Biography & Projects
Jennifer Frank focuses on developing and evaluating school-based prevention practices that modify the social ecology of risk (school-family-peer-individual factors) that gives rise to high-incidence disabilities, and preparing the next generation of school-based professionals to implement high-quality prevention practices in school settings. She strives to do work that is interdisciplinary and draw from diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the determinants of risk and resilience. The ultimate goal of her teaching, research, and service activities is to create optimal social contexts to support academic learning that are sustainable in real-world settings. Jennifer's current research interests include: school-based prevention, positive behavior supports, innovative statistical and experimental methods to validate evidence-based interventions, social-emotional learning, and mindfulness-based interventions.
Current Projects
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Longitudinal Effectiveness of Communities That Care on Reducing Youth Risk Factors
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Stress, Self-Regulation, and Psychopathology in Middle Childhood
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An Epidemiological and Longitudinal Study of Rural Child Literacy Trajectories (Family Life)
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Project RESPECT: A Proposal to develop the Responding in Emotionally Supportive and Positive Ways in Educational Communication Skills Training program
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Promoting Adolescent Well Being Through Emotion Regulation Skills Instruction
Recent Publications
Public health benefits 16 years after a statewide policy change: Communities That Care in Pennsylvania
Chilenski, S. M., Frank, J., Summers, N., & Lew, D. (2019). Public health benefits 16 years after a statewide policy change: Communities That Care in Pennsylvania. Prevention Science, 20, 947-958.
Evaluating the quality of mindfulness instruction delivered in school settings: Development and validation of a teacher quality observational rating scale
Broderick, P. C., Frank, J. L., Berrena, E., Schussler, D. L., Kohler, K., Mitra, J., Khan, L., Levitan, J., Mahfouz, J., Shields, L., & Greenberg, M. T. (2018). Evaluating the quality of mindfulness instruction delivered in school settings: Development and validation of a teacher quality observational rating scale. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671...
Using virtual role-play to enhance teacher candidates’ skills in responding to bullying.
Schussler, D. L., Frank, J. L., Lee, T. K. & Mahfouz, J. (2017). Using virtual role-play to enhance teacher candidates’ skills in responding to bullying. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 25(1), 91–120.
Impacts of the CARE for Teachers program on teachers’ social and emotional competence and classroom interactions.
Jennings, P. A., Brown, J. L., Frank, J. L., Doyle, S. L., Oh, Y., Davis, R., Rasheed, D., DeWeese, A., DeMauro, A. A., Cham, H., & Greenberg, M. T. (2017). Impacts of the CARE for Teachers Program on teachers’ social and emotional competence and classroom interactions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(7), 1010–1028.
Coding semi-structured interviews: Exmaining coaching calls within the CARE for Teachers program
DeWeese, A., Jennings, P. A., Brown, J. L., Doyle, S. L., Davis, R. T., Rasheed, D. S., Frank, J. L. & Greenberg, M. T. (2017). Coding semi - structured interviews: Examining coaching calls within the CARE for Teachers program. SAGE Research Methods Cases, Part 2. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473958319