Co-Principal Investigator(s): Smith, Katie

Purpose: In this project, the researchers evaluated Love in a Big World (LBW), a character education program designed to promote children's positive relationships with their teachers and peers and enhance the classroom and school environment. The LBW curriculum uses stories to teach students about positive character traits and their use, staff and principal training, a peer-recognition program, school assemblies, service projects, motivational morning announcements, and newsletters.

The research team tested the effect of LBW on teachers. Specifically, whether teacher training affected teachers' character education knowledge, self-efficacy, and positive attitudes toward character education and whether these outcomes influenced the fidelity of program implementation. The researchers also evaluated the program theory behind LBW. They examined how the program affected antisocial and prosocial behavior as well as classroom and school climate. Both of these were assessed through changes in teacher/student interaction, acquisition of character education knowledge and social-emotional competence, and students' positive attitudes and beliefs about their control over their own actions. The effects of the program were to be tested in suburban and rural schools in the mid-South. Children in these schools were predominantly Caucasian and African American from low-income to middle-class families.

Products and Publications

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Journal articles

Vuchinich, S., Flay, B.R., Aber, L., and Bickman, L. (2012). Person Mobility in the Design and Analysis of Cluster-Randomized Cohort Prevention Trials. Prevention Science, 13(3): 300–313.