Love in a Big World

Co-Principal Investigator(s): Smith, Katie

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.