| As an answer to the increasing problem of violence and disruptive behaviors found in America's schools today, the teaching of pro-social behavior skills is rapidly becoming a part of the American curriculum. Programs designed to teach children proper behavior in large group settings, as well as, the everyday classroom offer opportunities to learn rules, societal norms and consequences for actions. Students discuss, problem solve, and role-play common behavior situations while developing pro-social skills, skills for dealing with feelings and skills for dealing with alternatives to aggression.;This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching a pro-social behavior curriculum. Two suburban middle class elementary schools possessing the same demographic characteristics were selected for the study. The study was administered in fifth grade classes in each of the schools. Four classes were the control group receiving a partial treatment and three were the experimental group receiving a complete treatment. A pretest-posttest control group design (Gall, Borg & Gall, 1996) was used with participants randomly assigned to both the control and experimental groups.;Prior to the onset of the treatment, a pretest survey of attitudes towards social skills, skills for dealing with feelings, and skill alternatives to aggression was administered to both groups. The teachers were given the same survey to complete for each of their students. Teachers in the both groups were trained by the researcher to teach a previously written curriculum, designed to develop pro-social skills in the classroom of an elementary school setting. These lessons were taught weekly for four weeks. Students had the opportunity to determine what cooperation, positive attitude, responsibility and good effort look and sound like in the classroom. Teaching strategies such as: T-charts and role-plays were used to actively engage students. The control group was taught the same pro-social skills using direct instruction without additional teaching strategies. Following the four-week program of weekly classroom lessons, a posttest survey was administered to both experimental groups. Guidance counselors in each school were trained in the program philosophy. They observed prior to the onset of the study, during the study and after the completion of the study. Using a behavior checklist they observed change in targeted behaviors. Students were given the opportunity to express their perceptions of the effectiveness of the study through open-ended questions on the posttest survey and interviews with the guidance counselors. Additionally, discipline referral records for the students in each school, were analyzed for change from before the program began to after the completion of the program.;The goal of this study was to determine if teaching a pro-social skills curriculum would affect the behavior of students in the classroom. |
