This summary describes the Head Start CARES research project, which evaluated three classroom-based approaches to enhancing children's social-emotional development: (1) The Incredible Years Teacher Training Program; (2) Preschool PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies); and (3) Tools of the Mind--Play. The three social-emotional…

Participation in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs reduces aggressive and antisocial behavior (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Theoretically, SEL programs foster social and emotionally intelligent youth through improving children's social and emotional skills, defined in the present study as the ability to…

Children's social-emotional skills, such as conflict resolution and emotion regulation, have been linked to a number of highly regarded academic and social outcomes. The current study presents preliminary results from a causal test of the theory of change of RULER, a universal school-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL).…

A positive school climate is characterized by a supportive, orderly, and fair interpersonal climate. Children's perceptions of interpersonal climate and school safety are associated with several academic and behavioral adjustment outcomes. The current study has two goals: (1) to better understand the contribution of school interpersonal climate to…

The primary purpose of this research was to examine whether appreciation explains variance in life satisfaction after controlling for gender, positive affectivity, self-esteem, and coping skills. Two hundred ninety-eight undergraduates went to the informed consent page of the online survey composed of the Appreciation Scale, the Satisfaction With…

Sometimes a single word changes everything. In his groundbreaking book "Choice Words", Peter Johnston demonstrated how the things teachers say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for the literate lives of students. Now, in "Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives", Peter shows how the words teachers choose affect the worlds students…

Experimental studies of children's responses to apologies often present participants with hypothetical scenarios. This article reports on an experimental study of children's reactions to experiencing an actual disappointment and subsequent apology. Participants (ages four to seven) were told that another child was supposed to share some attractive…

Although most of the initial research on self-regulated learning focused on cognitive and meta-cognitive aspects, there has been a growing interest in the emotion and motivation domains of self-regulation. This article reports on research undertaken to investigate specific motivation and emotion regulation strategies used by middle school students…

This article offers a critique of Harry Brighouse's "autonomy-facilitating education", which aims to enable students to reflect critically on their lives and society without disposing them to do so. Because it is "character-neutral", this kind of education purportedly avoids some of the controversy surrounding autonomy-promotion. At the same time,…

Empathy is the ability to understand and feel for the situation of another human being and is shaped by seeing others react when distressed; by imitating what they see, children develop a repertoire of empathic responses. When children see other people in pain, their brains become active in the same regions that process the experience of pain…

Imitation is an early skill thought to play a role in social development, leading some to suggest that teaching imitation to children with autism should lead to improvements in social functioning. This study used a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of a focused imitation intervention on initiation of joint attention and…

Adolescent sexual maturation is staged using Tanner criteria assessed by clinicians, parents, or adolescents. The physiology of sexual maturation is driven by gonadal hormones. We investigate Tanner stage progression as a function of increasing gonadal hormone concentration and compare performances of different raters. Fifty-six boys (mean age,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the Dutch "Skills for Life" programme on students' health behaviours, bullying behaviour and suicidal ideation. Design/methodology/approach: The effectiveness of the "Skills for Life" programme on health behaviour outcomes was evaluated at three points in time in…

As a result of public discussions regarding Germany's standing on international rankings of student achievement, increased attention was focused on enhancing cognitive stimulation in preschools. There are some concerns that preschool curricula that focus more on cognitive stimulation rather than on socio-emotional skills might neglect the…

The "Effective Classroom Interactions" (ECI) online courses were designed to provide an engaging, effective and scalable approach to enhancing early childhood teachers' use of classroom practices that impact children's school readiness. The created courses included several versions aimed at testing whether or not certain design aspects…