Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / Non-academic factors significantly impact the achievement of students living in poverty (Ladd, 2012; Rothstein, 2010), with experts arguing for a systemic approach to address the complex factors associated with the growing opportunity gap (Bryk et al., 2010; Walsh & Murphy, 2003). In response, the integrated student support (ISS) model has emerged as one effective school-based method (Moore et al., 2017). Notably, both school social workers (SSWs) and school counselors are uniquely positioned to implement ISS models (Olsen, 2016; Teasley & Richard, 2017). School social work reflects a history of working primarily within the family and mental health domains, utilizing community partnerships to deliver intensive interventions to individual, at-risk students (Kelly et al., 2015a). Meanwhile, school counseling reflects a history of emphasizing the academic and social-emotional domains, utilizing individual, whole-school prevention and early intervention (Galassi & Akos, 2012). There is, however, little research on how these distinct professional histories influence systemic intervention implementation. Sequential explanatory mixed methods analyses examined how SSWs and school counselors implemented one systemic ISS model, City Connects, in high-poverty urban schools. Quantitative analyses examined the developmental domain (academic, mental health, family), intensity level (prevention/early, intensive intervention), and provider (school, community, Coordinator) of service referrals to determine differences depending on profession, while controlling for years of practice with City Connects and number of students served. Qualitative analyses bolstered quantitative findings. Post-hoc quantitative analyses further explored outcomes. Findings revealed no differences between school social workers’ and school counselors’ referrals across developmental domains, intensity levels, and service providers, irrespective of the number of years of practice and number of students served. Both professions believed the City Connects model increased the range of their responsibilities, impact on students, and satisfaction compared to their previous, more traditional roles. SSWs reported spending more time supporting families than school counselors in post-hoc analyses. Codified models of practice, like City Connects, may reduce potential practice differences associated with profession, develop and shift professional dispositions, encourage mindset shifts, and increase perceptions of increased impact and satisfaction. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / Out-of-school factors including poverty, mobility, and violence contribute to student learning and development where need often influences negative outcome gaps over time (Coalition for Community Schools, 2018; Mattison & Aber, 2007; Moore, 2014; Moore & Emig, 2014). A subset of students face these and additional challenges with emotional disturbance (ED). The ED designation is a strong predictor of poorer outcomes even with special education practice in place (de Voursney & Huang, 2016; IDEA, 2004; Lewis et al., 2017; Moore et al., 2017; Olivier et al., 2018). These findings heighten calls to reform support systems around students, especially those students facing the most need. Integrated Student Supports (ISS) emerged as a systemic approach to comprehensively service in and out-of-school needs (Moore, 2014; Moore & Emig, 2014; Lee-St. John et al., 2018; Moore et al., 2017). However, limited research exists on the impact of tandem ISS services on special education accommodation for students with ED. This study focused on an approach to ISS, City Connects, on academic and behavior outcomes for students with ED impairment. City Connects offers tailored support for the whole child and implementation has resulted in positive outcomes (City Connects, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020; Walsh et al., 2014). The study had two aims. First, to determine if students with ED designation (N=4,427) scored lower on academic and thriving outcomes than students never in special education (N=14,475). The second was to assess if ever participating in City Connects (N=5,067) moderated the relationship between ED impairment and outcomes. School-fixed effects regressions assessed these aims. Results revealed that students with ED scored significantly lower across all outcomes. Analyses for the second study aim were variable. Math scores were significantly higher for City Connects students than children without these supports. Writing and MCAS-ELA scores did not significantly differ between the two groups. Reading and behavior marks were significantly lower for City Connects students. The predicted moderation of City Connects only met significance for reading scores. Findings partially support hypotheses and promote greater attention to investigations of subsets of students and the mechanisms behind the response to City Connects and ISS more broadly. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

The aim of this study is to describe school teachers` experience that in their mainstream class teach students received in compulsory school for students with intellectual disability. How do teachers work so the students with intellectual disability became included in the class? To get answers to my purpose, I have used the following research questions: How is the experience of working with didactic, social and spatial inclusion described? What appears as challenges for including processes with integrated students? I have performed qualitative interviews with five primary school teachers. The teachers in the study teach or have taught integrated pupils who are enrolled in compulsory school. They teach or have taught the pupils in grade five in their class. As a conceptual starting point, I have chosen to use Asp Onsjös`(2008) different aspects of inclusion. Didactic, social and spatial inclusion. The result of the study shows that in the theoretical subjects mathematics and Swedish integrated pupils more often get individual support outside the classroom by a remedial teacher. In the practical subjects such as physical education and art, on the contrary the integrated pupils are taught with their classmates.  The result of the study reveals that teachers' didactic knowledge and skills are important for how the inclusion looks like in the classroom. Teaching is a social activity - a large part of the students´ social life takes place in the classroom. How teachers plan their lessons is related to how students with learning disabilities can participate. The teachers in the study describe that it is a challenge to have integrated students. According to them it is not just that students develop knowledge. A major challenge, according to the teachers, is to enhance the opportunities for the students being socially included with their classmates. The teachers in the study ask for the need for cooperation with remedial teacher and asking for more guidance. Working together with remedial teacher and other colleagues to support the integrated student in their learning is a recurring theme during the interviews. / Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva grundskollärares erfarenheter av att i den egna grundskoleklassen undervisa elever mottagna i särskolan. Hur arbetar lärarna för att elever med utvecklingsstörning ska bli inkluderade i klassen? För att få svar på mitt syfte harföljande forskningsfrågoranvänts: Vilka erfarenheter av arbete med didaktisk, socialt och rumslig inkludering beskrivs? Vad framstår som utmaningar för inkluderande processer kring integrerade elever? Jag har genomfört kvalitativa intervjuer med fem grundskollärare. Grundskollärarnai studien undervisar eller har i sin klass undervisat integrerade elever som är mottagnai särskolan. De undervisar eller har undervisat eleverna i årskurs fem. Som begreppslig utgångspunkt har jag valt att använda mig av Asp-Onsjös (2008) olika aspekter på inkludering. Didaktisk, social och rumslig inkludering. Studiens resultat visar att i de teoretiska ämnena matematik och svenska får integrerade elever oftare individuellt stöd utanför klassrummet av en speciallärare. I de praktiska ämnena exempelvis idrott och bild däremot undervisas de integrerade elever tillsammans med sina klasskamrater. I studiens resultat framkommer att lärarnas didaktiska kunskaper och färdigheter har betydelse för hur inkluderingen ser ut i klassrummet. Undervisning är en social aktivitet -en stor del av elevens sociala liv sker i klassrummet. Hur lärarna planerar sin undervisning hör ihop med hur elever med utvecklingsstörning kan delta. Lärarna i studien beskriver att det är en utmaning att ha integrerade elever. Enligt dem handlar det inte bara om att eleverna utvecklas kunskapsmässigt. En stor utmaningen är enligt lärarna är att stärka möjligheterna till att eleven är socialt inkluderad med sina klasskamrater. Lärarna i studien lyfter fram ett behov av ett nära samarbete med speciallärare och efterfrågar mer handledning. Att arbeta tillsammans med en speciallärare och andra kollegor för att stötta den integrerade eleven i sitt lärande är ett återkommande tema under intervjuerna.

Vårt syfte med studien har varit att via några lärares uppfattningar få en ökad insyn om grundsärskoleelevers inkludering i grundskolan.     För att samla in data till studien har den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun använts som metod. Studien bygger på åtta intervjuer med grundskollärare som undervisar grundsärskoleelever som är helt integrerade i grundskolan.   Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är det relationella perspektivet och perspektivet KoRP - kommunikation, delaktighet och lärande, som är förutsättningar för att skapa en framgångsrik inkludering.                    Resultatet av studien visar att lärarnas uppfattningar om grundsärskoleelevers inkludering i grundskolans undervisning är komplext, dels utifrån att lärarna saknar kunskaper om intellektuella funktionsnedsättningar, samt att lärarnas olika syn på inkludering inom skolans organisation är otydlig. Lärarna ser att finns såväl utmaningar som möjligheter med att bedriva ett framgångsrikt inkluderingsarbete, men att det är förenat med betydligt större svårigheter att genomföra detta med de elever som läser mot grundsärskolans läroplan inriktning ämnesområden.   Den slutsats som kan dras av studiens resultat är att det finns stora möjligheter till utveckling för grundsärskoleelevers inkludering i grundskolan, det handlar mycket om lärarna får rätt förutsättningar till att kunna bedriva en för eleven givande undervisning. / Our purpose with the study was to gain more knowledge about the effects that shows when teachers work to include students with intellectual disabilities in compulsory schools.   The method we used to collect data was qualitative research interviews. The study is based on eight interviews with teachers in compulsory schools, who work with, or have experience from teaching students with intellectual disabilities, and who are completely included in compulsory schools.   The theoretical basis for the study is the relational perspective and the perspective KoRP, communication, participation and learning, who are important basis for a successful inclusion.   The result shows that the teacher´s perceptions about teaching students with intellectual disabilities in compulsory school are complexed. One of the reasons for that could be that teacher´s knowledge about intellectual disabilities are weak. Another reason could be the differences in teacher`s consensus about inclusion in their organization. The teachers can see both opportunities and challenges to manage a successful inclusion for the students. The biggest challenge with inclusion for students with intellectual disabilities in compulsory schools, is to include the students who don´t read academic school subjects.   The conclusion to be drawn from the result of the study, is that there are great opportunities for development for students with intellectual disabilities by being included in compulsory school. It is about teacher´s possibilities to give the students the teaching they need to succeed.

Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / Poverty has many deleterious effects on child development, including negative impacts on social-emotional health, a developmental domain schools refer to as non-cognitive skills (Dearing, 2008). Unfortunately, children growing up poor often have underdeveloped non-cognitive skills, which significantly predict academic success and well-being (Farrington et al., 2012). Integrated Student Support (ISS) is one emerging approach that holistically supports cognitive and non-cognitive student development (Moore & Emig, 2014). While ISS has been found to improve academic outcomes, limited research examines its impact on social-emotional outcomes. This study focused on one ISS intervention, City Connects, which provides tailored student support plans to every child in a school via school and community-based services (Walsh et al., 2014). The study had three aims. The first was to examine the percentage of City Connects students with and without a social-emotional-behavioral (SEB) Need across levels of risk and service characteristics (i.e., domains, intensity levels, types) in second grade (N=896). The second was to examine improvement in three teacher-rated non-cognitive student outcomes (Prosocial Behavior, Self-Regulated Learning, Academic Effort) from second-fifth grade for City Connects students with and without a SEB Need (N=896). The third was to compare improvement in the same three non-cognitive student outcomes from second-fifth grade for students with a SEB Need in City Connects schools and comparable schools without the intervention (N=1,778). Multilevel modeling assessed aims 2 and 3. Significantly more students with a SEB Need were deemed higher risk and received more health, early intervention, and SEB/counseling services compared to students without a SEB Need in City Connects schools. Further, significant improvements from second-fifth grade were found in Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Effort for City Connects students with a SEB Need compared to those without a SEB Need. Significant improvements were also found over time in Academic Effort for students with a SEB Need in City Connects schools compared to those in comparison schools. Findings support that ISS improves non-cognitive functioning for students attending high-poverty schools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / With an increase in emphasis on individual uniqueness and multi-contextual influences, developmental and intervention/prevention science along with similar fields of research (e.g., personalized medicine, personalized learning, health communication, business marketing) have promoted the design and implementation of interventions that would tailor responses and strategies to optimize targeted outcomes based on individual needs and variability (Joyner & Paneth, 2019; Kreuter et al., 1999; Vesanen, 2007). However, in spite of the effort and resources invested in personalization in the past decades, evidence for the realization and utility of tailored interventions have been more anecdotal than quantitatively empirical. The majority of person-centered studies have been qualitative (Lerner et al., 2019). While there is little agreement on what “tailoring” means across the different fields of study, there is a consensus that the term “tailoring” and tailoring-related terms (e.g., personalization, individualization, differentiation, and customization) lack a common and feasible theoretical foundation. Consequently, this semantic crisis has made the construct increasingly difficult to conceptualize and operationalize (e.g. Economist Group, 2021; Shemshack & Spector, 2020). Drawing on insights from the Specificity Principle, Orthogenetic Principle, and Developmental Contextualism in developmental science, this dissertation proposed a provisional definition of “tailoring”: the process of matching unique patterns of services based on each student’s cumulative strengths and needs and the availability of services (e.g., Bornstein, 2015; Lerner et al., 1998; Walsh et al., 2002; Werner & Kaplan, 1956). Guided by this definition, this dissertation sought to find evidence of “tailoring” in one “whole-child,” school-based/evidence-based Integrated Student Support (ISS): City Connects. City Connects partners with school personnel and multiple community agencies to systematically and cost-effectively allocate services/resources to students and their families from low-income communities in order to promote strengths, address needs, and mitigate risks (Moore & Emig, 2014; Dearing et al. 2016; Walsh & Theodorakakis, 2017). After establishing a theoretically-informed basis for “tailoring” as an operationalizable construct, this dissertation employed a comprehensive, three-dimensional approach to data analysis: nomothetic (for finding general/ “universal” trends), differential (for finding differences between groups), and idiographic (for finding differences between individuals) (e.g., Lerner et al., 2019; Overton, 2015; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). This was to magnify the descriptive power of the data and findings. In order to accomplish this, the two exploratory substudies in this dissertation employed 1) descriptive analysis, 2) a novel approach for comparing the service patterns matched to each student’s unique sets of strengths and needs, and 3) Latent Class Analysis (LCA). The major findings suggest that “tailoring” in City Connects schools is occurring in five ways: 1) students with higher needs receive more support than students with fewer needs; 2) City Connects is adaptive in responding to the emerging needs of individuals as circumstances change in the course of time; 3) there are unique patterns of services that are either shared (two more students have the same combination of services/types of services) or unshared (only one student has a particular service pattern); 4) service patterns are related to students’ developmental needs (i.e., higher risk level->higher percentages of individualized service patterns); and 5) service pattern matching is purposeful and does not occur randomly. The implications that these findings have on theory, research, and practice are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Thesis advisor: Laura M. O'Dwyer / Education researchers are frequently interested in examining the causal impact of academic services and interventions; however, it is often not feasible to randomly assign study elements to treatment conditions in the field of education (Adelson, 2013). When assignment to treatment conditions is non-random, the omission of any variables relevant to treatment selection creates a correlation between the treatment variable and the error in regression models. This is termed endogeneity (Ebbes, 2004). In the presence of endogeneity, treatment effect estimates from traditionally used regression approaches may be biased. The purpose of this study was to investigate the causal impact of an integrated student support model, namely City Connects, on student academic achievement. Given that students are not randomly assigned to the City Connects intervention, endogeneity bias may be present. To address this issue, two novel and underused statistical approaches were used with school admissions lottery data, namely Gaussian copula regression developed by Park and Gupta (2012), and Latent Instrumental Variable (LIV) regression developed by Peter Ebbes (2004). The use of real-world school admissions lottery data allowed the first-ever comparison of the two proposed methods with Instrumental Variable (IV) regression under a large-scale randomized control (RCT) trial. Additionally, the researcher used simulation data to investigate both the performance and boundaries of the two proposed methods compared with that of OLS and IV regression. Simulation study findings suggest that both Gaussian copula and LIV regression are useful approaches for addressing endogeneity bias across a range of research conditions. Furthermore, simulation findings suggest that the two proposed methods have important differences in their set of identifying assumptions, and that some assumptions are more crucial than others. Results from the application of the Gaussian copula and LIV regression in the City Connects school lottery admissions study demonstrated that receiving the City Connects model of integrated student support during elementary school has a positive impact on mathematics achievement. Such findings underscore the importance of addressing out-of-school barriers to learning. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.