Schools and Community Work Group

Overview

The Schools and Community Work Group studies K-12 school-based interventions and partnerships, especially in low-income communities. Communities are an important context for educational outcomes as well as service-learning and other school research. Schools that are effective in preparing young people for work and college and in transmitting cultural and civic values should have measurable impacts on society, local families, and communities. Likewise, schools are critical institutions for human and community development.

For many decades, schools have been the setting of choice for the identification of children in need and the development, implementation, and testing of prevention and health promotion programs. Work Group members include Carolyn Hughes (co-coordinator) and Maury Nation (co-coordinator), Joseph Cunningham, Alex Hurder (Law), Doug Perkins, Dylan Swift, Kimberly Bess, Patricia Conway, Carrie Hanlin, Diana Jones, Claire Smrekar, Liz Kahn, Krista Grinney, Barbara Washington, and Gaylan Brown. The group also draws on the vast expertise and relationships with schools and educators developed by faculty throughout Peabody College.

Sample Research

Maury Nation, Douglas Perkins, Kimberly Bess, Paul Speer, Dan Cooper, and Leslie Collins are part of the Nashville Urban Partnership Academic Center of Excellence (NUPACE).  Its mission is to promote an academic/community partnership that integrates prevention science with community action in order to reduce violence among youth 10-24 years of age in Nashville/Davidson County TN. The project brings together an interdisciplinary group of investigators with broad and cross-cutting expertise from Meharry Medical College, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University, and the Metro Public Health Department to advise and consult with public agencies, Alignment Nashville, other community representatives, and youth to incorporate scientific methods and evidence-based, practice knowledge, developmentally and culturally appropriate strategies, and neighborhood specific information into youth violence prevention surveillance, programming, organization, and research and evaluation methods. The project utilizes a strength-based approach, focused on primary prevention, and employing a developmental-ecological model that examines youth violence within the context of family, peers, schools, and community. It employs a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model that promotes and supports inter-disciplinary collaboration among academic and community partners in carrying out planning, research and evaluation, communication, and dissemination activities on effective youth violence prevention interventions, outcomes, and best practices. Projects include a 5-year action-study to improve middle school climates to reduce bullying and violence, a 3-year study of the work and relationships among the local network of organizations addressing youth violence, and development of a comprehensive geographic database of social, educational, and health indicators.  For more information about NUPACE, please visit http://nupace.mmc.edu/whatisnupace.html

Carolyn Hughes's research focuses on providing support to high school students from high poverty backgrounds to increase their school completion, enrollment in post secondary education, and post-school employment. Carolyn currently leads the Peabody College Service-Learning Mentoring Program in which Vanderbilt students serve as mentors to youth attending high poverty high schools and after-school programs. Her model of student support derives from Bronfenbrenner's (1977) concept of individual-small group-organizational-community levels of interaction and the views held by Masten, Coatsworth (1998) and others that individual-school-home-community protective factors contribute to building resilience in the face of adverse conditions. Student populations addressed include both at-risk students and students with disabilities. Professor Hughes's research methods include direct intervention, surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and follow-up studies. For further information see: Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32, 513-531, and Masten, A., & Coatsworth, J. (1998). The development of competence in favorable and unfavorable environments: Lessons from research on successful children. American Psychologist, 53, 205-220.

Maury Nation's research includes a major focus on school-based drug, alcohol, and violence prevention programming, and the prevention, treatment and typologies of bullying in particular. His recent work has focused on the characteristics of, and the short-term and long-term consequences for children who are chronically victimized, and the role of power differentials in development of bully/victim relationships. Current school-related projects include: a) developing and testing using international data, an ecological model for understanding bullying and victimization; b) collaborating with the Nashville Prevention Partnership with a focus on preventing under-aged alcohol and drug use among middle-school students.

Joseph Cunningham is director of Nashville GEAR UP, which is a collaborative effort of Vanderbilt University and the Metro Nashville Public Schools to work with teachers, students, and parents to enhance the chances that students in poverty will successfully complete high school and go on to post-secondary education. The foci of the efforts are on building system capacity in middle and high schools through professional development work with teachers, providing counseling services to middle and high school students, fostering and sustaining parent involvement in schools and in their children's education, increasing the expectations and aspirations of students and their families, and providing information and support for post-secondary education. The project is going into its sixth year and will emphasize parent involvement activities and support for high school students as they transition to college as means of maintaining the efforts of the schools in the academic and counseling areas. The intent is to foster mechanisms that will maintain the gains of the early years of the project.

Sample Publications

Carter, E. W., Wehby, J. H., Hughes, C., Johnson, S., Plank, D., Barton-Arwood, S. & Lunsford, L. (2005). "Preparing adolescents with high-incidence disabilities for high-stakes testing with strategy instruction." Preventing School Failure, 49, 55-2.

Cunningham, P.B., Henggeler, S.W., Limber, S.P., Melton, G.B., & Nation, M.A. (2000). "Patterns and correlates of gun ownership among non-metropolitan and rural middle school students." Journal of Child Clinical Psychology, 29, 432-442.

Hughes, C., & Carter, E. W. (2006). Success for all students: Promoting inclusion in secondary schools through peer buddy programs. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Hurder, A.J. (1997). "The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Right to Learn." Human Rights, 24, 16.

Nation, M., Crusto, C., Kumpfer, K., Wandersman, A., Seybolt, D., Morrissey-Kane, E., & Davino, K. (2003). "What works in prevention: The characteristics of effective prevention programs." American Psychologist, 58, 449-456.

Speer, P.W., & Perkins, D.D. (2003). "Community organizations, agencies and groups: Significance for children and teens." In J.W. Guthrie (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Ed.)(pp. 431-441). New York: Macmillan.