Diversity Interventions in the Classroom: From Resistance to Action

The diversity intervention-resistance to action model is presented along with interviews of biology faculty undertaken to understand how resistance to implementing diversity-enhancing classroom interventions manifests at four specific input points within a rational decision-making process that too often results in inaction.

Exploring interpersonal and environmental factors of autistic adolescents’ peer engagement in integrated education

Autistic students often struggle to engage with peers in integrated education; however, research has largely focused on individual characteristics rather than the interpersonal and environmental factors affecting peer engagement. This mixed-methods study examined longitudinal peer interactions over a school year among 17 adolescents (seven were autistic) in an inclusive school club. The quantitative phase investigated participants’ social behavior rates to identify sessions where each student demonstrated high and low peer engagement compared with their average participation levels. The qualitative phase compared social interactions and contexts between sessions of high and low peer engagement, revealing four themes regarding contextual supports and barriers to autistic peer engagement: (1) peer engagement is a participatory process where a student and their peer(s) navigate mutual understanding, shaped by both student and peer social characteristics, openness, and involvement; (2) student–peer synchronicity, such as shared interests or compatibility of social styles, was essential to autistic peer engagement; (3) peer engagement can be supported by activities facilitating joint engagement and exploration of mutual interests; (4) classroom interventions emphasizing strengths can support peer engagement, while normative behavioral standards without peer education on individual differences and diversity can perpetuate peers’ negative perceptions of autistic difficulties. Lay abstract Peer engagement is essential but often challenging for autistic students in integrated education, especially for adolescents. Although peer engagement is bidirectional and context-dependent, research has largely focused on individual characteristics rather than the interpersonal and environmental factors affecting peer engagement. This mixed-methods study examined peer interactions over a school year among 17 adolescents (seven were autistic) in an inclusive school club at a public middle school in the Northeastern United States. The study began with a quantitative phase identifying sessions in which each student was socially engaged with peers more or less often than usual for them. We then qualitatively compared the social interactions and contexts between sessions where each participant experienced high and low peer engagement. Thematic analysis revealed four themes regarding contextual supports and barriers to autistic peer engagement: (1) peer engagement is a participatory process where a student and their peer(s) navigate mutual understanding, shaped by both student and peer social characteristics, openness, and involvement; (2) student–peer synchronicity, such as shared interests or compatibility of social styles, was essential to autistic peer engagement; (3) peer engagement can be supported by activities facilitating joint engagement and exploration of mutual interests; (4) classroom interventions emphasizing strengths can support peer engagement, while normative behavioral standards without peer education on individual differences and diversity can perpetuate peers’ negative perceptions of autistic difficulties. The findings have implications for better inclusive practice to support autistic social participation by modifying the peer environments, activities, and classroom interventions.

Lighting a Fire: Toward a “TORCHeS” Approach to Reducing Academic Procrastination with Classroom Interventions

Academic procrastination is prevalent and a promising target for intervention in educational contexts. Nevertheless, few interventions for procrastination have been rigorously tested. We propose a novel TORCHeS (Theory-driven, Open, Rigorous, Collaborative, Holistic, Small-changes) approach to developing easily implementable and potentially effective classroom interventions for academic procrastination. TORCHeS is motivated by a belief that complex behaviors like academic procrastination require a holistic, multipronged intervention approach, and that intervention research must embrace collaborative, open-science practices and objective measures of procrastination behavior. We illustrate what TORCHeS-inspired intervention efforts may look like by deriving some “small-teaching” intervention techniques from a simple process model of self-control, which characterizes procrastination as a goal-management failure resulting from a need to repair negative emotion triggered by impending academic tasks.

Instructor Strategies to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety among College and University STEM Students

Student stress and anxiety often negatively impact students’ academic performance. This Essay provides summaries of different evidence-based strategies, ranging from changes in instructional strategies to specific classroom interventions, that instructors can employ to address and ameliorate student stress and anxiety.

Classroom Interventions and Foreign Language Anxiety: A Systematic Review With Narrative Approach

Experimental studies have developed, conducted, and evaluated classroom interventions for foreign language anxiety (FLA) reduction. However, various characteristics of those classroom interventions make it difficult to synthesize the findings and apply them to practice. We conducted what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic review on educational interventions for FLA. Six criteria were established for inclusion of studies. Using English keywords, we identified 854 potentially eligible studies through ProQuest and Scopus, 40 of which were finally included. All included studies were published from 2007 to 2020. The studies differed in type of intervention, duration of intervention, and scale to measure FLA. Our systematic review resulted in seven features of classroom interventions, categorized as student–student interactions, student-teacher interactions, self-management, and mood boosters; we also categorized interventions as either individual or interactional.

Classroom, club or collective? Three types of community-based group intervention and why they matter for health

Interventions involving groups of laywomen, men and adolescents to promote health are increasingly popular, but past research has rarely distinguished between different types of intervention with groups. We introduce a simple typology that distinguishes three ideal types: classrooms, clubs and collectives. Classrooms treat groups as a platform for reaching a population with didactic behaviour change strategies. Clubs seek to build, strengthen and leverage relationships between group members to promote health. Collectives engage whole communities in assuming ownership over a health problem and taking action to address it. We argue that this distinction goes a long way towards explaining differences in achievable health outcomes using interventions with groups. First, classrooms and clubs are appropriate when policymakers primarily care about improving the health of group members, but collectives are better placed to achieve population-level impact. Second, classroom interventions implicitly assume bottleneck behaviours preventing a health outcome from being achieved can be reliably identified by experts, whereas collectives make use of local knowledge, skill and creativity to tackle complexity. Third, classroom interventions assume individual participants can address health issues largely on their own, while clubs and collectives are required to engender collective action in support of health. We invite public health researchers and policymakers to use our framework to align their own and communities’ ambitions with appropriate group-based interventions to test and implement for their context. We caution that our typology is meant to apply to groups of laypeople rather than professionalised groups such as whole civil society organisations.

Instructor strategies to alleviate student stress and anxiety in colleges and universities

While student stress and anxiety are frequently cited as having negative effects on students’ academic performance, the role that instructors can play in mitigating these issues is often underappreciated. We provide summaries of different evidence-based strategies that instructors can employ to address and ameliorate student stress and anxiety that range from changes in instructional strategies to specific classroom interventions. We begin by highlighting ways in which instructors can learn about and prepare to act on issues of stress and anxiety. We then discuss how to better connect with students and build an inclusive, equitable, and empowering classroom environment. When coupled with strategies to change student evaluation and assessment, these approaches can collectively reduce student stress and anxiety, as well as improve student performance. We conclude by discussing the roles that instructors can play in empowering students with skills that improve their time management, studying, and approach towards learning, with an eye towards ensuring their success across all their academic endeavors.