Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Teen Health Literacy Survey

Eighty-seven percent of parents report they have prepared their adolescents for adulthood, but many doubt their young person's ability to manage certain adult tasks, according to a national survey. Findings showed that only 8% of parents say they believe their teenager can set doctor appointments on their own and just 25% trust them to take the proper dosage of over-the-counter drugs. The study recommended that teens shadow their parents' health-related practices, and make mistakes do it themselves with guidance.
Clark, S. (2019).  C.S. Mott Children's Hospital national poll on children's health. Ann Arbor, MI: C. S. Mott Children's Hospital.
https://mottpoll.org/reports/parent-efforts-insufficient-promote-teen-independence

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Bullying increases

A report from  shows that 20% of teen students in the US said they were bullied in the 2016-17 school year, and of those, 15% were bullied online or via text, a 3.5 percentage point increase over the previous year. The researcher stated that the spike may be due to increased awareness and reporting of cyberbullying incidents.
Seigfried-Spellar , K. (2019). Bullying. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Friday, July 12, 2019

Media Literacy Education

Media literacy is being defined in multiple ways, in part, because it represents various fields, including core subjects as well as journalism, political science and sociology, according to a recent  report. The report identifies the need for a more unified approach and an interdisciplinary commission, plus strategies to assess media literacy.
Huguet, Alice, Jennifer Kavanagh, Garrett Baker, and Marjory S. Blumenthal, Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3050.html. Also available in print form.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Self-identification and problem-solving

Young students who understand they have "multiple identities" -- such as being a sibling, student and athlete -- have improved creative problem-solving skills, according to a recent study. The findings show that the students are four times as likely to consider various ways to solve a problem, compared with their peers.
Gaither, G. (2019).  Thinking about multiple identities boosts children's flexible thinking. Developmental Science (May 19). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12871