Over the past 30 years in the field of human development, adolescent development in particular, as well as in the service of school-based interventions, the value of the construct of school connectedness has become overly muddled and something needs to change. In this talk, Michael J. Karcher will explore this by explaining the evolution and diversity of terms, definitions, measures, and interventions addressing school connectedness. He will specifically illustrate the evolution of two measures of school connectedness and what each uniquely offers.
He will illustrate this using an applied example called the connectedness profile. This is a simple Microsoft Excel-based tool that generates a comparative profile of students’ responses to the Hemingway Measure of Adolescent Connectedness.* He will show how the tool is used and discuss the benefits of its use in the context of youth mentoring programs. Attendees will be encouraged to consider other ways it might be used such as by teachers, parents, or camp counselors. Attendees will leave with a more differentiated understanding of the various ways in which connectedness has been measured and what that means for our interpretation of research and the use of the construct in the service of fostering youth development.
*The name of the Hemingway Measure of Adolescent Connectedness is ascribed to Don Carli, a Michigan teacher and natural mentor, who altered one student’s career path when he said, “You write like Hemingway.” More on this will be shared in the presentation.
Speaker
Dr. Karcher is a professor of educational psychology in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He received a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University and a doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on school-based and cross-age peer mentoring as well as on adolescent connectedness and pair counseling.
Michael authored the Cross-Age Mentoring Program (CAMP), the implementation for which is described in CAMP Program Manual, Training Guide, Connectedness Curriculum, and Mentor Handbook, which have been reviewed by and are listed on the National Institute of Justice’s Crime Solutions website and the National Mentoring Resource Center website.
Michael was most recently the principal investigator of a longitudinal follow-up on the Study of Mentoring in the Learning Environment (SMILE) funded by the W. T. Grant Foundation and OJJDP. Along with David L. DuBois, Professor Karcher edited the Handbook of Youth Mentoring (2005, Sage; second edition in 2014). Michael co-edited with Michael Nakkula Play, Talk, Learn: Promising Practices in Youth Mentoring (2010), which first presented the TEAM framework. He has served on the editorial board for journals and the research and advisory boards of BBBSA, MENTOR, and the Christian Association for Youth Mentoring.