A Multi-Country Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial of Think Equal on Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Behavior

Introduction

Think Equal is a low cost, international, early childhood social and emotional learning program targeting social, gender, racial and religious equality, empathy, emotional intelligence, and global citizenship. Lessons are delivered by classroom teachers or child care professionals and are organized into 36 topic areas. The lessons use rich resources that use narratives in literature and in the wider context of the child’s life. In addition, Think Equal curricular resources focus on using positive, accurate language and social cognition. The purpose of this study is to document the results of a multi-country cluster randomized controlled trial of Think Equal on preschoolers’ social and emotional behavior.

Methods

After recruitment by Think Equal in partnership with country leaders, but before training, 280 preschools in Sri Lanka (n=65), Canada (n=22), Botswana, (n=46) Kenya (n=35), Argentina (n=46), India (n=30), and Singapore (n=36) were randomized within country to either receive Think Equal (n=105) or to operate as they normally would (n=75). Five children were randomly selected per classroom for inclusion in the study (n=1,400). Teachers in both Think Equal and control conditions were asked to report on children’s social-emotional behavior. At the beginning of the school year (T1) and at the end of the year (T2), teachers reported child demographics (i.e., age, gender, English-language proficiency) and child social-emotional behavior using items organized into subscales from the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997), Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation-30 (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996), and Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (Putnam et al., 2006). Subscales achieved acceptable levels of reliability.

Results

In multi-level analyses, children exposed to Think Equal were more socially and emotionally skilled and less likely to be angry, aggressive, anxious, or withdrawn than their peers who did not have access to Think Equal. (Country-specific effects were also found.) Effects were large, and for some outcomes, constituted a one-and-a-half standard deviation difference between children exposed to Think Equal and children in control classrooms. These strong effects are supported by anecdotal reports from educators, many of whom felt that because of their implementation of Think Equal, children were supported in regularly checking in with their feelings.

Conclusion

This study contributed to continuous improvement for Think Equal implementation including ways to improve Think Equal programming, increase Think Equal fidelity, and suggested strategies for improving data collection efficiency for future studies. Future analyses will explore missing data, validity, and implementation fidelity.