Evaluating the effectiveness of KooLKIDS : an interactive social emotional learning program for Australian primary school children

The effectiveness of universal social emotional learning (SEL) programs are dependent on the incorporation of best practice principles, including an evaluative component. In the present study, the effects of a best practice, teacher-led SEL program was examined with 854 children aged 8–12 years. KooLKIDS uses an interactive multimedia format and animated character to help children develop their emotion regulation capacities, social and friendship skills, empathy and compassion for others, and self-esteem. A quasi-experimental waitlist-control design was used to examine the impact of KooLKIDS on social and emotional competence, behavioral and emotional problems, academic achievement and effort. Hierarchical linear modeling demonstrated significant increases in social and emotional competence, and reductions in internalizing and externalizing problems in children post KooLKIDS program in the intervention group. The findings suggest that KooLKIDS has strong potential as a teacher-led, classroom-based, structured program for enhancing children's social and emotional learning

Understanding and training emotion regulation in children and adolescents

Emotion regulation (ER)—the ability to change an emotional experience in relation to a desired emotional goal is linked to broad psychosocial outcomes. In addition, early adolescence presents a sensitive period in the malleability of ER processes and is a period of particular risk for ER difficulties and the development of psychopathology. Utilising a mixed methods approach, this thesis explores the use of ER skills through childhood and adolescence within the context of social functioning (study 1, chapter 2); and leading from this, the training of ER skills via digital intervention approaches (study 2, chapter 3). Chapter 4 applied the findings of chapters 2 and 3 by presenting the evidence and codesign informed development of a prototype novel digital game for training specific ER strategies in early adolescence. Results demonstrate the importance of the development and use of adaptive ER skills through childhood and adolescence, and that issues around engagement, access, acceptability, and stigma in traditional and wider-reaching preventative intervention frameworks may be addressed by training ER via codesigned digital games. The applied implications of the thesis centre around the importance of training ER via appropriately codesigned digital technology in broad samples of early adolescents to address negative social experiences and linked psychological outcomes