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This case study describes the experiences and perceptions of school staff and students participating in restorative practices (RP) community building circles during the first year of school-wide RP implementation. Data sources include (a) beginning- and end-of-year surveys of school staff perspectives and experiences with implementing RP, (b) semistructured interviews conducted with 17 school staff, and (c) surveys of third- to fifth-grade (N = 107) students regarding their experiences participating in RP classroom circles. Across all data sources, the connection between community building circles and social-emotional learning (SEL) was evident and well articulated. Additionally, students and staff highlighted challenges in circle participation, equitable circle accessibility for all students, and tensions between RP and school discipline. The promise of RP to support SEL curriculum may only be realized if RP implementation is designed as a school-wide system to promote social development for both students and the adults who serve them.

Background Methods Results Implications for School Health Policy, Practice, and Equity Conclusions The weight‐normative approach to nutrition education dominates health education programming across the United States, despite evidence that this paradigm contributes to negative outcomes including weight cycling, bias and stigma, the development of disordered eating behaviors, and weight‐based bullying.This study investigates perspectives of 10 potential partners with interest in and potential to influence nutrition education. Through qualitative interviews and document analysis, researchers explored support for a weight‐inclusive curriculum and factors that influence high school nutrition curricular content and implementation.Findings indicate that partners hold both weight‐inclusive and weight‐normative values, guidance around nutrition curricular content is lacking, and state‐level policy is crucial to the valuing and implementation of consistent curricula.Lack of guidance or mandated curricular content contributes to inequities across the state. Weight‐inclusive curricular materials are needed. Administration must take an active role in providing access to professional development and state policy support for curricular implementation is essential.Weight‐inclusive curriculum could serve to improve health outcomes for adolescents. However, successful implementation of, or changes to, health and nutrition curricula will require support and engagement from partners at all ecological levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the emancipatory potential of incorporating youth participatory action research (YPAR) and restorative practices (RP) implementation into a transformative mixed methods study design as a means to create equitable and caring school systems for marginalized youth. The utilization of "transformative mixed methods" research offers a methodological orientation to legitimize, illuminate, and prioritize perspectives from "marginalized youth" that may be undervalued, decontextualized, and oversimplified in traditional quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Furthermore, the authors suggest that YPAR and RP align with Critical Theory and Quantitative Criticalism, which are theoretical and methodological frameworks consistent with the transformative paradigm. The integration of these various theoretical, methodological and applied frameworks provides researchers opportunities to flatten hierarchies and actively engage marginalized youth to address the structural and programmatic inequities they experience in schools. Informed by the authors' multi-year university-school district action research partnership, this paper explores how the alignment of YPAR, RP, and transformative mixed methods may promote critical consciousness amongst students, families, staff, and administration in schools. Finally, we also demonstrate how social science researchers can blend YPAR, RP, and transformative mixed methods design to partner with school districts to address structural societal problems, such as racism and inequity.

In this article, Kervick and colleagues posit that restorative practices (RP) implementation promises to mitigate educational inequities resulting from discipline disparities for youth with disabilities and youth of color. Recent efforts to reduce these disparities have emphasized more relational approaches to behavioral change. Kervick et al. argue that nonpunitive restorative approaches promise to mitigate discipline disparities for racialized youth and youth with disabilities within a schoolwide multitiered systems of support framework only if implemented with an emphasis on educational access and equity. They offer practical tools and strategies to support teachers with implementation of inclusive, accessible, and equitable Tier 1 restorative circles.

Despite an increased interest in bullying prevention programming over the last 10 years, significant gaps remain among theory, research, and practice in this critical area of school psychology. This article argues that the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition of bullying does not fully capture the experiences of many US youth, making it difficult for practitioners to apply theory and research from the field to their everyday work. As an alternative, we introduce the idea of relational youth violence--behaviors (physical, relational, sexual, verbal, or psychological) and policies (formal or informal) that are intentionally or unintentionally harmful to a young person or group of young people, based on real or perceived power imbalances that reflect larger social structures of equity and power. This framework pushes back against a simple categorization of behaviors as bullying, discrimination, and harassment, and asks that educators pay attention to the overlaps in students' lived experiences with these phenomena. In addition, the framework demands that educators consider factors across ecological levels, including larger organizational and sociocultural influences. Finally, by allowing for multiple perspectives and attributions, relational youth violence gives prominence to the role of intersectionality in shaping young peoples' interpretations of harmful experiences. After describing the new construct in detail, we describe how it might help to bridge the gap among research, policy, and practice.

Young people demand and deserve participation in shaping the health and well-being of their community. Getting to Y: Youth Bring Meaning to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (GTY) is a positive youth development initiative, whereby students analyze local youth health data and create change. This article adds definitive evidence to support the theoretical foundations of GTY expounded by Garnett et al. (2019). A mixed methods convergent study design, collecting quantitative data from pre- and postintervention surveys and qualitative data from focus groups, was enacted during the 2018–2019 school year. Survey participants were 256 students attending 20 Vermont middle/high schools. Surveys measured self-efficacy, health literacy, civic engagement, resiliency, and knowledge. Focus groups with 50 students solicited open-ended feedback. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests determined student-level change over time. Focus group transcripts were coded using grounded theory and a priori codes from the survey. Statistically significant improvements were seen in average scores from pre- to postintervention surveys in all five domains and differences in effect by gender. Results from the focus group complement the quantitative findings. Participation in GTY positively affected youth participant's understanding of their own health and well-being and increased agency to take action on behalf of themselves and their community. As the Youth Risk Behavior Survey is available nationwide, GTY is poised for replication to critically engage youth with relevant data to inform social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison to research on youth bullying, less research has been dedicated to youth harassment experiences in school. This study seeks to illustrate youth harassment experiences in school through three theoretically informed methodological approaches to modeling youth victimization: binary, cumulative risk, and attributional approaches. Data come from the 2015 Vermont School Climate Pilot Survey (N = 2,589 students). Students with complete harassment information (N = 2,481) were included. Using theoretically informed methodological approaches, regression models examined the associations between experiencing harassment (binary, attributions, and cumulative) and school connection, safety, and equity. About 16% of the sample experienced some form of harassment during the current school year (2014-2015). The most prominent attributions of harassment include weight (40%), sex (27%), and race (22%). After controlling for sociodemographics, ever experiencing harassment was associated with lower school safety, –0.73 (β), p <.001, lower connection with school, –0.52 (β), p <.001, and lower perceived equity, –0.77 (β), p <.001. Experiencing harassment is negatively related to school climate. The results from these analyses underscore the negative relationship among harassment victimization and several important indicators of school climate including student connection, perceived safety at and to/from school, and perceived equity of school. Theoretically informed methodological approaches in youth harassment research should be advanced to comprehensively assess the relationship between harassment victimization and harassment attributes on the social, academic, and behavioral development of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fat Talk Free Week (FTFW), a social marketing campaign designed to decrease self-disparaging talk about body and weight, has not yet been evaluated. We conducted a theory-informed pilot evaluation of FTFW with two college samples using a pre- and posttest design. Aligned with the central tenets of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we investigated the importance of FTFW saliency as a predictor of fat talk behavior change. Our analytic sample consisted of 118 female participants (83% of original sample). Approximately 76% of the sample was non-Hispanic White, 14% Asian, and 8% Hispanic. At baseline, more than 50% of respondents reported engaging in frequent self fat talk; at posttest, this number dropped to 34% of respondents. Multivariable regression models supported campaign saliency as the single strongest predictor of a decrease in self fat talk. Our results support the social diffusion of campaign messages among shared communities, as we found significant decreases in fat talk among campaign attenders and nonattenders. FTFW may be a promising short-term health communication campaign to reduce fat talk, as campaign messages are salient among university women and may encourage interpersonal communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ObjectiveTo determine risk factors for consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) among 2-year-old children.DesignThe analysis was performed using three linked data sets: the 2004–2005 Oregon Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Survey (PRAMS); its longitudinal follow-up, 2006–2007 Oregon PRAMS-2; and 2004–2005 Oregon birth certificates.SettingPRAMS is a surveillance programme supported by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and implemented by participating state health departments. Using mixed methods, PRAMS surveys women 2–6 months after a live birth. Oregon PRAMS-2 re-interviews respondents shortly after the index child's second birthday. Oregon PRAMS oversamples minority women.SubjectsUsing monthly cohorts, we randomly selected 5851 women from the 2004–2005 birth certificates. In total 1911 women completed both PRAMS and PRAMS-2. The weighted response rate of PRAMS-2 was 43·5 %.ResultsAlmost half of mothers (49·9 %) reported that their child drank SSB on at least 1 d/week. Mothers whose children drank SSB at least once weekly were more likely to have low income (adjusted OR = 2·83, 95 % CI 2·09, 3·83) and to eat out on ≥2 d/week (OR = 2·11 %, 95 % CI 1·66, 2·70). Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women were most likely to report that their child drank SSB at least once weekly.ConclusionsHalf of mothers reported that their 2-year-old children drank SSB at least once weekly. Public health interventions and policies should address childhood SSB consumption including educating health-care providers and parents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]