What changes when young people understand how they experience the world and communicate what they see? 

The Process Communication Model® identifies different Perceptions through which people experience and interpret the world: Thoughts, Opinions, Emotions, Inactions/Reflections, Reactions, and Actions. PCM also provides a framework for understanding communication Channels, Psychological Needs, and predictable communication patterns under stress. 

In Just In Time, youth do more than receive information that has been adapted for them. They learn the communication framework themselves. 

They begin learning to recognize:

• how they naturally perceive a situation;

• how they tend to communicate what they see;

• what kind of communication helps them hear another person;

• which psychological needs provide them with the strongest motivational energy;

• what begins to happen when those needs are not being met; and

• how they can intentionally access another perception or communication approach when a situation requires it.

The goal is not to change a young person's personality. It is to increase the number of communication choices available to them. 

Research question:
Can greater awareness of perception, communication channels, psychological needs, and distress patterns help youth make more intentional communication and decision-making choices during legally significant situations?

What happens when we ask why a choice made sense before telling a young person why it was wrong? 

Just In Time uses Kohlberg-informed moral reasoning as an instructional lens. 

Instead of beginning with: 

“Why did you do that?” 

or

“You knew better,” 

the facilitator works to understand the reasoning underneath the choice. 

Was the decision primarily about:

• avoiding punishment;

• getting an immediate payoff;

• fitting in or maintaining approval;

• following or rejecting a rule;

• considering broader effects on people and systems; or

• acting according to a personal principle?

The program then uses questioning that begins where the youth's reasoning currently is and invites consideration of a wider range of consequences, responsibilities, perspectives, and choices. Just In Time does not use Kohlberg stages to label a youth as moral, immoral, mature, or immature. 

Research question:
Does reasoning-matched questioning help youth develop more complex explanations for decisions and consider consequences beyond the factor that mattered most in the original moment?

Does knowing the people in the story make it easier to understand increasingly complicated legal problems?

One of the early pilot findings has led to a developing instructional strategy within Just In Time: recurring characters.

Instead of introducing an entirely new fictional youth for every legal problem, the same characters can move through a series of situations involving school authority, peers, phones, searches, aggression, restitution, family trust, and juvenile justice. 

Early pilot work suggested that character continuity reduced the time participants needed to learn new relationships and allowed more attention to be paid to the legal problem itself. It also created an opportunity for youth to see a character make mistakes, experience consequences, repair harm, and make another decision later, rather than reducing that person to a single harmful act. 

Research question:
Can narrative continuity increase engagement and reduce unnecessary cognitive load while helping youth connect legal concepts across systems and over time?

Can we measure legal literacy while young people are actually using it? 

Just In Time increasingly uses Investigation Challenges rather than relying only on traditional questions or recall-based assessments. 

Participants may have to:

• examine evidence;

• compare competing accounts;

• distinguish observation from assumption;

• locate the applicable rule;

• determine what information is missing;

• evaluate credibility;

• reconsider an initial conclusion;

• explain why a legal rule applies; or

• select an appropriate next response.

The pilot architecture identifies these challenges as embedded formative assessments of legal-literacy and related academic skills—not simply game pieces or entertainment. 

Research question:
Can embedded investigation provide a stronger measure of whether youth can apply legal literacy skills than measures that primarily assess recall of legal information?

Knowing your rights is different from knowing how to navigate the conversation. 

One of Just In Time's central ideas is that communication itself is a legal-literacy skill. 

A young person may know a rule or recognize a right and still struggle to navigate an interaction with a teacher, administrator, police officer, caseworker, attorney, parent, or other authority figure. 

Youth therefore practice how to:

• understand who they are communicating with and why;

• accurately explain what happened;

• ask for clarification;

• identify what they do not understand;

• listen for instructions;

• state a concern or disagreement;

• avoid unnecessary escalation;

• recognize when another communication approach may work better; and

• know when adult or professional assistance is needed.

Communication within legal and institutional systems is one of the formal competencies of the Legal Literacy Curriculum™.

Research question:
Can communication awareness increase a youth's ability to navigate authority, advocate for themselves appropriately, and avoid adding unnecessary communication conflict to an already difficult situation?

What happens when instructional decisions are informed by how the participant actually processes and communicates? 

Differentiated instruction is not new, and Just In Time does not claim that it is. 

The research interest is more specific: What additional information becomes available to the facilitator when established instructional practices are informed by a participant's PCM profile? 

The legal competency does not change. The governing law does not change. The expected learning outcome does not change. 

But the facilitator may make deliberate decisions about:

• how a question is asked;

• how much information appears at one time;

• whether a participant reads, discusses, investigates, moves, sorts, reacts, or reflects first;

• how quickly the information is introduced;

• how the participant is invited into discussion; and

• how the facilitator responds when communication begins moving into distress.

The pilot has already shown that equal participation does not necessarily require identical materials. Different participants may reach the same legal understanding through different instructional routes. 

Research question:
How can PCM profile information support instructional choices within youth legal-literacy programs, and which adaptations appear most strongly associated with engagement and application?

Does law become more usable when young people experience it through situations that feel possible in their own lives? 

Just In Time uses actual legal decisions as anchors while presenting many of them through developmentally relevant stories, evidence, and investigative files. 

The instructional adaptation can change details such as names, technology, extracurricular activities, or other non-controlling facts while preserving the:

• controlling legal issue;

• legally significant facts;

• applicable rule; and

• actual judicial outcome.

Participants later learn about the original case and determine which changed facts mattered legally and which simply changed their emotional reaction to the story. This approach is already built into the pilot's case-adaptation architecture. 

Research question:
How does authentic, case-based legal instruction affect comprehension, evidence analysis, transfer of learning, and a youth's ability to apply legal rules to new situations?

Can understanding the law help interrupt behavior before consequences escalate? 

Traditional legal education often begins after a legal problem already exists. Just In Time is interested in what happens when legal understanding is moved closer to the decision itself. 

Youth learn to trace: 

behavior → rule or law → authority response → consequence → next system → future effect. 

The program examines whether youth become better at recognizing when a school conflict, peer interaction, impulsive choice, digital communication, or other ordinary situation is beginning to carry legal or institutional significance. This behavior-to-system sequence is embedded throughout the Legal Literacy Curriculum™.

Research question:
Can legal literacy function as an early interruption tool by helping youth recognize consequences and available choices before a situation moves deeper into formal systems?