Promoting social competence in school-aged children: The effects of the open circle program
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 154 fourth graders (86 boys and 68 girls, mean age = 9.24 years at the fall administration). Parental consent to take part in the study was first obtained, and it was made clear to the children themselves that they were free to terminate their participation at any time if they so wished. (None did.) A total of eight classrooms were sampled: Two OCP classrooms in an urban school, two classrooms in a second urban school which was not part of the OCP program, two OCP classrooms in
Overview
As explained previously, the SSRS generates a large number of outcome measures. In the interest of clarity and because, as might be expected, all subscale scores were found to be highly intercorrelated in both the fall and in the spring (all p's < .001), the results reported here relied on standardized composite scale scores for Social Skills and Problem Behaviors. Students' self-ratings of Empathy and teachers' ratings of Academic Competence, which did not involve subscales, were also considered.
Discussion
The investigation described here provides modest support that children who had been exposed to the Open Circle Program for a full academic year were perceived by their classroom teachers to be more socially skilled and less apt to demonstrate problem behaviors than were their non-OCP counterparts. This Program effect appeared most true for urban children who, as a group, made significant gains in teacher-reported social skills. Although the teacher form of the SSRS revealed a number of
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank Pamela Seigle, former Executive Director of the Open Circle Program and developer of the Open Circle Curriculum at the Stone Center, at the Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College. Pamela's guidance and support were invaluable in the construction and execution of this study.
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