Environmental interventions to enhance student adjustment: implications for prevention

Abstract

School settings, often the sites for the prevention of adverse outcomes or the promotion of adjustment, are usually not the actual targets of such interventions. However, some interventions focus on modifying the school or classroom environments themselves. This review examines such approaches, and considers how school regularities that might undermine student adjustment are addressed. The environmental interventions are clustered in terms of focus: on student-student interactions, on teacher and peer influences, and on organizational function and structure. Reasons for the paucity of environmental change efforts and the inherent difficulties are discussed, and recommendations for creating ways to undertake future environmental interventions in schools are offered.