Enhancing School Engagement in At-Risk, Urban Minority Adolescents Through a School-Based, Adult Mentoring Intervention

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated whether a 5-month, adult mentoring intervention delivered by school personnel could enhance the school engagement of ninth grade urban minority adolescents. Compared to 20 at-risk students who did not receive an intervention, 20 at-risk students who were randomly assigned to mentoring exhibited significantly less decline during the first year of high school in perceived teacher support and decision making and were less likely to enter the discipline system. The effects were stronger and included sense of school belonging for participants who were “mentored as intended.” Moreover, mentee and mentor reports of relationship quality were associated with changes in mentored participants' school-related cognitions and behaviors. The findings indicate that adult mentoring may help to prevent normative declines in urban minority youths' school engagement.

Keywords:

• At-risk youth
• discipline referrals
• high school students
• mentoring
• relationship quality
• school belonging
• teacher support

The authors thank the mentors and students who participated in the current study and the school administrators who facilitated our data collection. We also thank Erich Labouvie, Marek Chawarski, and Stephanie O'Malley for their helpful edits and suggestions. This study was supported by grants from NIDA DA17552 and NIAAA T32AA07569. This manuscript was based on the first author's dissertation. Portions of this manuscript were presented at the 2005 Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Conference in Washington, DC.

Notes

Note. Responses for sense of school belonging, teacher support, and academic self-efficacy ranged from 1 to 4 (1 = low, 4 = high), while responses for decision making ranged from 1 to 5 (1 = low, 5 = high).

^a n = 36 (2 Control and 2 Treatment participants were missing posttest questionnaires).

^b F values reflect a 2 (Time; Pretest/Posttest) × 2 (Treatment; Mentee/Control) repeated measures analysis of variance.

^c Between groups effect size (Cohen's d) calculated with mean change scores and pooled standard deviations.

^d n = 18 Mentees, n = 17 Controls (one outlier removed from the dataset).

∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01.

Note. Values shown in parentheses are standard deviations. There was no statistically significant difference between Mentees and Controls on any of the continuous variables at the three time points, as indicated by a 3 (Time; Pretest/Posttest/Follow-up) × 2 (Treatment; Mentee/Control) repeated measures analysis of variance.

^a At follow-up, information on discipline referrals was available for 31 participants (16 mentored, 15 not mentored).

∗p < .05 for Mentees (change from pretest to posttest), Wilcoxon signed rank.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura J. Holt

Laura J. Holt, PhD, (previously with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey).

Brenna H. Bry

Brenna H. Bry, PhD, The State University of New Jersey.

Valerie L. Johnson

Valerie L. Johnson, PhD, The State University of New Jersey.