Abstract
The purpose of schools can be described as the provision of knowledge and skills to students that will promote their success in life and includes the development of social and emotional competence, personal ambition, and academic skills (Doll & Cummings, Transforming school mental health services: Population-based approaches to promoting the competency and wellness of children. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2008). The promotion of psychological well-being should be central to the school, to which academic success and well-being are closely associated (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Schools need an overarching framework comparable to those that exist for academics to guide the creation of an environment that aims to comprehensively meet this larger purpose. Covell and Howe (2008) suggest the use of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereinafter referred to as the Convention; United Nations, 1989) as the framework of system design for schools. The Convention meets this need because it serves as a broad framework that promotes and protects individual rights and respects cultural values. In this chapter, we demonstrate ways in which the Convention can provide unifying principles that can guide schools in the development, integration, and review of systems that promote the attainment of larger goals of education. Specifically, we illustrate how to use the Convention as a framework to evaluate the alignment of policies, programs, and practices to the broader purpose of schooling described above.
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Notes
- 1.
Tiered school-based service delivery (e.g., response to intervention) represents a model of academic, social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health programing, which varies in relation to the needs of the students within the school population. Tiered models are typically comprised of three or four levels. The foundational level of Tier 1 represents school-wide evidence-based programming. Subsequent tiers or levels reflect targeted programming and interventions based on the nature of student needs and the severity of difficulties prevalent in the population (Shapiro, 2016).
- 2.
For access, contact Bonnie Nastasi, PhD, School Psychology Program, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA; bnastasi@tulane.edu
- 3.
A related training manual is available in the online resources for this handbook.
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Cornell, L.C., Verlenden, J.V. (2020). A Child Rights Framework for Educational System Reform. In: Nastasi, B.K., Hart, S.N., Naser, S.C. (eds) International Handbook on Child Rights and School Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37119-7_7
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