Promoting psychological well-being in preschool children: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness- and yoga-based socio-emotional learning intervention

BACKGROUND

Mental health issues in youths have cascading negative effects on school outcomes, professional life, and physical health. Psychological well-being (P-WB) is an important protective factor against mental illness. Preliminary research suggests that mindfulness- and yoga-based socio-emotional learning (SEL) interventions can each have a positive impact on preschoolers P-WB. The objective of this trial is to rigorously evaluate the effect of a 24-week combined mindfulness- and yoga- based SEL intervention in preschool children from a French socio-economically disadvantaged area.

METHODS

The P-WB promotion intervention is compared to a wait-list control condition in a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT). Sixty-four pre-Kindergarten classrooms are randomized to the intervention or control group. Primary outcomes measure self-management capacity and core P-WB components: connection, insight, engagement, and positive relationship. Secondary outcomes include measures of mental health, executive functioning, and school performance. Primary and secondary outcomes are assessed through teacher questionnaires, standardized observations of children in school context, and experimental tasks and by collecting results of the national evaluation at first grade. All children-level outcomes are evaluated at pre-intervention, at the end of the intervention, and 1 year later (follow-up analysis), to the exception of school performance which is evaluated at follow-up only. Intention-to-treat analyses, accounting for clustering within classes, will adopt a random effects linear regression model to examine outcomes for the intervention versus control children.

DISCUSSION

This is the first trial to rigorously evaluate a combined mindfulness- and yoga-based P-WB promotion intervention, and the first RCT evaluating a SEL curriculum in French schools. Results may have key implications for P-WB promotion in preschool children.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

https://www.drks.de/ DRKS00028623. Retrospectively registered on 30 May 2022.

Classrooms in Peace Within Violent Contexts: Field Evaluation of Aulas en Paz in Colombia

Classrooms in Peace (Aulas en Paz) is an elementary school-based multicomponent program for prevention of aggression and promotion of peaceful relationships. Inspired by international programs and socio-emotional research, it includes (1) a classroom universal curriculum, (2) parent workshops and home visits to parents of the 10% most aggressive children, and (3) extracurricular peer groups of two aggressive and four prosocial children. Activities seek to promote socio-emotional competencies such as empathy, anger management, creative generation of alternatives, and assertiveness. A 2-year quasi-experimental evaluation was conducted with 1154 students from 55 classrooms of seven public schools located in neighborhoods with the presence of youth gangs, drug cartels, and high levels of community violence in two Colombian cities. Despite several implementation (e.g., about half of the activities were not implemented) and evaluation (e.g., randomization problems, large number of missing data, and changes between treatment and control groups) challenges, positive results were found in prosocial behavior and in reduction of aggressive behavior, according to teacher reports, and in assertiveness and reduction of verbal victimization, according to student reports. Furthermore, implementation cost (25 US dollars per student per year) was very low compared to other programs in developed countries. This study shows that the Classrooms in Peace program has an important potential to generate positive results and highlights the challenges of implementing and evaluating prevention programs in highly violent environments.