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Ashdown and Bernard (2012) - Coggle Diagram
Ashdown and Bernard (2012)
Aims
To investigate the effect of a social and emotional learning skills curriculum on the social-emotional development, well-being, and academic achievement of young children
They wanted to find out if young children who received the program would:
Display greater gains in their level of social and emotional competence than those who didn't
Display greater gains in their social and emotional well being than those who didn't
Show a greater decrease in problem behaviours than those who didn't
Display greater gains in their levels of academic achievement than those who didn't
Procedure
The sample that was used consisted of 99 children (45 females and 54 male).42 were 5 year olds and 57 were 6 year olds
They were chosen because they were of low socioeconomic status . approximately ⅔ students had english as a second language
One class of 5 year olds and one class of 6 year olds were selected leaving the other two classes to be the control group.
(They were then given the YCDI course over 10 weeks)
The teachers were all trained in the use of the YCDI program
Teachers then completed two questionnaires about each of the children in both groups.
The first questionnaire , the ACER well-being survey, consisted of 50 things related to reliability and validity. Teachers were asked to give scores 1 to 4 for each of the questions
The second questionnaire ,the social skills rating system,consisted of 57 items ro measure social skills and behaviour problems. Teacher had to give a score between 0 and 2
Teachers also asked to record a independent text reading graded 0 to 28
Results
Males display higher levels of problem behaviors, and lower levels of social-emotional well-being, social-emotional competence and social skills.
However the analysis indicated that there were no differences in the effectiveness of YCDI between males and females as both group scores improved over the program duration
Conclusions
The reason the grade 1 YCDI class showed stronger improvements than the prep YCDI class might be because the impact of the YCDI intervention is greater when teachers rely on the explicit teaching guidance contained in the YCDI curriculum concerning how the content of the lesson should be delivered.
Results suggest that You Can Do It! Early childhood education program is an effective way of improving the social and emotional competence of young children
After the program the students were more able to manage their emotions, get along with others and engage in academic learning than the students in the non-YCDI classes.
Program was equally effective for children from a range of cultural backgrounds
Evaluation
Overall the study proved beneficial to the children who participated in the YCDI program as great gains were shown in their levels of achievement in comparison to the children who did not participate.
One weakness of the study was that since it was only conducted at one school with a relatively small sample thus not making it generalizable
Another weakness is that the teachers may have been biased as they knew which children participated in the YCDI program and which ones didn’t