•Academically resilient students are present in over half of the 60 schools in our sample.•Resilient students are present even in very low quality schools.•Resilient students achieved marks that are ...comparable to international benchmarks.•Socio-emotional skills are strongly associated with academic resilience.
Poverty is considered a risk factor that jeopardizes children’s academic performance. However, even in high-poverty contexts there are students who manage to achieve consistently good academic results. This paper uses a resilience framework to identify and describe the characteristics of students from South African rural and township primary schools who perform above socio-economic expectations in literacy. After accounting for differences in socio-economic status, we find that resilient students differ significantly from their lower-achieving peers along various dimensions, especially socio-emotional skills. This is a promising finding in light of a growing body of research on skill formation, which suggests that these skills can be fostered through targeted interventions.
A variety of universal school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have been designed in the past decades to help children improve social–emotional and academic skills. Evidence on the ...effectiveness of SEL programs has been mixed in the literature. Using data from a longitudinal follow-up study of children (n=414) originally enrolled in a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) when they were in Head Start, we examined whether universal SEL services in third grade were associated with the development of children from disadvantaged families. We took advantage of pairwise matching in the RCT design to compare children who had similar family background and preschool experiences but received different doses of SEL services in third grade. The results showed that the frequent (i.e., weekly to daily) exposure to SEL opportunities was associated with favorable social–emotional and academic development in third grade, including increased social skills, student–teacher relationship, and academic skills, as well as reduced impulsiveness.
•A sample of Head Start participants originally enrolled in a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) in preschool•Focusing on the different doses of classroom-based social and emotional learning activities in third grade•Frequent exposure to SEL opportunities was associated with favorable social–emotional and academic outcomes in third grade
•Incorporate social and emotional learning into a whole school approach and curriculum.•Professional learning should prioritize mastery experiences that are familiar to teachers.•Deliver ...interventions aimed at boosting student social and emotional learning directly to students.
We present findings of an experimental study exploring the role of socio-emotional skills in improving outcomes for youth enrolled in a remedial program in municipal schools in Quito, Ecuador. These at-risk youth often engaged in hazardous child labor, including some of the worst forms of child labor. The Young Potential Development program is an add-on curriculum and teacher professional development initiative that seeks to develop youth socio-emotional skills. We generally found no impacts on youth socio-emotional skills and other outcomes. We explore the lack of impacts with a rich fidelity of implementation and mechanism of change study.
Emotional awareness is the ability to conceptualize and describe one’s own emotions and those of others. Over thirty years ago, a cognitive-developmental theory of emotional awareness patterned after ...Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was created as well as a performance measure of this ability called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). Since then, a large number of studies have been completed in healthy volunteers and clinical populations including those with mental health or systemic medical disorders. Along the way, there have also been further refinements and adaptations of the LEAS such as the creation of a digital version in addition to further advances in the theory itself. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the evolving theoretical background, measurement methods, and empirical findings with the LEAS. The LEAS is a reliable and valid measure of emotional awareness. Evidence suggests that emotional awareness facilitates better emotion self-regulation, better ability to navigate complex social situations and enjoy relationships, and better physical and mental health. This is a relatively new but promising area of research in the domain of socio-emotional skills. The paper concludes with some recommendations for future research.
Introduction
Children and adolescents’ social and emotional skills have been gaining attention in diverse settings. With over 100 conceptual frameworks available, there is now a common move toward ...framing these skills as social and emotional learning (SEL), assuming that they are not only amiable to development, but also malleable to change as a product of intervention. As such, there is a strong need for a comprehensive measure to effectively evaluate such skills, validated for different age groups in children and young people, and applicable to both educational contexts and community settings.
Methods
This paper presents the validation of the Portuguese adaptation of the Child/Youth form of the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), in the scope of the Gulbenkian Academies for Knowledge initiative with a sample of 7,831 participants between 8 and 17 years old (
M
= 11.79,
SD
= 2.94).
Results
Results show that the measure has good internal consistency and sensitivity, while also being sensitive to change over time. Preliminary factor analysis shows promise, although further research is necessary.
Discussion
Discussion reflects on the value of the Child/Youth form of the SSES as a comprehensive measure to be used by community and educational professionals to monitor skill development and improve their work on SEL.
Introduction
Emotional intelligence (EI) is associated with a range of positive health, wellbeing, and behavioral outcomes. The present article describes the development and validation of an online ...training program for increasing EI abilities in adults. The training program was based on theoretical models of emotional functioning and empirical literature on successful approaches for training socioemotional skills and resilience.
Methods
After an initial design, programming, and refinement process, the completed online program was tested for efficacy in a sample of 326 participants (72% female) from the general population. Participants were randomly assigned to complete either the EI training program (
n
= 168) or a matched placebo control training program (
n
= 158). Each program involved 10-12 hours of engaging online content and was completed during either a 1-week (
n
= 175) or 3-week (
n
= 151) period.
Results
Participants who completed the EI training program showed increased scores from pre- to post-training on standard self-report (i.e., trait) measures of EI (relative to placebo), indicating self-perceived improvements in recognizing emotions, understanding emotions, and managing the emotions of others. Moreover, those in the EI training also showed increased scores in standard performance-based (i.e., ability) EI measures, demonstrating an increased ability to strategically use and manage emotions relative to placebo. Improvements to performance measures also remained significantly higher than baseline when measured six months after completing the training. The training was also well-received and described as helpful and engaging.
Discussion
Following a rigorous iterative development process, we created a comprehensive and empirically based online training program that is well-received and engaging. The program reliably improves both trait and ability EI outcomes and gains are sustained up to six months post-training. This program could provide an easy and scalable method for building emotional intelligence in a variety of settings.
This study aims to explore the reciprocal associations between personality traits (conscientiousness and openness to experience) and academic achievement in adolescents, using the Personality ...Achievement Saturation Hypothesis (PASH).
Personality traits, especially conscientiousness, and openness, have been identified as strong predictors of academic achievement. The PASH provides a framework for understanding these relationships but has mainly been studied from a unidirectional perspective. This study extends the PASH to examine reciprocal associations and how they vary with different achievement indicators.
Using large-scale panel data (N = 6482) of secondary school students in Germany, we applied cross-lagged panel models and latent change score models to examine the differential reciprocal associations between personality traits (conscientiousness/openness) and academic achievement (school grades/achievement test scores) in language and math over two years from grades 7 to 9.
In line with the PASH, initial levels of conscientiousness were more strongly associated with school grades than with achievement test scores over two years. Simultaneously, prior school grades were more strongly associated with conscientiousness over two years. However, initial levels of openness did not show differential associations with either school grades or achievement test scores over two years. Similarly, prior school grades and achievement test scores were also not differentially associated with openness over two years.
Our findings introduce an innovative lens through which we observe how the PASH can be leveraged to explain the differential reciprocal associations between conscientiousness and academic achievement. Further research is needed to examine if PASH could be similarly extended to disentangle the associations between openness and academic achievement.
Research shows positive bystander intervention effectively mitigates bullying experiences. Yet, more evidence regarding bystander responses to bias-based social exclusion (BSE) is needed in ...intergroup contexts, especially in the majority world and in areas of intractable conflict. This study assessed the effectiveness of skills and skills + contact-based interventions for BSE among 148 Palestinian Citizens of Israel (M
= 10.55) and 154 Jewish-Israeli (M
= 10.54) early adolescents (Girls = 52.32%) in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Bystander responses were assessed by participants' reactions to hypothetical BSE scenarios over three time points. Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed both interventions significantly increased positive and decreased negative bystander responses, with changes maintained at the follow-up. The opposite result pattern emerged for the control group. Findings suggest that both interventions can effectively encourage youth to publicly challenge BSE, even amidst intractable conflict.
•Validation of a social and emotional skills scale.•Use CASEL framework to evaluate social emotional learning outcomes.•High reliability and validity for Chinese elementary students.•Measurement ...invariances by grade and gender were roughly confirmed.•Concurrent validity was supported by the relation of social emotional skills and SDQ.
This study aimed to develop a brief student-reported social emotional skills scale to evaluate social emotional learning outcomes based on the CASEL framework. The original version of the social emotional skills scale consisted of 70 items which were mainly adopted from existing related scales. After two rounds of exploratory factor analysis with samples of 1,675 and 1,389 Chinese elementary students, a 5-factor and 38-item construct was refined. This construct was further supported with good fitness by confirmatory factor analysis with another sample of 891 students. Measurement invariances by grade and gender were roughly confirmed. Concurrent validity was supported by the correlation matrix between social emotional skills scale and the strength and difficulties questionnaire. Limitations and implications are finally discussed.
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