Exemplary Social and Emotional Programs
PATHS. The PATHS Program is a classroombased curriculum implemented by teachers for elementary grades and is effective for regular and special-needs students (Greenberg & Kusche, 1996).
The PATHS curriculum helps children develop problem-solving, self-control, and emotional-regulation skills. The program consists of 57 lessons of 20- to 30-minute duration taught two to three times per week. A pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment of (N = 6,500 students) 198 intervention classrooms and 180 matched- comparison classrooms showed that PATHS decreased aggression and disruptive behaviors and improved classroom climate (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1999). One- to two-year longitudinal findings suggest that the PATHS curriculum has lasting effects on emotional understanding and interpersonal social problem-solving skills (Greenberg & Kusche, 1996). The curriculum is supported by teacher training, teaching materials, and parent resources. However, since PATHS is a lengthy and intensive curriculum, teachers can become burned out, resulting in poor implementation that decreases expected outcomes (Ransford, Greenberg, Domitrovich, Small, & Jacobsen, 2009).In a study with randomly assigned special education classrooms in Grades 1 to 3, PATHS was proven effective for children with special needs (Chi-Ming, Greenberg, & Kusche, 2004). Data were collected for 3 years, and growth curve analysis indicated that PATHS reduced internalizing and externalizing behaviors and depressive symptoms—impacts that lasted 2 years beyond the intervention.
The WHO (2009) has endorsed PATHS as a “best practice” program for life skills programming. WHO reports that PATHS has been adopted in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries as both a universal and a targeted program (for children at high risk of antisocial behavior).
Second Step. The Second Step Program is a classwide social skills program implemented by teachers in preschool through middle school. It is the most commonly used elementary school SEL program in the United States, partly because of the excellent instructional materials that focus on the three critical areas of empathy, impulse control, and anger management. The program consists of 30 classroom lessons (approximately 35-45 minutes each) typically taught one to two times per week. In a typical Second Step lesson, the teacher has a card that shows a picture of an interaction, and the teacher asks students, using a series of specified discussion questions, to think about what the picture depicts and the nonverbal cues they see that lead them to make that assessment. Students are then encouraged to think about similar situations in their own lives (e.g., when they have felt proud of an accomplishment, when they have done something in anger that they knew they should not have done). In some lessons, the teacher then models skills that students can use. In earlier grades, these demonstrations and modeling discussions can be done by the use of hand puppets to keep students engaged in the lesson.
Second Step has proven effective in developing desired prosocial behavior. In a recent pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment of schools to training versus control that was conducted with 790 second and third graders (Grossman et al., 1997), students participating in Second Step exhibited less physical aggression and more prosocial behaviors than students in the control condition, and treatment effects were maintained over a 6-month period. Washburn (2002) found that Second Step was particularly effective with low-income urban, minority students.
Strong Start/Strong Kids Programs. The Strong Start/Strong Kids programs, from the Oregon Resiliency Project (Merrell, 2010), are designed to be used pre-K through Grade 12 as a brief and low-cost way to promote SEL and CRE.
Caldarella, Christensen, Kramer, and Kronmiller (2009) evaluated the effects of Strong Start on second-grade students, using a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group design. Results revealed statistically significant improvements in teacher ratings of students’ internalizing and peer-related prosocial behaviors, particularly for students at greater risk. Conversely, control group students experienced significant worsening of internalizing behaviors and decreased levels of peer-related prosocial behaviors. Strong Start was also evaluated in kindergarten students (Kramer, Caldarella, Christensen, & Shatzer, 2010) using a time-series design. Results indicated gains in students’ prosocial behaviors and decreases in internalizing behaviors, as rated by teachers and parents. Research on the Strong Kids and Strong Teens versions (Merrell, Juskelis, Tran, & Buchanan, 2008) in Grades 5, 7 to 8, and 9 to 12 is also supportive. Three groups participated in either the Strong Kids (Groups 1 and 2) or Strong Teens (Group 3) programs, receiving 1-hour lessons and associated assignments once a week for 12 weeks. In all three studies, students increased social and emotional knowledge and decreased negative emotional expressions.