignWe treat MHS as a “critical case,” holding strategic importance to the problem on which the study focuses. Using qualitative methods, we employed a bi-level design to uncover links between school organization and instruction.Data Collection and AnalysisWe drew on 240 hours of school observations, with special attention to PBA enactments. We also drew on 45 interviews with key stakeholders; faculty survey responses; school documents; student work; and email list communications. Our analysis involved thematic coding, memos, metamatrices, and situated/discourse analyses.Findings/ResultsMHS's PBAs drew school actors out of the spatial/temporal boundaries of classrooms and fostered serious, spirited, interactive spaces for learning. Three aspects of PBAs—authentic audiences, embodied action, and dialogic argumentation—transformed these assessments into what we call performance-based engagements (PBEs). This shift enhanced students’ engagement and contributed to a schoolwide culture of engaged learning. We argue that sustained participation in PBEs encouraged students to experiment with and adopt expanded practice-based identities as critical thinkers and change agents.Conclusions/RecommendationsOur study suggests how the schoolwide implementation of dynamic, innovative, and culturally sustaining forms of assessment can expand and revivify traditional school learning in ways that promote the academic and intellectual engagement of historically underserved students.

Community-as-pedagogy: environmental leadership for youth in rural Costa Rica

This mixed-methods study examines an informal place- and community-based environmental education program implemented for rural, underserved high school students in Costa Rica’s bio-culturally diverse Osa Peninsula. Using a community-as-pedagogy framework built on Paulo Freire’s concept of a problem-posing education, we investigate how pedagogically-positioned social relationships mediate students’ knowledge, perceptions, and leadership. We find linkages between existing community resources and endogenous environmental leadership, and suggest how making those connections strengthens students’ perceptions of their social relationships and their ability to create meaning and take action. Through the program, students show an increase in knowledge about their local environment. They critically and socially engage with that new information, further developing networking skills in the context of community-informed environmental issues. After participating in the program, the students describe environmental leadership as requiring persistence, forethought, and a willingness to care for both the environment and community.