Instrumental School-Based Mentoring for Middle School Students: Past, Present, Future

Although youth mentoring is popular in the United States, and beginning to gain popularity in other countries, dissemination efforts have preceded the establishment of a strong evidence-base for this service. This is particularly true in mentoring programs that are based in schools, which constitutes the most popular form of mentoring. However, when compared to community based mentoring interventions school-based mentoring (SBM) interventions face a variety of limitations because of the context of these programs. One of the most frequently documented limitations of SBM interventions is reduced frequency of meeting times and reduced duration of the relationship. Thus it may be beneficial to test models of mentoring that specifically accommodate these limitations (i.e. decreased contact hours).

This poster will review several recent studies investigating the development and evaluation of a brief instrumental SBM curriculum designed for implementation within the constraints of the school system. Specifically, this poster will highlight the results from a series of 3 iterative randomized controlled trials and present an empirical investigation of how different training and supervision models influence mentors satisfaction and anticipated continuation in school-based mentoring. Results from the 3 evaluations demonstrate that successive program modifications intended to infuse evidence-based practices within the context of brief mentoring relationships has successfully improved effect sizes on several outcomes (e.g. life satisfaction, grades, reductions in school disruptive behavior). Although several factors changed in successive iterations of the mentoring curriculum, we present a quasi-experimental evaluation of changes in mentor training and supervision practices between the 1st and second evaluation. Results from this quasi-experiment suggest that changes in training were associated with mentor satisfaction and plans to continue mentoring, in addition to larger and more positive effect sizes on youth outcomes. This poster will offer recommendations for future SBM research and provide access to training and mentoring curriculum involved in the studies.