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Internship
in Clinical Child Psychology
Research
Programs
Project Title
The PALS Project: Positive Attitudes for Learning in School
Supervisors
Marc S. Atkins, Ph.D. and Jaleel Abdul Adil, Ph.D.
Project Description
Schools are one of the few existing resources for children and families
consistently available within urban low income communities and therefore
offer a unique opportunity to promote positive mental health for children
and families. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness
of a new program, PALS (Positive Attitudes for Learning in Schools),
an NIMH-funded collaboration between Chicago Public Schools and the
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). PALS is a collaborative school-based
program in which parents, teachers, and UIC staff work together to provide
classroom activities to: 1) improve children's learning, 2) teach children
to cooperate and get along with their classmates, 3) provide family
linkages to school by assisting parents' involvement in their child's
schooling, 4) develop activities for parents that will provide parents
with social support and skill development, and 5) assist school's to
plan for children's needs throughout the year. Participants will be
300 children from approximately 170 classrooms in kindergarten, 2nd,
and 4th grades from 15 Chicago public schools. Classrooms are randomly
assigned to receive PALS or clinic-based mental health services at the
Institute for Juvenile Research. Children within these classrooms will
be selected for participation if they are identified by their teacher
and parent as exhibiting disruptive behavior at school and home, and
their parent or guardian provides permission to participate in the project.
The experimental
PALS project uses an ecological model to guide program staff to identify
ways to increase all children's learning in the classroom and to improve
the involvement of children's parents. The ecological perspective emphasizes
the need for least-restrictive, group administered services, that are
flexible and individualized across the multiple contexts for children's
behavior, and that integrate into ongoing school routines and resources.
The PALS team consists of the classroom teacher, a parent hired by the
project, and a mental health provider who work collaboratively guided
by a manualized treatment that proceeds in four phases: engagement of
key constituents in urban schools, development of collaborative partnerships
among PALS team members, systematic assessment of ecological classroom
contexts, and delivery of empirically-based services.
Psychology Interns
Roles and Contributions
1. Provide consultation
to PALS teams on program implementation and evaluation.
2. Assist with the refinement of the PALS manual for school-based mental
health providers in urban low income schools.
3. Assist with the development of measures to assess program implementation
and effectiveness.
4. Assist with data analysis and interpretation towards the refinement
of research goals.
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