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Stress coping
Stress coping
We are researching how we can help children who may avoid their stressors, to develop more effective stress coping mechanisms through the use of co-created leisure activities in a developmental climate for learning.
Developmental relationships for co-creating summer holiday leisure activity schemes as resilience assets.
Some children may choose avoidance disengagement strategies to cope with stress and negative emotions when facing difficulties at school, particularly in maths. I am researching alternatives to avoidance coping, that may provide the benefit of building students’ internal assets to promote re-engagement with learning. I present co-creation, through developmental relationships, as one mechanism for promoting more effective coping, and plan to test its impact on maths attainment in the context of an out of school, holiday activity club.
In a pilot study I measured non-cognitive characteristics of 42 children before and after an average of 14 days of intervention, along with standardised mathematics attainment. Before and after group characteristics were compared using Mann Whitney and Hedges g statistics. The intervention had a significant impact on students’ mathematics attainment. At the same time students reported greater self-determination, agency and access to developmental relationships.
I aim to make an original contribution in defining the role of out of school programs as a non-cognitive intervention to improve educational attainment for under-privileged students, which may also contribute to improving trauma informed youth work and truancy and exclusion management in schools.
The working paper is available on OSF Preprints at DOI 10.31219/osf.io/ztdv9
