Latinx and Black youth are more likely to experience exclusionary discipline compared to their White peers, with immediate and long-term consequences for academic achievement and social well-being. In part, disparities in exclusionary discipline are due to small initial differences in social perception and interactions, which intensify over time as negatively stereotyped students and their teachers react to one another. Prior pilot work suggests that Peer Coach Training (PCT), an approach that deemphasizes student misbehavior and focuses instead on training youth as “coaches” to help their peers, may help increase prosocial behavior and positive teacher perceptions for youth with disciplinary referrals. Using a proof-of-concept approach, Huey and colleagues will build on promising early findings by conducting a small randomized controlled trial of ten charter schools across Los Angeles County, with 150 Black and Latinx middle school student participants who have received at least one disciplinary referral. The team will use multi-level models to assess the potential of the intervention to influence student behavioral and discipline outcomes, as well as the extent to which helping behaviors, psychological empowerment, and teacher perceptions of student behavior may explain effects. They will then conduct in-depth interviews with students and teachers to better understand the mechanisms through which the intervention may yield positive effects. Findings will provide insight into a novel strengths-based approach to reducing inequalities for Black and Latinx youth.
How does training in peer coaching benefit Latinx and Black middle-school youth referred for disruptive behavior?
