Understanding How Mentoring Can Disrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline and Promote Positive Youth Development

从学校到监狱的管道是一个比喻，用来描述教育政策和做法将青年从公立学校输送到少年和刑事司法系统的方式。学校开除等排斥性的学校纪律是学校到监狱的一个重要组成部分，与青年辍学、犯罪和司法系统接触有关。 对被开除的学生进行辅导干预可能是预防和减少危险行为的一个关键的、尚未开发的潜在变革杠杆，同时促进青年的积极发展，并从中游的Vantage破坏学校到监狱的管道。然而，需要进行研究，以确定对这一青年群体最有效的辅导方案结构。 这项研究将对南卡罗来纳州大学青少年指导计划（USC AMP）的参与者进行。 南加州大学AMP于2017年开发，是一项大学与社区合作计划，将计划在刑事司法，人类服务或法律相关领域从事职业的受过培训的大学生导师与被传统高中开除并目前就读于纪律性替代学校的青年相匹配。 为了探索替代的校本辅导计划是否能促进积极的青年成果，研究人员将使用混合方法实验设计，并利用从导师-学员对收集的定量调查数据和定性访谈数据。 研究人员将评估9个月和18个月的教育，职业和犯罪结果之间的差异，被开除的学生单独接受一对一的指导和那些接受补充结构化课程。 研究人员还将研究指导经验对大学生导师的影响，特别是他们对认知，个人和人际交往技能增长的看法。 该项目将推进对指导计划影响的科学理解，并有可能为减少学校到监狱的管道提供可扩展的蓝图，并照亮课程体验，使本科生能够超越技能能力，发展情商，个人和人际关系专业技能。该项目由法律科学和激励竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）项目共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The school-to-prison pipeline is a metaphor used to describe the ways in which educational policies and practices funnel youth out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice system. Exclusionary school discipline, such as school expulsion, is an important component of the school-to-prison pipeline and associated with youth drop out, delinquency, and justice system contact. Mentoring interventions for expelled students may represent a key, untapped potential lever of change for preventing and reducing risk behaviors, while promoting positive youth development, and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline from a midstream vantage. However, research is needed to determine the most effective structure of mentorship programming for this population of youth. The research will be conducted on participants in the University of South Carolina Adolescent Mentoring Program (USC AMP). Developed in 2017, USC AMP is a university-community partnership program that matches trained university student mentors who are planning to pursue a career in a criminal justice, human services, or law-related field with youth who have been expelled from their traditional high school and currently attend a disciplinary alternative school. To explore whether alternative school-based mentoring programs promote positive youth outcomes, the researchers will use a mixed methods experimental design and draw upon quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data collected from mentor-mentee pairs. The researchers will evaluate differences in 9- and 18- month educational, vocational, and delinquency outcomes between expelled students receiving one-on-one mentoring alone and those receiving a supplemental structured curriculum. The researchers will also examine the impact of the mentorship experience on the university student mentors, particularly their perceptions of cognitive, personal, and interpersonal skill growth. This project will advance the scientific understanding of the impact of mentoring programs and has the potential to provide a scalable blueprint for reducing the school-to-prison pipeline and illuminate a curricular experience that allows undergraduate students to move beyond skill competency to develop emotional intelligence, personal, and interpersonal professional skills. This project is jointly funded by the Law & Science, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) programs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.