A preliminary empirical evaluation of KooLKIDS: A school-based program to reduce early onset antisocial behaviour in children

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

“…KooLKIDS is an engaging school‐based SEL intervention, which supports the broad positive impacts that a best practice, evidence‐based, teacher‐led SEL program can have, in terms of increasing social and emotional competencies among primary school‐aged children, and reducing internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. Thus, the present findings build on and extend the current research base pertaining to KooLKIDS (Carroll et al, 2017; Houghton et al, 2017) as well as school‐based SEL programs more generally.…”

“…Incorporating these key features highlighted by Durlak et al (2011) into SEL programs facilitates flexible delivery tailored within a naturalistic school environment and as such, increases the accessibility of the programs to students. In addition, it is important that SEL programs are highly engaging and interactive in nature, incorporate coaching and role playing, and employ a set of structured activities to guide children towards achieving specific goals (Carroll et al, 2017; Houghton et al, 2017). In an attempt to address these key operational program features, KooLKIDS was developed.…”

“…KooLKIDS was originally developed as an intensive targeted intervention for children at risk of suspension from school for severe antisocial and challenging behavior, utilizing a combination of individual and whole‐of‐class sessions. A formal evaluation of KooLKIDS (Intensive) delivered across a school term (10–12‐week period) revealed significant reductions in levels of children's aggression and antisocial behavior and increases in peer acceptance (Carroll et al, 2017). A second evaluation (Houghton et al, 2017) found significant increases in positive emotions and significant reductions in physical and verbal proactive and reactive aggression.…”

Reactive and proactive aggression as meaningful distinctions at the variable and person level in primary school‐aged children

“…Thus, intervening early with proactively aggression children is likely to generate a range of substantial benefits for the child, for the school, and for society in general, even if the prevalence of this group is low. A recent evaluation of a school-based intervention targeting A u t h o r M a n u s c r i p t A u t h o r M a n u s c r i p t children displaying antisocial behavior which focused on improving social and emotional regulation and increasing empathy, found that the program led to significant reductions in self-reported verbal proactive aggression, physical proactive aggression, verbal reactive aggression, and in teacher ratings of callous-unemotional traits (Carroll et al, 2017). Programs of this nature may have the potential to reduce negative outcomes for both proactive and reactive aggressively children, but further longitudinal research is required to determine whether the benefits are experienced equivalently across groups.…”

Who benefits most? Predicting the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning intervention according to children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties

“…Many SEL programmes target children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in particular because of the adverse impact they can have on peers and teachers (e.g., Carroll et al., 2017) and the assumption that an intensive individualised or small group approach is more efficacious (see Murphy, Hawkins, & Nabors, 2019). However, the recognition of the heterogeneity of emotional and behavioural difficulties within classrooms has witnessed a number of SEL programmes moving towards a universal (whole-of-class or whole-of-school) approach to promote strong and long-lasting positive outcomes for all children (Wilson & Lipsey, 2007).…”