Exchange prevention registry

"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
Last reviewed:
Age group
6-10 years
Target group
Primary school children
Programme setting(s)
School

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

  • prevention

Links to this programme in other registries

Implementation Experiences

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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

Evidence rating

  • Additional studies recommended
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Studies overview
The Portuguese study (Coelho et al., 2023) found a significant increase of the intervention group’s assertiveness (F(1,81)=6.448, p=0.01,η2=0.074) and sociability (F(1,81)=5.60, p=0.02,η2=0.07). Effect sizes were small to moderate, and no effects were found for self-regulation, self-control and emotional control. Concerning the classroom peer relationships, the results showed a significant difference between the control and intervention group for levels of comfort, conflicts, mutual affection and innovation. The Intervention group had lower levels of conflicts (F(1, 191)=5.045, p=0.02,η2=0.026)and higher levels of cooperation (F(1, 191)=4.643, p=0.003,η2=0.024).Coelho et al. (2023) emphasises that more research is needed, before generalising the results of their study to other contexts

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).

Implementation Experiences

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