In collaboration with Melissa R. Dvorsky, PhD at Children’s National Hospital, we are conducting this study to learn more about school engagement, or a child’s interest and commitment to school, and factors that promote academic success and healthy social and emotional outcomes across the transition from fifth grade to middle school. The goal of this project is to develop a measure of school engagement for youth with ADHD and to learn more about school engagement in youth with versus without ADHD.

TEAM is a school-based peer-supported intervention designed to enhance school engagement among middle school-aged students with attention problems. TEAM is an adaptation of an evidence-based organization skills training intervention, the Challenging Horizons Program (Evans et al., 2016), that pairs older students with younger students to help them learn strategies for organizing school materials, setting academic goals, and developing supportive relationships. Students also learn problem-solving skills and opportunities to become involved in school from school staff.

TEAM has been studied in one small pilot trial (Capps et al., 2024). We are currently working to refine TEAM for scaled up implementation and evaluation.

You can read more about TEAM here.