Sexual Violence Prevention Tools
Linda Williams, Ph.D., co-authored “Multiple Sexual Violence Prevention Tools: Doses and Boosters,” (Potter, S.; Banyard, V.; Cares, A.; Williams, L.; Moynihan, M.; Stapleton, J.) for the Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research (in press). Sexual violence prevention programs on college campuses have proliferated in recent years. While research has also increased, a number of questions remain unanswered that could assist campus administrators in making evidence-based decisions about implementation of prevention efforts. To that end, the field of prevention science has highlighted the need to examine the utility of booster sessions for enhancing prevention education. This study examined how two methods of prevention delivery—small group educational workshops and a community-wide social marketing campaign (SMC)—worked separately and together to promote attitude change related to sexual violence among college students. Results revealed benefits of the SMC as a booster for attitude changes related to being an active bystander to prevent sexual violence. Further, students who first participated in the program showed enhanced attitude effects related to the SMC. This is the first study to look at the combination of effects of different sexual violence prevention tools on student attitudes. It also showcases a method for how to investigate if prevention tools work separately and together.
Sexual Harassment in Schools
Katja Gillander Gådin, Ph.D., and Nan Stein, Ed.D., authored “Do Schools Normalize Sexual Harassment? An analysis of a legal case regarding sexual harassment in a Swedish high school,” published November 2017 in Gender and Education by Taylor & Francis.
Sexual harassment has become so frequent and ubiquitous in schools that these behaviors have become normalized and expected. In order to prevent the re-enactment and perpetuation of this problem, it is important to explore processes that contribute to its existence. A high school sexual harassment lawsuit in Sweden is used as a case study to illustrate ways that might explain how sexual harassment is normalized at the organizational level. A thematic analysis has been used to identify themes and subthemes. The results show a multilayered web of factors and practices related to sexual harassment at the organizational level in the school. In order to change a school’s culture from one where sexual harassment is normalized, multiple needs must be addressed: organizational weaknesses must be strengthened; adults must enact their responsibility to change the situation; and awareness of the relationship between sexual harassment, gender, and power needs to be increased.
Growing the Out-of-School-Time Field
Preserving Integrity: The Power of Sport, the official publication of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry, published “Keep Moving: The Power of Physical Activity Before School and the Impact on Children, Youth, and Families,” by Georgia Hall, Ph.D., in the special 2017 issue. In the article, Hall shares data that shows how before-school physical activity programs offer a variety of new physical activity skills, reinforce healthy habits, and emphasize the vocabulary, language, and practices of wellbeing. Before-school physical activity programs may also offer a promising model for how schools, families, and out-of-school programs can work together to increase children’s physical activity and healthy eating, and promote health and wellness within families through the child’s participation.
“Summer Learning Programs: Investigating Strengths and Challenges,” by Hall, Kristen Fay Poston, Ph.D., and Julie Dennehy, M.M., was included in After-School Programs to Promote Positive Youth Development Learning from Specific Models, Volume 2, edited by Nancy Deutsch, Ph.D. Given the substantial data that support trends in summer learning loss, researchers have concluded that summertime presents a particularly potent opportunity to help youth learn and develop in significant ways that have been vastly underestimated. Unfortunately, the socioeconomic divide keeps many children out of summer learning programs, meaning that those youth who may most benefit from opportunities to prevent summer learning loss may be least likely to participate in summer learning programs. This chapter examines the strengths and contributions of summer learning programs, along with identifying implementation challenges and gaps in our knowledge base. The authors provide an overview of the components of high quality summer learning programs. They also address the connection between summer learning programs and youth outcomes and discuss several conceptual and methodological limitations in their understanding of the associations between summer learning experiences and youth outcomes. The researchers consider the role of summer learning in the larger picture of education reform and youth development priorities.
Elizabeth Starr, M.Ed., and Ellen Gannett, M.Ed., authored the chapter, “The State of Professional Development: Past, Present, and Future,” in The Growing Out-of-School Time Field: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Helen Janc Malone, Ed.D., and Tara Donahue, a volume in the Information Age Publishing series, Current Issues in Out-of-School Time (OST). The series is designed to disseminate original research and promising practices that further the OST field. This first book sets the foundation on which the series rests upon, by offering an analysis of the progress made since the 2000s, as well as by looking toward the future for areas of considerations. Leading OST experts explore latest knowledge, intentionally bridging research and practice, and propose new areas of inquiry. Learn more: www.infoagepub.com/products/The-Growing-Out-of-School-Time-Field.
The fall 2017 issue of Afterschool Matters, the national, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to promoting professionalism, scholarship, and consciousness in the field of afterschool education, is focused on both the diversity of the field and the common goal that all afterschool programs share—providing high-quality education and support to youth. Published by the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and edited by Georgia Hall, Ph.D., this issue includes articles by practitioners from across the country, including Michelle Masarik, STEM Advisor for the Friendship Train Foundation and an administrator at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel All Starts 21st Century Community Learning Center in Asbury Park, NJ. Masarik participated in the first cohort of the Afterschool Matters Fellowship (see page 8). The journal is part of the Afterschool Matters Initiative and is produced with support from the Robert Bowne Foundation. More about Afterschool Matters, including links to current and past issues of the journal, is available at niost.org/afterschoolmattersjournal.
Depression Prevention & Intervention
Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D., co-authored several journal articles related to depression prevention and intervention programs. “Cultural adaptation of an internet-based depression prevention intervention, CATCH-IT, for Arab adolescents using the PEN-3 model,” (Abuwallah, Z., Kadhem, Z., Bishay, A., Gladstone, T., Mikhael, E., & Van Voorhees, B.) was published online in July 2017 by the International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health. Cultural adaptation of evidence-based Western psychotherapy is an important step toward better prevention and treatment of depressive illness in the Arab community. Project CATCH-IT is an internet-based depression prevention intervention tool that is tailored for adolescents and young adults. The PEN-3 theoretical framework was used for the cultural adaptation of Project CATCH-IT for Arab adolescents. This study sets the background for future studies and research for implementation of the Arabic version of CATCH-IT for the prevention of depression.
“Evaluation of protective and vulnerability factors for depression following an internet-based intervention to prevent depression in at-risk adolescents” (Kruger, J.R., Kim, P., Iyer, V., Marko-Holguin, M., Fogel, J., DeFrino, D., Gladstone, T., & Van Voorhees, B.) will be included in the International Journal of Mental Health Promotion (in press). Adolescents aged 14–21 years were screened for core symptoms of depression without reaching criteria for a mood disorder diagnosis. At baseline, six weeks, and at two and a half years, participants were assessed for automatic negative thoughts (ATQ-R), educational impairment, and perceived social support. Also, motivational interviewing (MI) by the intervening primary care physician was tested against brief advice (BA) to determine how the level of physician involvement affects these psychosocial outcomes. Overall, the research team found significant decreases in ATQ-R and educational impairment from baseline to two and a half years. There were no differences for perceived social support, and no differences between the MI and BA groups. The findings suggest that offering CATCH-IT to adolescents may help reduce maladaptive cognitive patterns and long-term struggles in school.
“Prevention of Adolescent Depression in Primary Care: Barriers and Relational Work Solutions” (Majoney, N., Gladstone, T., DeFrino, D., Stinson, A., Nidetz, J., Canel, J., Ching, E., Berry, A., Cantorna, J., Fogel, J., Eder, M., Bolotin, M., & Van Voorhess, B.) was included in a recent issue of the Californian Journal of Health Promotion. Depression affects millions of adolescents in the U.S. each year. The authors sought to understand the internal factors that affect the ability of healthcare organizations to implement an intervention that involves mental health screening and depression prevention treatment of at-risk adolescents in primary care settings.
“Building Resilient Families: Developing family interventions for preventing adolescent depression and HIV in low resource settings,” (Kuo, C., Stein, D.J., Cluver, L.D., Brown, L.K., Atujuna, M., Gladstone, T., Martin, J., LoVette, A., & Beardslee, W.) will be published in Transcultural Psychiatry (in press). Depression contributes significantly to the global burden of disease in low and middle income countries. In South Africa, family members may be at elevated risk for depression due to HIV and AIDS, violence, and poverty. The researchers conducted a qualitative investigation from 2013-2015 to inform the development of a family intervention to prevent adolescent depression in South Africa among families infected or at risk for HIV. Findings indicate that HIV and poverty are important risks for depression. Future interventions must address linguistic complexities in describing and discussing depression, and engage in the social interpretations and meanings placed upon depression including bewitchment or deviations from proscribed social roles. This study will guide the development of Our Family Our Future, a resilience-focused family intervention to prevent adolescent depression (ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT02432352).
Media Stereotypes & Adolescent Attitudes
Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Amanda Richer, M.A., Brianna Ruffin (Class of 2017), Budnampet Ramanudom (Class of 2018), and Katie Madsen (Class of 2019), authored “Escaping from Worries or Facing Reality: A Survey Study of Adolescent Attitudes about Sexist and Homophobic Stereotypes in Mainstream U.S. Media,” a chapter in Beyond the Stereotypes? Images of Boys and Girls, and their Consequences, recently published by Nordicom (November 2017). The research team examined the influences of being exposed to gender and sexual orientation stereotypes in the media on U.S.-based adolescents aged 12-18. Departing from wishful identification theory, the study allowed adolescents to report how television characters resemble them, rather than whom they emulate, coming from a place of agency. The findings demonstrated that girls and sexual minorities were less likely to see their gender and sexual orientation reflected in favorite characters. Girls and sexual minorities felt more personally affected by stereotypes about women and girls and were more likely to believe that sexism and homophobia needed to be addressed in the media. Across all groups, those who tend to escape their worries through watching television reported feeling more upset at television content and being more personally affected by negative stereotypes centered on women, girls, and sexual minorities.
Relational-Cultural Theory
Judith Jordan, Ph.D., authored several publications focused on Relational-Cultural Theory.
“Jean Baker Miller, M.D.: Visionary Pragmatist,” was included in a recent issue of Women & Therapy (40. 3-4. 260-274). Jean Baker Miller’s 1976 book, Toward a New Psychology of Women, was an overnight success. It struck a deep chord in many women because it was based on listening to women’s stories. Instead of seeing women through the lens of male psychology with its emphasis on separation and autonomy, Miller suggested that relationships are central to women’s experience of themselves and the world. Traits that were typically pathologized (needing other people, attending to the messages of emotions, wanting to participate in growth-fostering relationships for all involved) were revisited by the physician and her colleagues who discovered strengths where others had seen weakness. The resulting work is known as Relational-Cultural Theory and has offered new understandings of women’s and men’s development with a special emphasis on the impact of power and marginalization on personal and collective wellbeing.
Relational-Cultural Therapy, Second Edition, was published by the American Psychological Association in November 2017. In this book, Jordan explores the history, theory, and practice of relationship-centered, culturally oriented psychotherapy. Western psychological theories generally depict human development as moving from dependence to independence. In contrast, relational–cultural therapy is built on the premise that, throughout the lifespan, human beings grow through and toward connection, and that we need connections to flourish. This theory views isolation, at both individual and cultural levels, as a major source of suffering. The goal of the relational therapist is to deepen the therapeutic relationship and, ultimately, the client’s relationships outside of therapy. The client’s relational images—positive or negative expectations created by past relationships—influence current relationships, and a negative image can result in disconnections between people and society. This new edition highlights new research on the effectiveness of relational–cultural therapy in a variety of real-world situations—such as developing team-building exercises in workplaces, and providing a theoretical frame for an E.U.-sponsored conference on human trafficking.
“Introduction to Relational-Cultural Theory,” was included in Transforming Community: Stories of Connection through the lens of Relational-Cultural Theory, edited by Connie Gunderson, Ph.D., Dorothy Graff, Ph.D., and Karen Craddock, Ph.D., published by Whole Person Associates. This book addresses many of RCT’s newest applications. It is a compilation of writings by people who presented at and attended the conference Transforming Community: The Radical Reality of Relationships co-sponsored by The College of St. Scholastica (CSS) and the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, a legacy project of the Wellesley Centers for Women, held in June 2016 in Duluth, MN.
“Relational–Cultural Theory: The Power of Connection to Transform Our Lives,” was published in the October 2017 issue of The Journal of Humanistic Counseling.
“Relational-Cultural Therapy,” is included in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology (2017), edited by: Amy Wenzel, Ph.D.
“The Power of Connection: Reflections on Mutual Growth,” was included in the Handbook of Counseling Women, Second Edition, edited by Mary Kopala, Ph.D., and Merle Keitel, Ph.D., published in 2016 by Sage Publications.
“Relational-Cultural Theory: The Power of Connection to Transform Our Lives,” was included in the October 2017 (volume 56) Journal of Humanistic Counseling, with Jordan serving as an Invited Living Luminary contributor.
The Journal of Counseling & Development published by Wiley devoted three-quarters of volume 94 in 2016 to assessing and exploring Relational-Cultural Therapy. Two articles were based on conversations with Judith Jordan: “Everything has changed: An interview with Judy Jordan,” (Trepal, H & Duffey, T.) and “Introduction to the special section on Relational-Cultural Theory, (Duffey, T. and Trepal, H.)
Privilege Narratives
Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., authored the chapter, “The Ephemeral Passport,” for a new book, Privilege Through the Looking Glass, edited by Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., published by Sense Publishers. This collection of essays explores status characteristics in daily life. The editor sought out interdisciplinary scholars and writers to share their stories as a means of connecting the personal and the public. The contributors in this volume did not rely solely on academic scholarship, but delved deeply into their own lives, exposing personal experiences, thoughts, feelings, and vulnerabilities. Understanding the goal of this volume, they have either made explicit connections to the institutional and cultural dimensions of privilege and oppression in their essays, through interweaving the personal and public, or via the discussion questions or activities at the end of their respective chapter.
Women and the Tunisian Constitution
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, S.J.D., co-authored “Women and the Making of the Tunisian Constitution” for a recent issue of the Berkeley Journal of International Law, Volume 35 | Issue 1 (de Silva de Alwis, R., Mnasri, A., & Ward, E.). The Jasmine Revolution of 2011 and the cascade of revolutions that followed created a crucial, albeit narrow, window of opportunity for political changes that could shape legal system reform across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. This article proceeds in four parts.
Part I provides a historical overview of Tunisia’s constitution-making process and defines the major stakeholders involved, as well as the varying dynamics among them. It introduces a comparative summary of how other countries have gradually shifted from the Lancaster Model to a more participatory process that embraces women’s inclusion in drafting constitutional rights provisions.
Part II begins the case study of Tunisia by detailing how some of the stakeholders mentioned in Part I shaped the drafting process for certain gender provisions, the proposed texts as well as subsequent revisions. Part II concludes by identifying some of the inconsistencies found within the constitution’s final text, as well as pre-existing laws that have complicated the enactment of implementing legislation.
Part III considers the international forces involved in the drafting process, and the extent to which international texts and softer modes of influence determined the direction of Tunisia’s internal dialogue.
Part IV makes recommendations to actualize the constitution’s gender provisions. It looks at the beginnings of some of these efforts, as well as gives recommendations based on the experience of other countries in transition.
The authors aim to provide greater insight into how provisions are drafted, to what extent the participatory process succeeded in creating new constitutional norms for a country in transition, and to what effect international sources had in driving the constitution to a particular end result.
