Studies show that pre-school
social-emotional and problem-solving skills deficits predict poor long-term
academic achievement, school drop-out, mental health problems, substance misuse
and antisocial/aggressive behavior.
The Incredible
Years® (IY) is a series of three separate, multifaceted, and developmentally
based curricula for parents, teachers, and children. This series is designed to
promote emotional and social competence; and to prevent, reduce, and treat
behavior and emotional problems in young children.
In this paper, a
randomised controlled trial took place in primary schools where teachers were
already trained in the Incredible Years® (IY) teacher classroom
management programme and where the universal IY Classroom Dinosaur School
social-emotional skills curriculum was being delivered as part of the statutory
Welsh personal and social education curriculum. And this study examined whether the IY Small Group Therapeutic
Dinosaur School programme had added benefits for children with identified
behavioural, social, and/or emotional difficulties.
Children were
screened for behavioural difficulties using the teacher-rated Strengths and
Difficulties Questionnaire and were eligible for study inclusion if teachers rated
them as above the cause for concern cut-off on this measure. Two hundred and
twenty-one children (male: 62%, female: 38%) were randomised to intervention or
wait-list control conditions. Assessments of behaviour and social-emotional
competence were completed by multiple respondents, including teachers, children
and researchers who completed blinded direct observations (on a
subsample).
The results
indicated that there were no significant differences in child or family
demographics between baseline intervention and control conditions. Multilevel
modeling analyses showed improvements in the problem-solving knowledge of
children in the intervention condition (ES = .39 for prosocial and .41 for
agonistic solutions), compared to children in the control condition on the
Wally Problem Solving measure. Intervention children were also significantly
more likely to achieve teacher set social-emotional academic goals.
In conclusion, intervention
children showed increased problem-solving skills and greater teacher-set
personal-social achievement targets. These results were achieved by teachers
new to the IY small group Dina programme that requires significant skills to
deliver to high challenge children for up to 18 weeks. This study is an
important addition to the literature on the therapeutic IY small group Dina
programme.
Article by Margiad E. Williams, et al,
from UK.
Full access: http://t.cn/EtBjzIn
Image by Daniel, from Flickr-cc.
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