"Calmly - Learning to Learn Yourself": a Social-Emotional-Learning (SEL) programme to improve children’s self-regulation skills
At a glance
Country of origin
- Portugal
Level(s) of intervention
- Universal prevention
Calmy – Learning to Learn yourself is a classroom-based socio-emotional learning (SEL) intervention that focusses on improving the development of children’s socio-emotional skills (SES) and positive relationships with their peers and teachers. The intervention aims at self-regulation, communication, adaptability, creative thinking, resilience, and problem-solving. These skills play an important role in various developmental outcomes such as school success.
This intervention is implemented in the curriculum of elementary school students (8-10 years) and consists of weekly, one-hour sessions delivered by a trained facilitator, in the presence of the teacher responsible for the class. Each session introduces the development of one or more socio-emotional competences. The programme sessions cover 10 topics. The programme uses a variety of strategies, such as reflecting, brainstorming, open-ended questioning, social and self-reinforcing feedback and group games (Coelho et al., 2023).
Keywords
preventionLinks to this programme in other registries
Implementation Experiences
Read the experiences of people who have implemented this programme.Contact details
Vera Coelho
University of Maia, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Maia, Portugal,
vcoelho[at]umaia.pt
Overview of results from the European studies
Studies overview
Countries where evaluated
- Portugal
Characteristics
Protective factor(s) addressed
- Individual and peers: Impulse control
- School and work: Good school climate and ethos
- Individual and peers: interaction with prosocial peers
- Individual and peers: skills for social interaction
- Individual and peers: prosocial behaviour
Risk factor(s) addressed
- Individual and peers: anti-social behaviour
Outcomes targeted
- Emotional well-being
- Emotion regulation, coping, resilience
- Relations with peers
- Other relationships (community, school)
Description of programme
One RCT (Coelho et al., 2023) was conducted in Portugal in 2023. In this study 16 sessions of one hour were delivered each week by a trained facilitator with the responsible teacher present. The measures for this study included both self-report questionnaires, completed by students, and hetero-report questionnaires, completed by teachers and families. To study the social and emotional skills a Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) was conducted, and the Classroom Peer Context Questionnaire (CPCQ) was used to measure the children’s perspectives of peer relationships in the classroom at individual, interaction, group and relationship levels (Coelho et al., 2023).
