The goal of this project was to develop a cutting edge, evidence-based program to assist parents who are responsible for supervising a beginning teen driver. This report describes the background and development of the “Parent Coaching” session, and results of initial concept testing. The Parent Coaching session emphasizes what parents can do to help their teen develop more quickly into an experienced, safe driver. The content was developed with guidance from recent research about the strengths and weaknesses of parental supervision of teens’ early driving, as well as findings from recent, on-going naturalistic studies of teenage driving. During the two-hour in-person session, parents view and discuss actual video clips of parents and teens during supervised driving. This helps parents understand the situations and challenges that are likely to occur during practice driving, and how they can best handle those situations. The session also highlights the importance of teens obtaining considerable driving experience in a wide variety of situations/conditions. The failure to provide this variety is one of the main, documented shortcomings in how most parents currently approach supervision of their teen’s driving. Additionally, parent-teen communication is a major focus of the session; specifically, how parents can help their teen begin to develop a higher-order understanding of driving. The mode of delivery adheres to well-established principles of adult learning, which differ in significant ways from didactic approaches oriented toward child learning in traditional classroom settings. Rather than presenting facts and statistics, with participants viewed as passive recipients of information, the session is centered on discussions and problem-solving activities. During discussions, parents are encouraged to draw upon and share their own experiences. The size of sessions is limited to 8-12 parents to foster participation and interaction among participants. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting