Primary School Children's Socioemotional Competence: Assessment, the Effects of the EMOscope Intervention and the Role of Engagement

The project seeks to improve the understanding of primary school pupil's socioemotional competence and conditions for its development. The research has three objectives. Firstly, it investigates the psychometric properties of a newly-developed socioemotional understanding test called the Domino Test for Socioemotional Understanding (DOTSEMU). Secondly, it examines the impact of the intervention aimed at developing socioemotional competence in primary school pupils - the EMOscope. Lastly, it investigates the role of activity-specific engagement in developing children's socioemotional competence during the EMOscope intervention. The project from the start is being inspired by the conceptual framework and instruments developed at the Research Centre for Experiential Education. The thesis consists of three articles, each of them addresses one of the below-mentioned specific research aims. In the first study, the validity and the reliability of the Domino Test for Socioemotional Understanding (DOTSEMU) was verified. The DOTSEMU is a performance-based measure that assesses children's ability to understand human behavior and emotions in a social context. Children are asked to create story lines from two sets of pictures, to describe them and to name emotions experienced by three characters of each story. To examine the psychometric properties of the test, the study was conducted in the school year 2014/2015 in six third grade classes of Polish primary schools. Results suggested that the reliability of the DOTSEMU was acceptable. Moreover, the test explained unique variance in children's outcomes, taking into account another validated and performance-based measure of emotional awareness. Overall, the study provided first evidence that the DOTSEMU assesses socioemotional understanding and contributes to the prediction of behavioral (mal)adjustment in children. The aim of the second study was to investigate the impact of the EMOscope intervention. The intervention is based on the set of materials developed at the Research Centre for Experiential Education that helps children to reflect on their emotions and on emotions of other people. To investigate the effects of the EMOscope intervention, a quasi-experimental design with the pre and post-test was used. This study was conducted in the school year 2014/2015. The sample comprised sixteen third grades of Polish primary schools. Eight classes were assigned to the control, eight to the experimental condition. In the experimental classes five sessions with the educational set EMOscope were conducted by teachers. Data were collected with questionnaires for teachers and with performance-based tests and peer nominations. Multilevel regression analysis revealed that children in the experimental condition improved significantly on their test scores on emotional self-and other-awareness and on social understanding. Moreover, they decreased in teacher-rated hyperactivity, conduct problems and total difficulties. No effects were found, however, on teacher-rated pro-social behavior, emotional problems and peer problems, and peer-rated cooperative behavior. The third study investigates the role of activity-specific engagement in developing children's socioemotional competence during the EMOscope intervention. To address this aim, a part of the data collected from the intervention study with the EMOscope was used. To examine the role of engagement during the EMOscope, observations of children were performed live in classrooms. The study confirmed that children were highly engaged during the intervention and that engagement was higher in girls. Moreover, children's engagement was the highest during the last session of the intervention. Unexpectedly, the multilevel regression analysis revealed that engagement negatively predicted teacher-rated pro-social behavior and positively teacher-rated conduct problems at post-test. However, engagement positively predicted peer-rated cooperative behavior at post-test. No effects of engagement were found on children's emotional awareness, socioemotional understanding and on teacher-rated hyperactivity, emotional problems, and peer problems.

Jaar van publicatie:2019

Toegankelijkheid:Open