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Abstract
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VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The goal of this research by Roth and Nicholson was to identify differences in learning abilities between violent youth who succeeded when they returned to school as mainstream students compared to violent youth who failed when they returned to school as mainstream students.
METHODOLOGY:
This was a quasi-experimental, cross-sectional study of 60 adolescents from a school for violent and assaultive youth. All successfully mainstreamed students from 1986-1988 were used in this study. No control group was used. Students were referred to this school by the court, school systems, mental health clinics, and private practitioners. Positive re-integration into the public school system was measured using three instruments: (1) Walker Problem Behavior Identification Checklist (MWPBIC) as a pre-test and post-test; (2) a questionnaire completed by the public school teacher into whose classroom the subject was mainstreamed; and, (3) The Detroit Test of Learning Aptitude (DTLA).
Reintegrating the subjects into the public school system took place gradually over the period of a year, but varied depending on the progress made by each adolescent. Therapeutic parent meetings were held throughout the integration process to encourage better support for the children by their parents.
Six variables were studied to determine their effect on the subject's ability to successfully reintegrate into the public school system: behavioral classification, race, sex, age, socioeconomic status (eligibility for free school lunches), composite quotients in five learning areas. The subject's linguistic, cognitive, attentional, motoric and general aptitudes for learning made up the five learning areas studied. The top third of the students based on the MWPBIC and the questionnaire were arbitrarily selected as "successful" and the bottom third as "unsuccessful." Analysis of variance and Tukey's t-tests were performed on the data.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
The demographics of the successful and unsuccessful groups were as follows: The mean age was 11.2 years; 60% of the students were black; 10% were female, 90% male.
The F-test found a significant difference between the successful and unsuccessfully mainstreamed subjects in the following areas: verbal quotient, cognitive, attentional enhanced, attentional reduced, motoric enhanced, motoric reduced, and global. Using Tukey's t-test, there were significant differences in the same areas and in the structural category. Based on using a difference of 10 quotient points as the DTLA Manual suggests, only the verbal quotient was significant (p<.01).
AUTHORS' RECOMMENDATIONS:
The results of this study indicate that violent and assaultive youth with lower verbal quotient scores are not ready for successful re-integration into the public school system; they may need additional educational services. Future research should examine whether the subject's educational deficits can improve with remedial skills programs, and what the impact of verbal deficiencies is on violent and assaultive behavior. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Demographic Factors
KW - Educational Factors
KW - Juvenile Violence
KW - School
KW - Learning Disability
KW - Socioeconomic Factors
KW - Juvenile Violence
Language: en |