Wednesday, April 6, 2016

articles_04

Article Critique 2
Title: Addressing Well-Being in Early and Middle Childhood
Author: Jamie RaNae Bennett, Sanda K Negley, Mary S. Wells, Peg Connolly
 Volume L, No. 1, 2016 Therapeutic Recreation Journal Salt Lake City, Utah
Summary: Mental health is something that is developed in the early and middle stages of childhood. Research suggests that if a child experiences traumatic events during this time in their life, it is directly correlated with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety as an adult. The study took 110 4th grade students and gave them a pre and posttest of their health related quality of life. Between these tests, they administered an eight week curriculum that implemented therapeutic recreation. During this curriculum, students are taught about emotions, stresses and ways to identify and manage those feelings. Their studies concluded that having a TR intervention in a school setting has increased health related quality of life. There was not an increase in the quality of life results in the treatment group, but the control group showed a decrease. TR intervention may not increase their perception on quality of life, but as the school year goes on and gets more stressed, they are able to maintain their health.
Strengths: I really enjoyed this article. I agree that students are beginning to have stresses at that age and, it being some of the first times they have experienced it, they don’t know what to do. I know that recreation has helped me in my life and it relieves my stresses. I think this study was well structured and that it has good implications. I really like the age group they worked with because that age group can give structured responses and helpful information
Weaknesses: I really wish they had a larger testing group. I think it would be interesting to see if this helped students in maybe underprivileged areas. I also don’t really like that they did this in a charter school. Most children do not attend a charter school growing up and from my experience, they are a little more structured than public school. I think it would be interesting to see if it had the same effect in public schools.
Application: I think this could give a great future to recreational therapists. It would be great to be able to work in a school and help children in that way! That would be a job I am interested in. I think this would be an interesting study for teachers to read because even though they are not TR certified, they can implement these things in the classroom. I would want my child to learn in this kind of environment.
Personal feelings: I personally really enjoyed this article and thought it was very well structured. I think it was very insightful on how children learn. By the time we are adults, most of us have learned how to cope with stress, but much of that is learned in the home. Some children do not have that environment at home and do not develop those skills. I think it would be great if they taught stress management at school through recreation. Recreation is how I let out my stresses.

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