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There are a variety of skills that are not directly taught in schools yet serve as protective factors for academic success (i.e., self-efficacy, social, skills; emotional well-being; Graziano et al (Journal of School Psychology 45 3-19 2007); Minnard (Children and Schools 24(4) 233-246 2002). An intervention strategy for promoting such protective factors in school-aged children involves mentoring. Despite the dramatic increase in the implementation of mentoring programs in the first decade of the current century (Herrera et al (Making a difference in schools 2007); Portwood & Ayers (Children and Schools 30 177-185 2005), there remain few systematic program evaluations and even fewer meta-analyses examining the effects of mentoring. Specifically, there is a paucity of research examining the potential benefits of mentoring on emotional well-being. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by providing an overall assessment of the relationship between mentoring and emotional functioning of mentees. A qualitative analysis, as well as a quantitative meta-analysis, examining the effects of mentoring programs on the emotional well-being of school-aged children is presented. Overall, findings provide evidence for a small to moderate positive effect of mentoring on the emotional well-being of youth. Additional analyses focusing on specific emotional constructs indicate that mentoring has a small negative effect (d = 0.20) on negative affect, a medium negative effect on internalizing behavior (d = 0.45), and a medium positive effect on self-esteem (d = 0.45). For children, success in school requires more than reading, writing, and arithmetic thus, mentoring may be one approach to developing the necessary protective factors that can lead to greater success.

The study tested whether deficits in executive function are associated with adolescent risky behavior engagement. At baseline, adolescents (n = 102) aged 12 to 19 years were administered a performance-based measure of executive function and self-report measure of broad-based risky behavior engagement. Additionally, a teacher report for each participant delineating executive function was obtained. In line with our hypothesis, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that adolescents exhibiting poor observer-reported executive function (i.e., teacher report) were more likely to engage in a greater frequency of risky behaviors. Conversely, there was no relationship between the performance-based measure of adolescent executive function and risky behaviors. These findings highlight the importance of obtaining teacher input when operationalizing youth vulnerability, particularly as this relates to understanding executive function deficits. Clinical implications for in-school intervention programs are discussed.

The paper examined the effectiveness of an in-school intervention for adolescents designed to target emotional regulation skills related to risky behaviors. The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Intended for Youth (CERTIFY) program was delivered to at-risk adolescents in Montreal, Canada. Participants were drawn from an alternative high school and a dropout prevention program within an urban high school. The pilot was a student-focused therapeutic modality without parental intervention for maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation (CER) and engagement in risky behaviors. CERTIFY is a school-based group intervention targeting CER strategies and was implemented with 28 adolescents from two English language secondary schools. The intervention was conducted for 12 weeks for the intervention group versus controls who were offered usual school supports. Program outcomes were evaluated using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Risky Behaviors Questionnaire for Adolescents. The intervention group made significant gains with regard to using adaptive CER strategies. Specifically, the intervention resulted in increases in self-reported use of positive reappraisal and refocusing on planning. No significant gains were found for reducing the use of maladaptive CER strategies or risky behaviors. This school-based intervention program for high-risk adolescents increased overall use of adaptive CER strategies and provided insight for future intervention design.