Two-Year Impacts of a Universal School-Based Social-Emotional and Literacy Intervention: An Experiment in Translational Developmental Research

• Published in: Child development Vol. 82; no. 2; pp. 533 - 554
• Main Authors: Jones, Stephanie M., Brown, Joshua L., Lawrence Aber, J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2011; Wiley-Blackwell
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Academic learning; Achievement; Aggression; Attention; Behavioural disorders; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child Behavior - psychology; Child Development; Child growth; Children; Communities; Depression (Psychology); Depression - prevention & control; Depressive disorders; Developmental psychology; Education reform; Educational Status; Elementary School Students; Elementary schools; Emotional Development; Emotions; EMPIRICAL ARTICLES; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human aggression; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Intervention; Literacy; Male; Mathematics Achievement; Outcomes of education; Program Effectiveness; Psychology, Child; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading Achievement; Scholarships & fellowships; School adaptation; School based; Schools; Selfreport; Social Behavior; Social behaviour; Socialization; Studies; Teachers; Translation; Treatment Outcome; Human; Mood disorder; Affect affectivity; Academic achievement; Attention; Depression; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Educational schedule; Literacy; Attribution; School environment; Social cognition; Social development; School age; Social behavior; Language; Social interaction; Affective development; Child; Aggressiveness; Cognitive bias
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01560.x

This study contributes to ongoing scholarship at the nexus of translational research, education reform, and the developmental and prevention sciences. It reports 2-year experimental impacts of a universal, integrated school-based intervention in social-emotional learning and literacy development on children's social-emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning. The study employed a school-randomized, experimental design with 1,184 children in 18 elementary schools. Children in the intervention schools showed improvements across several domains: self-reports of hostile attributional bias, aggressive interpersonal negotiation strategies, and depression, and teacher reports of attention skills, and aggressive and socially competent behavior. In addition, there were effects of the intervention on children's math and reading achievement for those identified by teachers at baseline at highest behavioral risk. These findings are interpreted in light of developmental cascades theory and lend support to the value of universal, integrated interventions in the elementary school period for promoting children's social-emotional and academic skills.