In cultures where children have regular contact with same aged peers during the first years of life, peer sociability plays a fundamental role at early stages. Currently, the only social emotional skills children are exposed to are those that they learn alongside academic learning. Additional social emotional skills are often not taught. These skills include social awareness, self-awareness, dealing with ambiguous situations, adapting to social situations, managing stress, and learning how to learn (Lindsay, 2013). It is especially challenging for English language learners (ELL), who have the additional task of learning multiple ways of communication, including both language and cultural rules. Research on social emotional learning has shown that when children are able to deal with, manage, and maneuver the social and emotional landscapes of their lives, their capacities to learn and function socially on all levels improve (Lindsay, 2013). This study seeks to compare the social emotional outcomes for ELL students with their native English-speaking peers in classroom settings. The study includes literature review and data analysis on data collected by Second Step Study researchers at the College of Education from approximately 5,000 children across 40 schools in 5 districts. One of the teacher-reported measurements used in the study is the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA), a behavioral rating scale that measures skills associated with social-emotional competence, resilience, and academic success. The other teacher-reported measurement is the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a behavioral screening questionnaire which measures children’s strengths and difficulties related to behavioral characteristics. Results from the measures will be compared between native English speakers and ELL students. The aim of this study is to increase teachers’ awareness of the importance of social emotional development of English language learners.

Parent engagement has been found to have direct implications in the academic success of students. Knowing the ways that parents are or are not engaged is vital to developing ways to improve parent engagement. Additionally, it is important to reveal the ways in which parent engagement is defined in current school settings. Increasingly, school, and community based organizations are in need of understanding how well they are doing in engaging parents. To help us understand ways to assess parent engagement, this study examines parent engagement measures found in literature from 1993 to the present with a focus on its representation in urban communities. Specifically, we examine how equitable and traditional forms of parent engagement are or are not represented in the constructs used to measure parent engagement in urban settings. We synthesized literature into Excel templates and then coded using MAXQDA software. This allows us to analyze the data and more easily view patterns, differences, and commonalities among the literature. Using our coding database, we found preliminary results that indicate that parent engagement studies of urban school settings were more frequent in comparison to suburban, rural, or mixed school settings. We found that within the urban setting, when studying parent-engagement behaviors, over fifty percent of the time the behaviors studied were home-based. These findings suggest that the quantitative measures and studies of parent involvement over the last twenty years largely reflect the traditional approaches that qualitative studies have found to be inhibiting, particularly for the participation of non-dominant parents such as minorities or parents from low-income background in school-based or community-based parent engagement. These findings suggest the need to examine beyond the scope of traditional measures in order to begin to understand the potential of equitable parent, school, and community collaboration for improving student learning and success.

Bilingualism has become increasingly prevalent, but few studies have been done to specifically examine how language diversity might affect children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study is to analyze whether home language affects how children with ASD respond to an interactive book reading intervention. The Preschool Autism Literacy research project at the College of Education has developed an early intervention program that would prepare young children with ASD to improve their language skills and be more successful in later reading instruction. Forty-nine students with ASD in their last year of preschool (ages 4-5) met individually with a tutor 4 times a week, for 15 minutes per each session for an interactive book reading session designed to improve the language development of young children. To examine the effects of home language differences, we compare the data of four groups of participants: (a) a control of monolingual English students, (b) a control group of students with a home language other than English, (c) a treatment group of monolingual English students, and (d) a treatment group of students with a home language other than English, on receptive and expressive language outcomes controlling for pre-intervention scores. We hypothesize that bilingualism would have no negative impact on the response of the bilingual students. Thus, we expect to see no difference or a slight increase in improvement of reading skills of bilingual children compared to monolingual English children, because of the intervention program. This study has implications for emergent literacy instruction for young children with ASD from a variety of language backgrounds.

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) is a complicated disorder of the brain that affects children and adults. Simply put, SPD is when the sensory stimuli received are confusing, upsetting, or not meaningful to a child, which results in poor adaptive responses. To achieve an adapted or successful response means that the central nervous system has been able to successfully organize incoming sensory information from the environment for use. The central nervous system is responsible for allowing the neurons to work together and communicate effectively. When this does not happen the result is sensory processing disorder. Within the field of occupational therapy, SPD is a widely accepted disorder; however some pediatricians, psychologist, and teachers question its legitimacy. As a future OT I was intrigued by the concept of SPD, however I wanted to move beyond the initial curiosity and gain a more concrete understanding. I started my research with a literature review asking the question, "What is the foundation of SPD?" and "What are common treatments?" This developed into looking at current research methods, SPD in combination with other disorders, diagnostic and assessment precessess, and treatment through occupational therapy. Through this process, I quickly realized the complexity of SPD and wanted a more tangible and personable perspective of SPD. This led me to conduct a series of thirteen interviews with occupational therapists. They were all pediatric OT who worked either in a school or clinical setting and had extensive experience working with children with SPD. The interview questions addressed the same themes in my literature review with more elaborate questions on treatment. Through my research, I hope to expose others outside the field of occupational therapy to SPD in hopes of advocating for awareness and promoting research. Because of the complexity and individualistic manner of SPD, it is important to push for more research. As more children demonstrate symptms of SPD, continuous research is vital to convey validity, support clarity and accuracy during assessment, and provide more effective treatment.