Promoting Social and Emotional Competencies for Rural Children in China: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Background: While Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) research has become ubiquitous in Western contexts, it is minimal in China. Several SEL programs have been developed or adopted for Chinese contexts, but few studies have examined their effectiveness in local contexts, especially rare in rural schools. This study is the first to examine both the acceptability and the effectiveness of a well-designed SEL program in rural Chinese elementary schools in terms of its contribution to improving children’s social emotional competencies.

Methods: We adopted a two group quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention study design with a three-level cluster design. The sample consisted of 1247 children nested within 4 schools and 24 classrooms with children with an average age of 10.96 years. Specifically, the study drew on 648 fifth graders with a mean age of 10.94 years from two rural schools as the intervention group and 599 fifth graders with a mean age of 10.98 years from another two matched schools as the comparison group.

Results: Multilevel mixed-effect models were conducted to examine the impact of SEL intervention on children’s overall social emotional competencies and its five subdomains, controlling for children’s demographic variables. Four change scores of the social emotional competency outcomes showed that children in the intervention group at the post intervention time point achieved significantly higher scores than those in the comparison group. Specifically, controlling for all other variables, the children in the SEL experiment group reported 0.084 unit higher on overall social emotional competency scores than the control children (p < .01), 0.127 unit higher on self-awareness scores (p < .001), 0.134 unit higher on social-awareness scores (p < .001), and 0.089 unit higher on relationship skill scores (p < .05). There were, however, no statistically significant intervention effects on the competencies of self-management and responsible decision-making. In addition, our findings also present the responses obtained regarding acceptability of the current SEL intervention study. Participants in the intervention group reported high satisfaction scores about the current intervention (Mean=9.1, SD=1.6, based on a 1-10 scale). In addition, the intervention was considered interesting (Mean=9.2, SD=1.61), helpful (Mean=8.6, SD=2.15), and the skills taught were useful in their daily life (Mean=8.07, SD=2.65). Of the 648 participants, 97.65% expressed their willingness to attend a similar intervention again.

Implications: The significant invention effects of the school-based SEL program on rural children’s overall social emotional competencies and three subdomains and its high acceptability among rural children demonstrate the great potential of scaling up SEL in rural Chinese elementary schools. The insignificant findings on two domains of social emotional competencies indicates the crucialness to continue improving the SEL curriculum through incorporating responsible decision making and strengthening the sessions for emotional regulation. The results also have significant educational policy implication on challenging the traditional teaching style in rural Chinse schools. Besides, the findings also shed light on future research directions, including using rigorous RCT design, longitudinal design, multiple informants to assess social emotional competencies, as well as diverse mental health outcomes including both internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms.