Weissberg urges prevention partnerships

This successful researcher emphasizes a new brand of parent-teacher cooperation.

By Patrick A. McGuire
Monitor staff

In the late 1980s, during a long-term research project in New Haven, Conn.,

Roger Weissberg, PhD, asked parents, teachers and students to develop a list of school-related problems they?d like to prevent.

They cited many categories, from absenteeism to substance abuse, violence, loneliness, depression and teen pregnancies. The community?s immediate instinct, he said, was to create separate programs aimed at preventing every problem on the list.

But, he explained during an address at APA?s 1998 Annual Convention in San Francisco, 'while well intentioned, a plethora of different kinds of prevention programs creates chaos in schools and confusion for kids and teachers.'

In fact, it was a single in-depth program that led to lasting success in New Haven as Weissberg and his colleagues created an approach that cast teachers and parents in the unusual role of partners with each other. 'Most traditional prevention programs aspire to involve parents but not to partner with them,' explained Weissberg, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 'Simple involvement of parents in prevention programs is not the same as a school-family partnership,' he said. 'It?s important for families to do things with their children and for teachers to do things with their students. It?s also important for all of them to have collaborative approaches so they give common messages to children.'

Weissberg argued that by going beyond traditional efforts at parent involvement, 'a school-family partnership becomes a base from which programs are conceptualized, designed, implemented, evaluated and even institutionalized.'

In New Haven, Weissberg?s collaborative efforts at improving children?s social, emotional and ethical training have since been transformed into a permanent part of the school district?s organization, from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Parents and teachers began with specific goals, including teaching students to engage in safe health practices and behaviors; understand and respect diversity; become socially skilled; and contribute responsibly and ethically to their families and peer groups.

'We needed to think more holistically about promoting positive, responsible, ethical, caring children,' Weissberg said. He believes prevention programs should be developed in preschool through high school and 'incorporate validated mental health strategies and competence building as an integral part of the curriculum.'

The conceptual model for the New Haven program, he said, emphasized two points. 'The first is to encourage children to coordinate their affect, cognition and behavior, and therefore to handle effectively and adaptively relevant social tasks. Psychologists are especially good at this. We are less good at the second, which is to create environmental settings and resources that support adaptive behavior in the achievement of good developmental outcomes.'

A challenge for teachers and parents, he said, was 'to recognize emotions in children as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching.'

Such programs, he said, should also teach children about stress and their feelings and other people?s feelings, create opportunities for children to use the skills and provide recognition when they use the skills adaptively.

'Teachers especially need to be trained to foster children?s affective, cognitive and behavior competencies,' said Weissberg?areas such as knowing one?s emotions, managing emotions, optimism, goal-setting, problem-solving and decision-making. 'The challenge is how to teach these jargony terms over a multiple-year period in a way that is accessible to students, teachers and parents.'

In New Haven, teachers provide 25 to 50 hours of classroom instruction to enhance children?s social and emotional skills with an emphasis on self-control, stress management, problem-solving, decision-making and communication. In addition, the schools established peer leadership programs, mentoring programs and after-school academies where these skills were reinforced.

Weissberg is also executive director of the Collaborative for Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning, which aims to support the development and dissemination of effective school-based prevention programs.