Project Activities
During year one, the research team will develop Kindergarten lessons, and in year two, will develop first grade lessons and teacher training components. Year three activities will be devoted to implementing the full complement of grade Kâ1 lessons. During the last year, the research team will also develop professionally produced DVDs with examples of effective instruction and specific teaching strategies which will be part of the teacher training materials for the SELF curriculum. At each stage of development, the research team will monitor and evaluate lesson implementation using observational data and continually adjust curricular components to enhance treatment fidelity, social validity, and potential for improving children's behavioral outcomes. In addition, the team will use ongoing observations and feedback from focus group interviews to construct and revise an accompanying teacher-training component focused on key concepts and instructional strategies.
Structured Abstract
Setting
Elementary schools in North Central Florida
Sample
Students in grades K-1 who are screened to be at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders who are not identified as developmentally delayed will participate.
SELF lessons will focus on age-appropriate critical competencies involved in five areas of social-emotional learning: self-awareness (e.g., emotion recognition and identification), social awareness (e.g., perspective taking, respecting others), responsible decision-making, self-management, and relationship management.
The complete SELF curriculum will comprise 5 units (1 unit per critical competency) of approximately 10 lessons each. Teachers will conduct SELF lessons with groups of 3â6 students, 2â3 times a week, for 20â25 minutes during classroom time designated for supplemental reading instruction.
SELF lessons will incorporate instructional techniques that are closely aligned with best practices in teaching reading comprehension: (a) teacher modeling (b) guided practice (c) independent practice, feedback, and application. SELF will also focus on maximizing teacher-student dialog and developing concepts and vocabulary associated with emotions and behavior. Teachers will promote emotional and behavioral self-regulation, therefore, while simultaneously promoting language development. Social-emotional skills will be fostered through discussions of story content chosen and/or developed for the models of social behavior they provide. The project team will supplement commercially available tradebooks with songs, poems, pictures, and role-plays to help children apply these skills during small group instruction.
Research design and methods
A continuous, iterative, mixed-methods research design involving observations and feedback from stakeholders will be used to develop and refine the SELF curriculum during the first two years of the project. At each stage of development, the research team will monitor and evaluate lesson implementation using observational data and continually adjust curricular components to enhance treatment fidelity, social validity, and potential for improving children's behavioral outcomes. In addition, the team will use ongoing observations and feedback from focus group interviews to construct and revise an accompanying teacher-training component focused on key concepts and instructional strategies. During the last year, the research team will conduct a pre-post design evaluation to assess implementation of the entire curriculum package and potential impact on student outcomes.
Control condition
N/A
Key measures
The Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders will be used as a screening measure. Key measures include the Clinical Evaluation of Language, the Clinical Assessment of Behavior, the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function, and a researcher-developed teacher-report of students' knowledge and application of concepts and skills contained in the SELF curriculum. The Direct Observation of Practice Protocol will be used to determine if the intervention is operating as intended.
Data analytic strategy
Qualitative focus group data will be coded and analyzed to identify emerging patterns and themes using HyperRESEARCH software, and descriptive analyses of quantitative data from observation and treatment fidelity protocols will be used to revise and refine SELF lessons and accompanying teacher training. ANCOVA with repeated measures will be used to compare pre- to post-intervention measures of student knowledge/application of SELF concepts and student outcomes measures. To assess whether executive functioning mediates the effects of the intervention on behavioral and language outcomes, ANCOVAs will also be conducted with pre and post-treatment executive function scores as covariates.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this project include a fully developed social-emotional learning curriculum, an accompanying teacher training component for use in a train-the-trainer model, evidence of feasibility of the intervention in K-1 classrooms, published reports, and presentations.
Journal article, monograph, or newsletter
Daunic, A.P., Corbett, N.L., Smith, S.W., Barnes, T., Santiago-Poventud, L., Chalfant, P., Pitts, D., and Gleaton, J. (2013). Integrating Social-Emotional Learning With Literacy Instruction: An Intervention for Children at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Behavioral Disorders, 39(1): 43-51.
Santiago-Poventud, L., Corbett, N.L., Daunic, A.P., Aydin, B., Lane, H.B., and Smith, S.W. (2015). Developing Social-Emotional Vocabulary to Support Self-Regulation for Young Children at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Problems. International Journal of School and Cognitive Psychology , 2(3): 1-9. doi:10.4172/ijscp.1000143 Full text
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
