The Pathways Research Study

As part of this project, the Pathways team will examine outcomes of students who participate in Pathways compared to those who do not. Assigning participating schools to implementation year by lottery allows us to conduct a gold-standard research study focused on the students who are in 8th grade in the first implementation year.

Data Collection

The study team will administer a survey to all eighth-grade students in participating schools—once in fall after the lottery year (fall 2023) and again in spring of the same year. Eighth-grade students and their teachers in schools that implement Pathways in fall 2023 will be asked to complete a brief feedback survey about their experience participating in (or delivering) Pathways. As part of our continuous improvement and testing process, teachers will record their delivery of the sessions using a GoPro camera provided by the project.

Training and Support for Implementation

Following the lottery, all eighth-grade teachers and a counselor (or other designated community member) from each participating school will attend a 3 day summer training in summer 2023 or 2024. The training has three parts—experience, construct learning, practice. In the first part, teachers and counselors experience Pathways as participants. In the second part, teachers and counselors learn about the theory of motivation and the empirical evidence underpinning Pathways. In the third part, teachers and counselors practice implementing Pathways with direct coaching.

Teachers implement Pathways with weekly support from a trainer (meeting by phone or video) during the first 6 weeks of the school year. These weekly support check-ins are structured to review core take-home points and prepare for upcoming sessions. As part of training, each teacher and counselor will receive an implementation manual, access to online resources, including a library of videos demonstrating high-quality implementation, and video tips from Professor Oyserman and trainers to help prepare for each session. We also will provide all materials to implement Pathways in the classroom. The summer training will be held regionally.

All participating school staff will be compensated for time spent in training and any travel costs (if applicable) will be covered by the grant.