Clinical psychologist Jenelle Nissley-Tsiopinis and colleagues test school-based programs to help students who have difficulty with organization, time management, and planning.
3 min
Image: Olha Danylenko via Getty Images
Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often struggle with executive functions—tasks involving managing their time, completing their homework, turning in assignments, and planning for upcoming projects.
These limitations, says clinical psychologist Jenelle Nissley-Tsiopinis, can contribute to contribute to conflicts with caregivers and impact high-school and college placement, causing students to lose interest in school and confidence in themselves.
“Some very brilliant kids can’t turn in their homework, so they can’t get graded for it,” says Nissley-Tsiopinis, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and clinical associate in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Perelman School of Medicine. “A lot of times, kids do their homework, but they forget to submit it. If they turn it in late, it’s half a credit, so that’s a 50%, not 100%, even if they complete all the work accurately.”
Research has shown the effectiveness of interventions to reduce organizational skills deficits and homework problems, says Nissley-Tsiopinis.
In a study published in 2024, she and Penn Medicine and CHOP colleagues Jennifer Mautone, and Thomas J. Power tested school-based interventions to help elementary-school students who have difficulty with organization, time management, and planning—hallmarks of ADHD.
Working with 22 schools in the greater Philadelphia area, they found that the school-based Organization Skills Training-Tier 2 (OST-T2) intervention succeeded in improving executive function proficiency among elementary school students after 16 sessions.
A core part of OST-T2, Nissley-Tsiopinis says, is repeated practice of organizational skills in-session; teaching children hands-on executive function skills instead of telling them what to do or doing it for them.
“That’s the part that was missing from a lot of the interventions that were in schools already,” she says. “The piece that we really want them to do, that the research tells us is important, is for the kids to practice the skills, and that’s how they learn to do it.”
Currently, Nissley-Tsiopinis and colleagues are assessing an intervention known as Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) on organizational, time management and planning (OTMP) skills for middle school students.
Previous studies have shown HOPS to be an effective school-based intervention for students with ADHD and academic problems, she explains. But, she adds, this program has the potential to be effective for students with OTMP deficits who do not have ADHD. Their new study, therefore, will test whether HOPS yields the same benefits for the full range of middle school students who have OTMP deficits. The study protocol was recently published in PLOS One.
“I was interested in the study because my own research focuses on experimental design, generalizability, and treatment effect heterogeneity,” she says, explaining that treatment effect heterogeneity refers to whether an intervention works differently for different groups of people.
This study gives her the opportunity to study the factors that predict improvements in student outcomes, Chan says. “We do not have findings yet, but I will be working with the lead PIs on the statistical analysis in the coming months,” she says.
Jenelle Nissley-Tsiopinis is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Penn Medicine.
Jennifer Mautone is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Penn Medicine. She is also the director of Primary Care Behavioral Health Research and the Pediatric Research Consortium at CHOP.
Wendy Chan is an associate professor in the Human Development and Quantitative Methods Division at Penn GSE.
Other authors for the PLOS One study are: Jaclyn Cacia, Brittany Chamberlin, Christina A. Di Bartolo, Phylicia F. Fleming, Katie L. Tremont, Tara Vigil, and Emma H. Walz of CHOP; Abbas F. Jawad of Penn Medicine and CHOP; and Joshua M. Langberg of Rutgers University.
On the move: Water quality and antimicrobial resistance testing goes mobile
Penn researchers have developed a mobile field laboratory allowing them to test water quality and track antimicrobial resistance in and around San Cristóbal in the Galápagos.
Penn researchers Vanessa and Alexis North are studying one of the largest collections of Egyptian blue objects ever found in the ancient Near East, shedding new light on how the world’s first synthetic pigment may have traveled far beyond Egypt.
A new role for dental providers? Rethinking where vaccines are given
Vaccinations have traditionally been administered in primary care settings or pharmacies. However, for about a decade, some states have authorized dentists to administer vaccines, and many others did so during the COVID-19 pandemic. The effectiveness of this approach has led some countries and states to expand or consider expanding the role of dental providers in delivering routine vaccines, including those against COVID-19 and the human papillomavirus (HPV), and in providing vaccine education.
Penn student develops a way for computer chips to run more efficiently
Fluid Silicon, a platform from President’s Sustainability Prize winner Nhlanhla Mavuso, allows computer chips to continuously monitor their health and self-tune as their characteristics change. The technology has the potential to reduce energy usage in data centers and improve reliability in mission-critical applications.
