UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Comprehensive crisis training for school-based professionals: The development, implementation, and evaluation of a crisis preparation and response curriculum(2006-11-21) Ridgely, John Timothy; Strein, William; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Schools and school systems are increasingly expected and legally obligated to be prepared for and respond to crises impacting school communities. However, there have been few systematic efforts to develop research-based training programs designed to increase the crisis preparation and response abilities of school-based professionals. The purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive crisis preparation and response curriculum for school system staff. The curriculum in this study was developed following a thorough review of the school-based crisis intervention literature and the research on key principles of adult learning. Members of the district's crisis response leadership team and other school-based staff helped pilot and fine-tune aspects of the curriculum prior to implementation. The curriculum was subsequently implemented with twelve school-based professionals who enrolled in the 15-hour course. The evaluation of the curriculum focused on identifying changes in the participants' learning and behaviors throughout the course, documenting the effectiveness of crisis simulations as a training tool, and looking for themes and patterns across the various data collection tools that could assist in improving the scope and sequence of the curriculum for future trainings. The findings for each of these evaluation goals were very positive. The course participants' ability to effectively apply crisis preparation and response skills during extended simulations improved substantially throughout the course based on group performances on a crisis simulation rubric. The participants also consistently reported that they felt more comfortable and confident applying these skills, with many planning to take leadership roles on their school-based crisis teams. The crisis simulation activities were found to be excellent tools for learning and practicing crisis intervention skills in a safe setting, and the course participants agreed that these simulation activities were realistic, valuable teaching techniques. The themes and patterns related to the scope and sequence of the curriculum were extremely positive, with few changes suggested. The participants reported that the content and teaching strategies utilized were effective and fostered learning. Implications for future research and practice were discussed.Item Effectiveness of School-Based Crisis Intervention: Research and Practice(2005-11-23) Croft, Ivan A; Strein, William O; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research comprehensively examining the efficacy of school crisis intervention procedures and strategies is limited and often restricted to either author-based recommendations or descriptive accounts of crisis responses. The purpose of this study was to identify research-supported practices in school crisis intervention and complete a program evaluation of a local school system's crisis intervention procedures. Three procedures were incorporated. A set of decision rules were developed based on research in evidence-based practices to discern crisis intervention strategies that are strongly recommended, recommended, not recommended, or bearing insufficient data based upon the quality and degree of support available for the practice in the literature over the last 20 years. Upon completion of the literature coding, the crisis intervention procedures employed by a school system were evaluated by assessing the degree of match between the documented procedures and the established research-supported practices in crisis intervention. The third procedure evaluated the perceived level of effectiveness of crisis responses in the school system through structured debriefings completed with school-based crisis teams after a crisis response. Results of the literature coding revealed patterns of scholarship detailing 98 separate crisis intervention strategies with 7 meeting the criteria for strongly recommended, 23 for recommended, 4 for not recommended, and 64 showing insufficient data. A pattern analysis showed the majority of strategies reflecting insufficient data to code due to a lack of operational evidence or inconsistent operational definitions or implementation across studies. Results of the program evaluation indicated that the school system procedures disaggregated more broadly than the literature with fewer discrete strategies identified. A comparison of strategies showed 6 school system procedures matching with strongly recommended practices, 17 with recommended, 19 with insufficient data, and 0 with not recommended. Transcriptions from the structured debriefings were analyzed using the constant comparison method. Results revealed six categories of feedback (crisis preparedness, pre-response planning after a crisis, information flow, student support, staff support, and follow-up) with multiple themes nested within categories. Practices perceived by crisis responders to be effective or ineffective in each category were discussed. Implications on current crisis intervention practices and future research were discussed.