Design guidance lessons that give adolescents practice in planning, anticipating consequences, and regulating behavior, and avoid scare tactics and lecturing¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Because maturing prefrontal abilities such as planning, weighing risk and reward, and controlling impulses strengthen with practice, the review recommends guidance lessons that "provide teens with opportunities to practice skills such as planning, anticipating consequences, and regulating their own behavior." It explicitly discourages "scare tactics, lecturing, and other traditional tactics" as disregarding brain-based strategies. Counselors deliver this through collaborative classroom guidance infused into the regular curriculum.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Collaboration between counselors and teachers, with developmental-goal topics infused into the regular curriculum

Constraints¶

• Traditional tactics such as scare tactics and lecturing are discouraged by the review as disregarding brain research

Target Learners¶

• middle and high school students

Target Learning Goals¶

• planning
• decision-making
• self-regulation
• risk assessment

Affordances¶

• Adolescent Brain Reconstruction Zone Sensitive Period

Related Strategies¶

• Use brain-friendly, multisensory and expressive approaches and a partner (not authority) stance in counseling adolescents
• Use external reinforcement contingent on successful inhibitory control to improve behavioural regulation

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Roaten, G. K., & Roaten, D. J. (2011). Adolescent Brain Development: Current Research and the Impact on Secondary School Counseling Programs. https://schoolcounselor.org