Child Psychology Commons^™

Building Wellbeing Through Nature And Adventure For Justice-Involved Youth, Lewis Kogan, Meagan Ricks, Janna Coulter, Miranda Margetts, Lori Butterfield, Ben Ukoh-Eke

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Justice-involved youth often experience elevated levels of stress, mental health challenges, and reduced access to positive developmental opportunities. A nature- and adventure-based youth development program designed to strengthen resilience, self-efficacy, nature-connectedness, and well-being among justice-involved youth was piloted in 2025 to address these challenges. Pilot findings indicated improvements in resilience, self-efficacy, hopefulness, and connectedness to nature.

Factorial Structure Of A Bilingual Progress Monitoring Tool For Mindfulness Interventions, Andrea V. Molina Palacios

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are an increasingly popular option for schools to support youth in each of the multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). MBIs have proven to increase attention, help with emotion regulation, decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression, and overall increase students’ wellbeing with a cost-effective package that makes it affordable for schools to implement. Moreover, MBIs have also proven to be effective for Hispanic youth who are at a higher risk of experiencing low access to mental health care and higher levels of poverty, which puts them at risk for dropping out and having low academic achievement. However, there …

A Policy Analysis Of Higher Education Support For Foster Youth In The Colorado Child Welfare System, Krystal Robles

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This policy analysis examines how two Colorado laws, House Bill 22-1374 (Foster Care Success Act), and Senate Bill 22-008 (Higher Education Support for Foster Youth), aim to improve educational outcomes and long-term stability for youth who age out of the foster care system. Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) and Resilience Theory are used in this paper to examine how these policies address systemic inequities, promote resilience, and offer protective factors that support educational attainment. Using policy review, state policy comparison, stakeholder interviews, and community perspectives, I evaluated how the implementation, effectiveness, and limitations of these bills shape real-world impact. The findings …

Belonging, Safety, And Well-Being: An Ecological Systems Review Of School-Based Supports For Transgender And Gender-Diverse Students, Lauren Deluca

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) youth continue to experience significant challenges in school belonging, safety, and mental health outcomes within K-12 educational settings. At the same time, literature highlights the important role affirming school environments play in promoting resilience and well-being among TGD students. The purpose of this systematized review was to synthesize the current literature examining the school-based factors associated with belonging, safety, and well-being for TGD students across ecological systems, as well as identify the barriers that hinder educators in implementing affirming practices in schools, and how school professionals navigate these barriers. Guided by Minority Stress Theory and Ecological …

Understanding And Responding To Childhood Trauma In The Classroom, Kara L. Ganzer

Master of Arts in Human Services

This capstone explored childhood trauma as a significant public health and educational issue because of its widespread impact on children’s development, learning, behavior, and educational experiences. A review of the current literature was conducted to examine adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the neurobiological and developmental effects of childhood trauma, its impact within educational settings, and the trauma-informed approaches for supporting students who have experienced adversity. The literature suggested that childhood trauma can disrupt brain development, executive functioning, emotional regulation, attention, memory, and stress-response systems, contributing to academic, behavioral, and social-emotional challenges within the classroom. Findings also highlighted the important role schools …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

The Role Of Social Emotional Learning In Utah’S Implementation Of Essa, Sharon Walles

Transforming Communities

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), as a policy, offers an additional tool to address the escalating adolescent mental health crisis. By acknowledging the critical link between student well-being, academic success, and evidence-based practices, this policy analysis explores how funding from ESSA can be leveraged to integrate Social Emotional Learning (SEL) within Utah’s schools. Experts, educators, and parents can be voices to combat misinformation surrounding the recent politicization of SEL and its implementation. This analysis connects Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory, which highlights the interconnectedness of the environment, with the importance of prioritizing mental health within schools to help adolescents with issues …

Examining The Relationship Between Trauma-Informed Safety Drill Practices And School-Level Chronic Absenteeism In Maine Secondary Schools, Tina Nightingale

Dissertations

School safety practices can influence students' perceptions of safety, emotional well-being, and engagement in the educational environment; however, limited research has examined whether trauma-informed safety drill practices are associated with measurable educational outcomes. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study was to examine the relationship between trauma-informed safety drill practices and school-level chronic absenteeism in Maine middle and high schools. Guided by trauma-informed care, adolescent neurodevelopment, and Protection Motivation Theory, the study investigated whether higher levels of trauma-informed implementation of safety drills, as measured by the Trauma-Informed Safety Drill Practices Index (TISDPI), were associated with lower rates of chronic …

Interview With Orca Award Winner Ross Thompson, Unl Psychology; Childhood Emotional Development, Mark Griep, Ross Thompson

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Ross Thompson was awarded the ORCA in 2000. He was born in 1954 in Madison, Wisconsin. He traveled nearly 2000 miles west to earn a bachelor’s in psychology magna cum laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles. Then, he traveled east over 2200 miles to earn a master’s and doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 1981, he joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an assistant professor of psychology and rose quickly through the ranks while studying childhood emotional development. In 2003, three years after earning the ORCA, Ross left UNL to join the psychology …

Urban Indian Parents' Occupational Perceptions Of Play And Governance Of Children's Excessive Screen Time Preferences And Behaviours In This Digital Era, Joanna Priyadarshini Udaykumar, Tony Sam George

International Journal of Playwork Practice

Abstract

Children’s innate urge to engage in joyous, self-directed, meaningful, iterative activities embodies their unique play experiences and facilitates their holistic development. However, the exponential growth of digital technology in an urbanized world has transformed their social landscape by offering them a plethora of novel play opportunities that ‘pushes children away from the outdoors and pulls them indoors’. Moreover, the radical transition from nature-based recreation to media-centric activity insinuates the surge of a global pandemic characterized by low physical activity, sleep deprivation and sedentary, lifestyle diseases. This emerging trend reflects children’s predilection for videophilia over biophilia due to the dominance …

Determinants Of Corporal Punishment And Severe Physical Punishment In Egypt: A Mixed-Methods Analysis For Child Protection Policy, Marwa Moustafa Nassef

Theses and Dissertations

Corporal punishment (CP) and severe physical punishment (SPP) remain a major public health, child rights, and child protection policy concern. In Egypt, despite legislative reforms, survey-weighted analysis of the 2021 Egypt Family Health Survey (EFHS) 2021 (CAPMAS, 2022) reveals prevalence rates of 60.5% for CP and 27.4% for SPP among children aged 1–14 (author’s calculations using EFHS-2021, n=7623), yet evidence distinguishing the determinants of routine corporal punishment from escalation to severe physical punishment remains limited in low- and middle-income contexts. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework, this mixed-methods study identifies key drivers of CP and its escalation to SPP among Egyptian …

Always More To Explore: Play And Resilience In Community-Based Artmaking, Charlotte T. Faubert

Masters Theses

The following research investigates the ways in which material exploration in community-based artmaking spaces fosters learning through play and creative resilience. Using teacher-based action research, three visual arts workshops were designed, conducted, and reviewed in order to understand how community-based teaching strategies that center material exploration impact these two components of social emotional growth in elementary-aged art students. The conclusions drawn from this research indicate that material exploration, learning through play, and creative resilience are elements within community-based artmaking that form an ecosystem of learning, with all three phenomena feeding off of one another in a non-linear capacity. Additionally, it …

Arts-Based Violence Prevention For Youth: A Literature Review, Amber Lynn Isaac

Expressive Therapies Theses

This narrative literature review examines arts-based approaches to violence prevention and trauma-related support among school-aged children and adolescents in school and community settings. Violence is conceptualized as both interpersonal and structural, encompassing physical, emotional, relational, and systemic harms that arise through unequal access to safety, opportunity, and resources. The review then explores how these conditions increase vulnerability to trauma exposure, particularly among youth in marginalized and underserved communities, and considers the psychological impacts of violence on youth development. Centering the resilience of children and adolescents through relational strengths, adaptive coping strategies, and creative capacities, this review then examines the benefits …

From Worry To Invention: Developing The Lunch Bunch As A Multimodal Expressive Arts Model For Regulation, Collaboration, And Peer Connection In Elementary Schools, Pascale Lauren Mimran-Ugbabe

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis documents the development of the Multimodal Expressive Arts Lunch Bunch, a small group intervention for elementary students delivered during the school lunch period at a public elementary school in Boston, Massachusetts. Grounded in multimodal expressive arts therapy, intermodal transfer theory, polyvagal-informed co-regulation, and principles of externalization, the intervention was designed as a low-barrier creative support group accessible regardless of diagnosis, referral status, or family pursuit of clinical services. Two cohorts of teacher-nominated students, one group of fourth-grade girls and one mixed-gender third-grade group, participated in a sequenced arc moving from worry externalization through collaborative invention, prototype construction, and …

An Equity-Based And Culturally Responsive Bill Of Rights For Early Childhood Students Of Color With Exceptionalities, Evette Simmons-Reed, Michelle Frazier Trotman Scott, Gloria Tardash, Mildred Boveda, Donna Y. Ford

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing disparities in early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) services for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) disabled children, exposing critical gaps in access, services and support. systemic inconsistencies in implementation, training, and funding, remain barriers limit opportunities for CLD students to benefit, despite the aims of the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act (IDEA). To address these inequities, this manuscript proposes an expanded and updated Culturally Responsive Equity-Based Bill of Rights for EI and ECSE. Building upon Ford and colleagues' (2018) work, this revised document extends protections to children aged zero to five, emphasizing …

Practical Applications Of Play Therapy Principles In Early Childhood Classrooms, Colleen D. Martinez, Beth A. Trammell

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Play in early childhood is a central tenet to everyday life for children and is thus of great importance to early childhood practitioners. However, the wide variety of definitions, policies, and practices related to play make implementing it effectively in the classroom nuanced. This article explores components of both child-led and adult-led practices—viewed through the lens of play therapy—to aid early childhood educators in applying these practices in the classroom. Case examples from the authors are included to further explore these topics in real-life situations.

Latent Transition Analysis: A Statistical Method For Identifying Underlying Subgroups Over Time, Holmes Finch

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Researchers working in early childhood research are often interested in assessing change over time in multiple variables. In addition, they may wish to ascertain whether there exist subgroups in the data with respect to these variables, and whether/how membership in these groups is related. Latent transition analysis (LTA) provides such researchers with a useful tool for investigating questions around such groups, including their composition, frequency, and the likelihood of moving from one to another at different points in time. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide a full demonstrate of LTA and show how it can be used to …

A Tutorial For Identifying And Comparing Change Points In Developmental Trajectories, Holmes Finch

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Researchers in a variety of social science fields work with sequential data, such as measurements made over time. In some instances, one or more of the moments (e.g., mean, variance) of the series may change abruptly at some point in the sequence, yielding what is known as a change point. There is a broad literature describing methods for changepoint detection. Researchers working with multiple sequential series containing change points may be interested in comparing the locations of these changes. The purpose of this manuscript is to demonstrate how a researcher can detect changepoints and compare changepoints between two or more …

Using Multilevel Modeling To Understand Nested Data, Holmes Finch

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Researchers in the social sciences often work with nested data, in which individuals are collected in higher level clusters. For example, educational research often involves working with samples in which students are nested within schools. Standard data analyses, such as regression and analysis of variance (ANOVA), yield statistically biased results when this nested structure is ignored. One widely used and effective approach for handling such nested data is multilevel modeling. The purpose of this manuscript is to review the basics of multilevel modeling and to provide the reader with a fully worked example in which the analytic approach and results …

Guest Editor's Introduction: Methodological Innovations For Advancing Early Childhood Educational And Psychological Research, Anthony Mangino Ph.D.

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

The goal of this special issue is to provide you, the inquisitive reader and developmental scientist, with some of the methodological tools to aid in augmenting your analytic capacity.

Partners In Pilgrimage: Transforming The Journey Of Adolescence By Guiding Teenagers Toward Faithful Lives, Redefining Success, And Cultivating Connection To God, Abigail R. Weaver

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Adolescence is a formative period in which young people seek meaning, identity, and belonging while navigating a complex array of cultural, social, and developmental pressures. In suburban American contexts, these pressures are intensified by competitive academic environments, demanding extracurricular commitments, and pervasive societal expectations that equate worth with achievement. Drawing from my experience as a youth minister in suburban United Methodist churches, this dissertation examines how such forces shape the spiritual and personal development of 15- to 18-year-olds and explores the Church’s role in guiding adolescents through this landscape with wisdom and care.

Grounded in the Christian tradition and informed …

Supporting An Inclusive Summer Camp For Children With Developmental Disabilities Who Use Aac And Their Neurotypical Peers: A Practice-Based Report, Jessica Hicks

Communication Disorders and Occupational Therapy Undergraduate Honors Theses

For my honors research, I completed an internship in an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) lab at the University of Arkansas. For most of my internship work, I helped support an inclusive AAC summer camp for children with and without developmental disabilities, such as autism, for whom speech does not fully meet their communication needs. AAC includes high-tech tools such as communication apps on tablets that serve as speech-generating devices (SGDs). SGDs were used by many of the AAC summer camp participants with developmental disabilities. In this report, I will provide background information on AAC and developmental disabilities. I will …

Cross-Cultural Differences In Academic Pressure, Anxiety, And Sleep Quality Among High-Achieving Students In The United States And South Korea, Yumi Choi, Brett Zollinger, Jisook Park

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

This study examines cross-cultural differences in academic pressure, anxiety, and sleep quality among high-achieving students in the United States and South Korea. As academic success becomes increasingly competitive in both countries, students often face significant psychological and physiological challenges. This research investigates how differing educational systems and cultural expectations influence levels of academic pressure and their subsequent impact on anxiety and sleep quality.

Data were collected from high-achieving high school students in both countries using standardized measures, including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) scale. Comparative analyses were conducted to identify differences in perceived …

Analyzing Methods To Support Students Left Behind In Colorado Primary/Secondary Schools, Grace Hudson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

In the United States, there has been an increase of deportations, since 2024, of undocumented immigrants. This has disproportionally affected Mexicans and others from Latin American countries (Dreby 2012) due to them being the largest group of undocumented people in the United States. One effect of these deportations is an increase in children that are left in the United States while their parent(s) are in detention or have been deported. Some of these children are in mixed-status families, which means that the child has a different citizenship status than their parents or other members in their family, which allows for …

Early Childhood Echo (Ec Echo) Start-Up & Operations Manual, Lisa Long, I. Michelle Gaither, Ruby Brenner, Bradley Long, Emily Mcclelland, Malcolm Huell, Lauren Elliott, Katerina Sergi

Publications

The Early Childhood ECHO (EC ECHO) Start-up & Operations Manual is a practical guide to launching case-based telementoring and professional development using the Project ECHO® model. Prepared for early childhood programs and agencies. Adapted from Mississippi’s EC ECHO implementation (2023–2025) and aligned with Project ECHO® guidance.

Assessing School Readiness For Social And Emotional Learning: A Study Of School Leadership Perceptions And Attitudes, Nahla Elharati

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the integration of social and emotional learning (SEL) in a number of British schools across Egypt, focusing on how school leaders defined and perceived its importance in student development. Through in-depth interviews with twelve school leaders, this study found that school leaders’ definitions of SEL emphasized self- awareness, self-regulation, and relationship-building, alongside a strong focus on the real-life applicability of SEL both within school settings and in students’ future lives. School leaders also expressed positive attitudes toward the benefits of SEL, particularly its role in enhancing academic performance, promoting student well-being, improving peer relationships, and reducing bullying, …

Empowerment Pedagogy: A Mixed Methods Grounded Theory Approach To Developing A Pedagogical Framework For Empowering Middle School Aged Students, Henry James Bryant

Educational Studies Dissertations

The current state of adolescent well-being in “post-COVID” America demonstrates a need for widespread intervention to aid students in coping with trauma and mental health issues. In a review of the literature, feelings of empowerment have been found to be antithetical to feelings of trauma. Moreover, the benefits of empowerment in terms of adolescent mental health, academic achievement, and behaviors are well documented. However, strategies designed to impact students’ feelings of empowerment have not been well established, and programs that are presently offered are often inaccessible due to cost, public opinion, and a need for whole school adoption. In this …

Laila: A Doll Memoir Of 1947 Partition Of India And Pakistan, Maleeha Malik, Maleeha Fatima Malik

Children's Literature (MFA) Theses

This abstract examines a creative and critical work centered on the 1947 Partition of India, which displaced approximately fourteen million people and caused one million deaths. The narrative introduces Laila, an anthropomorphized doll who functions as both witness and archive, embodying the memories and traumas of multiple child survivors. Through Laila’s journey across India, Pakistan, and the diaspora, the text explores themes of identity, belonging, loss, and intergenerational memory.

Blending personal family history with historical analysis, the author situates Laila within lived experiences of migration, silence, and religious marginalization, particularly as part of the Ahmadi Muslim community. The narrative foregrounds …

The Dunning-Kruger Effect In Sixth Grade Adolescents: Improving Metacognition For Self-Regulated Learning, Julie H. Chen

Scripps Senior Theses

The Dunning-Kruger (DK) effect is a cognitive bias where low-performing individuals overestimate their own abilities, and top-performing individuals underestimate their own abilities relative to their peers. The purpose of this proposed study is to investigate the DK effect in sixth grade adolescents and to use metacognition as an intervention to improve self-assessment calibrations. This study will investigate adolescents in Piaget’s formal operational stage, aiming to improve metacognition levels. The study will occur over 12 weeks, and participants will be given a preparation handbook with or without metacognition activities for the purpose of preparing for the California Assessment of Student Performance …

Children's Peer Selection In Stem: The Influence Of Gender, Ethnicity, And Disability, Meagan Girard, Kim P. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present study examined how children’s peer selection in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) may be influenced by gender, ethnicity, and physical disability. Sixty-four children (ages 6-12) from elementary schools in Southwestern Ontario completed three tasks: a simulated peer selection task, an attribution of ability task, and a stereotype belief questionnaire. In the peer selection task, participants were repeatedly asked to select one peer from a set of AI-generated photographs showing children who differed by gender (male, female), ethnicity (White, Black, East Asian), and physical disability status (able-bodied user vs. nondisabled). The Peer Selection Task was based on the …