Effectiveness of a social skills curriculum on preschool prosocial behavior and emotion recognition

Date of Award

2017

Degree Name

Ed.S. in School Psychology

Department

Department of Counselor Education & Human Services

Advisor/Chair

Advisor: Elana R. Bernstein

Abstract

Preschool children in public school programs are expelled at three times the rate of their K-12 peers. Research demonstrates a decreased emphasis on social-emotional skill development in preschool, despite high incidences of problem behaviors. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a commercially available social skills curriculum on preschoolers' social-emotional development, specifically their pro-social behaviors and emotion recognition. Results showed that students who participated in the social skills curriculum increased prosocial skills and ability to visually recognize emotions in others. While statistical measures indicate that the intervention did not have a statistically significant impact on student emotion recognition and prosocial behavior, anecdotal reports from participating teachers indicated that the intervention was highly beneficial to participating students. Further, the curriculum had a high level of treatment acceptability by participants' teachers. Implications regarding social emotional curriculum and preschool students' prosocial skill and emotion recognition development are provided.

Keywords

Social skills Study and teaching Case studies, Emotion recognition Study and teaching Case studies, Preschool children Behavior Case studies, Education, Preschool Social aspects Case studies, Preschool Education, Curricula, preschool, social emotional, emotion recognition, prosocial behavior, curriculum

Rights Statement

Copyright © 2017, author

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