Experimental Evaluation of a Program to Foster Socioemotional Competence of Children in Third Grade and Their Teachers

Trial statusNot yet recruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
AgeNot listed
SponsorUniversidad de los Andes, Chile

About this trial

The 10-minutes project is an experimental study to assess the impact of a SEL program for children in 3th and 4th grade and their teachers called 10-minutes.

The program is a curriculum that provides 10-minute activities (thus the name) for children to be implemented by the teachers daily throughout the school year. The activities do not require prior knowledge of teachers on SEL development, nor planning or material preparation.

The 10-minute project is a quantitative study developed to evaluate whether the 10-minute curriculum and an expanded version with professional development activities for teachers or counselors, 10-minute plus, at third grade would improve students and teachers' socioemotional competence. The randomized control trail involves 30 schools in Chile, matched on socioeconomic measures, size, and urban/rural conditions, assigned randomly to 1 of 3 conditions. Ten schools will receive 10-minutes only, the SEL curriculum taught by teachers or school counselors, during the 2024 and 2025 school years. Ten schools will receive 10-minutes plus during the 2024 school year. Ten schools will serve as "delayed program" control, which will have the opportunity to receive the program (10-minutes plus) after the final follow-up. To examine the possibility of fade-out of the effects of the SEL intervention on students, the first experimental condition (10-minutes only) will be randomly divided into two groups, one will receive the intervention for one year only, whereas the second one will receive the intervention for two consecutive years.

It is expected the program will yield positive effects on the experimental groups (both students and teachers), and effects are expected to be greater in the group offered the 10-minutes plus intervention which entails both a curriculum for children and professional development for teachers, than the effects in the group offered the 10-minutes curriculum exclusively. If the program proves to be effective, then cost-benefit analyses will follow to assess the efficiency of the program. The estimated benefits of the program are expected to be lower than the costs.

Eligibility criteria

This trial does not accept healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

. The inclusion criteria for schools: at least one third and one fourth grade class.

Disqualifiers

The exclusion criteria for schools are as follows: schools implementing a similar intervention in grades 3 and 4, and special needs schools.

Trial design

Design model

Parallel

Treatments tested in this trial

  • 10 minutes program

    Behavioral

    The curriculum component offers 10-minute daily doses of activities targeting the development of eight socioemotional competences in children: (i) emotional knowledge and management, (ii) developing a healthy identity, (iii) establishing and maintaining positive relationships, (iv) feeling and showing empathy, (v) establishing and reaching goals, (vi) responsible decision-making, (vii) contributing to the community and (viii) developing spirituality. The activities do not require the teacher to plan or to prepare material for the students.

  • 1 hour PD program

    Behavioral

    The professional development (PD) component is a 1-hour dose of activities targeting each of the eight SECs on which the curriculum focuses. The focus of PD is not to teach about SEC development in children but to develop SEC in teachers. Thus, this is an 8-hour PD program distributed throughout the academic year.

Treatment groups

750 Participants
are divided into 3 treatment groups
Group A: 10 minutes onlyExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Group B: 10 minutes plusExperimental treatment 2 interventions
Group C: DelayedOther 2 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

Learning characteristics, leadership, motivation, communication, and planning skills.

The Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students developed by Renzulli et al. (2002) will be used. This scale has 14 subscales. Only 5 will be used: leadership, learning characteristics, motivation, communication, and planning skills. The other scales refer to learning behavior in specific disciplines (such as arts, music, science, etc.) and that is why they will not be used. The items of these scales will be responded by parents.

Time frame
Months 1, 5 and 12
2

Self-control

will be assessed using the Impulsivity Scale for Children (ISC). This is an 8-item survey responded by children that assesses the inability to regulate behavior, attention, and emotions in specific goals (Tsukayama, Duckworth \& Kim, 2013).

Time frame
Months 1, 5 and 12
3

Grit

The 10-item likert scale that measures perseverance, the Oviedo Grit Scale (OGS; Postigo, Cuesta, García-Cueto et al., 2021) will be used. The scale has been adapted to Chile (reliability = 0.92; Postigo, Barria, Cuesta, Garcia-Cueto, 2023).

Time frame
Months 1, 5 and 12
4

Mindset

Whether children view intelligence as a fixed trait rather than a trait that can be improved will be assessed using a 3-item scale developed by Dweck, Chiu and Hong (1995), widely used in Chile with an internal consistency of 0.86 (Claro, Paunesku \& Dweck, 2016).

Time frame
Months 1, 5 and 12

Secondary outcomes

Other outcomes

Locations

This trial has no locations.

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

Universidad de los Andes, Chile

Lead sponsor

Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo

Collaborator

This trial is not recruiting at the moment. You can still explore other options: