Poster #162 - Evaluation of a School-Based Social and Emotional Learning Program Using Volunteer Parents as Instructors

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

The social and emotional learning (SEL) program offered by the Happiness Village Emotion Education Association (HVA) in Taiwan is a school-based curriculum aiming at assisting preadolescent socioemotional competence. The program lasts for four semesters during the fifth and sixth grade. To ensure the quality of the program, HVA systematically and regularly trains, evaluates, and supervises volunteer parents to run the program. Additionally, the program’s instruction manuals, class activities, and homework pamphlets have already been standardized and published. As a result, the number of schools that adopt HVA’s program is increasing every year mainly through word-of-mouth recommendation. Yet, no scientific study has evaluated its effect.
This study was targeted at evaluating the effect of HVA’s 5th grade program on children’s Appraisal and Expression of Emotion (AEE), Regulation of Emotion (RE), and Utilization of Emotion (UE) that were revealed in the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Parent Report (EIQ-P; adapted from Schutte et al., 1998). Permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative parenting styles assessed by Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1988, 1991) and children’s felt security assessed by Security Scale (Kerns et al., 2015) were also collected to investigate how family relationship may contribute to the intervention effect.
The Intervention Group-I (IG-I) included 351 fifth graders and 323 guardians from twelve schools. The Control Group (CG) included 72 children and 60 guardians from four schools. The Intervention Group-II (IG-II) consisted of the same number of children and guardians as in CG; all of them were individually picked from IG-I to match with the participants in CG in terms of child’s sex, academic performance, parental education level, and city of residence. All guardians filled out EIQ-P both at the start (pretest) and at the end (posttest) of the school year of fifth grade. At the beginning of the spring semester of the school year, guardians filled out PAQ and children filled out the Security Scale.
One-way between-subject (IG-II versus CG) analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) on the posttest scores of the three EIQ-P subscales with the pretest scores of EIQ-P as the covariate indicated that, at the end of fifth grade, children in IG-II were rated by guardians to have higher AEE (F[1, 117]=4.065, p< .046, ηp2=.034), and RE (F[1, 117]=8.302, p< .005, ηp2=.066) than those in CG, suggesting the positive effect of HVA’s program. Next, hierarchical regression analyses on the improvement of the subscale scores of EIQ-P from children in IG-I were conducted. The variables first entering each of the three steps of the regression models are shown in Table 1. Results indicated that the lower the scores in AEE at the start of the fifth grade predicted larger improvement in emotional intelligence, especially for the children receiving higher authoritative parenting (β= –0.231, p<.001; Figure 1). Authoritative parenting also positively predicted larger improvement in RE and UE after receiving HVA’s curricula for two semesters. Moreover, both children’s felt security and guardians’ permissive parenting contributed positively to the improvement of RE (Table 1). In conclusion, school-family partnership plays a critical role in the effectiveness of HVA’s SEL program.

Authors

• Keng-Ling Lay, National Taiwan University
  Presenting Author

• Chen-Yu Lin, National Taiwan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tai-Chuan Chang, National Taiwan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Li-Jung Yang, Taiwan Happiness Village Emotion Education Association
  Non-Presenting Author

• Huei-Tsyr Chen, Taiwan Happiness Village Emotion Education Association
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuan-Jung Wang, National Taiwan Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author