Reframing: How staff help youth overcome episodes of anxiety in youth programs

Experiencing overwhelming anxiety is becoming more common for adolescents in the United States, and for the adults in their lives, it is difficult to know how to respond or help. Research suggests youth programs support social-emotional learning, including the development of emotion regulation skills (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). This study explores how adult program leaders respond to youth who are experiencing anxiety due to their work. A sample of twenty-seven leaders, all of whom had at least four years of experience working with youth, were interviewed. Leaders also represented a variety of program types (e.g. STEM, leadership, and art) for middle (11-14 years old) and high school youth (14-18 years old). Leaders were asked to explain how they respond to youth who have become too anxious to continue with their work. Qualitative methods and strategies, including open coding and constant comparison, were used to define the dominant response category and three strategies within this category. The category that resulted from multiple iterations of coding was reframing: to provide a way to view or understand using a new perspective (i.e., frame). The three strategies leaders used during youth’s episodes of anxiety were: reframing youth’s sense of ability, reframing youth’s conceptualization of the task, and reframing youth’s emotional experience. Findings provide a deep level of insight into how expert leaders use reframing to target specific aspects of youth’s anxiety episodes and use multiple reframing strategies in concert.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human & Community Development

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Orson, Carolyn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Larson, Reed W.
• Raffaelli, Marcela

• youth programs, program staff, anxiety, reframing

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018 Carolyn Orson

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101145

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101145