Bullying Among Adolescents

The assignment:

You will be making your own academic intervention for this paper utilizing previous research to support your ideas. I know this may sound daunting, but I want you to have some fun with this. Pick a topic/ problem you are passionate about and the writing will be a lot easier. You will have to have 3 key parts of your intervention, so make sure you have an intervention that can accommodate this. Before starting this paper, or even the outline, your topic should be approved by me. This will probably be a quick email that you send me. It would be helpful to have some idea about what your 3 key aspects of your intervention would be at this point so I could offer feedback, but this is not required. You should have approval from me by Friday August 4th.

Picking a topic/problem: The topic you pick should be (at least a little bit) related to academic/education issues. This could include bettering achievement scores, focusing on mental health in children with a school-based intervention, or tackling a systematic issue that affects a certain group. But basically, anything that would help a child in school (which covers a lot) would be an appropriate topic. Here are some (very broad) topics that should get you started if you are feeling stuck:

• Chronic Absenteeism
• Access to Educational Resources
• Parental Involvement in Schooling
• Teacher Interventions
• Summer Decline in Low-Income groups
• College Prep
• School Readiness
• Access to STEM courses
• Anxiety in classrooms
• Bullying
• Student Relationships to each other
• Teaching Social Skills
• Fostering a School Community
• Health/Wellness Issues
• ADHD Interventions
• Impulse Issues
• Drug and Violence Prevention

Creating an Intervention: In order to “create” an effective intervention, you first should see what others have done. I truly do not want you to reinvent the wheel, you should be using past interventions/studies to help figure out what has worked before. You will need 3 key parts of your intervention, with research backing up each part.

Below, I outlined the 5 sections that your paper should have to help you format your ideas. Unless stated, these sections can be as long or as short as you think is effective, but make sure to have all of the elements. In certain sections, I have also given an example and how I would tackle each section. Obviously, you cannot steal my example.

1)    INTRODUCE: State your issue you want to target, your target population, and a short summary of your intervention. This should be sort of like an abstract, giving the reader a very short summary of what they are about to read. This should be no longer than a paragraph. Be sure to use an effective hook and conclusion.

2)    WHAT is the issue you want to target?

• Why this issue? What are the poor outcomes that can come from this issue being left untreated? These can be long term/ short term issues but make sure you have at least 2-3 poor outcomes.
• Be sure to include at least 2 peer reviewed journal article sources in this section.
  • § A great way to find sources for this would be to search for “TOPIC adverse effects in AGE GROUP”
• Concrete example:
  • § Tackling math skills in preschoolers because it is key for school readiness/ future success.
    • I would then give citations/ examples of what school readiness is and why it is so important for future success.

3)    WHO are you targeting in this intervention?

• What group of people do you want your intervention to be for?
• Identify the population in need!
• Why them?
  • § What systematic/ cultural barriers are in place or why might this specific group benefit?
• At least 1 peer reviewed journal article!
• Concrete example:
  • § Tackling math skills in preschoolers because it is key for school readiness/ future success. I would then give a citation of why preschoolers may benefit the most!

4)    DESCRIBE your intervention: this should be the longest section, with effective transitions between paragraphs.

• Describe fully what you want to do.
• Name at least 3 key parts of your intervention! Make sure to have at least 1 empirical article as EVIDENCE supporting each part (3 studies in total).
  • § To get these empirical articles:
    • Find other interventions that have done a similar aspect and cite that
    • Find an empirical article that has found results that your idea has “worked”
  • § While you are only required to have 1 article for each key part, your argument could be strengthened by having 2 or more sources instead.
• Concrete example:
  • § Topic/Intervention: “Parents teaching preschoolers key math skills with an iPad app and sensitive parenting”
  • § 3 Key parts: Parental teaching of math skills, iPad app teaching math, and sensitive parenting
  • § Then find studies that support each point
    • Data saying why parental teaching of math works.
    • Examples of when teaching math with an iPad works.
    • Why sensitive parenting is important.

5)    CONCLUDE:

• Provide a VERY short summary of your intervention again and try to persuade someone why this intervention could work!
• Spend most of this section thinking about how this could positively impact this group of children and society in general.
• Make sure to have an effective conclusion that makes the reader want to see your intervention in action!

Citations: As you can see above, you should have at least 6 peer-reviewed articles citated in your paper. Never(!) buy an article or access to an article, as you can use the UMass library system to access it. You can always email me for help or if you find the abstract of a paper which you think would be interesting but cannot find it.

Specific writing goals:

• Your intervention should be clearly laid out very early in the paper.
• Arguments to support your intervention should be clearly stated and supported with evidence from the literature.
• Organization is especially key for this paper. Check that each paragraph has a topic sentence and that all the material in each paragraph relates to it.
• Use parallel construction at least once.
• In longer papers, it is especially useful to use a variety of sentence lengths to maintain the reader’s attention.
• Use headings, if appropriate, to facilitate organization.
• Cite your sources correctly.