An emotional competence curriculum for young children four to five years old

Abstract

The aim of this study is to test the efficacy of the Seeds of Unity curriculum on a Pre-Kindergarten class consisting of four to five-year-old children in Brooklyn New York. The syllabus is a fusion of The Starting Small Program created by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the teaching of emotional competence theory. This study measured fourteen, four to five-year-old children before and after a ten-month exposure to the Seeds of Unity Curriculum. The Social Skills Rating Scale (SSRS) was utilized to measure changes in emotional competence before and after exposure to the curriculum. The results showed a mean score on the Gresham Social Skills index that placed the girls in the 76^% before the program and the 97% after, and the boys went from the 64% to the 89% when measured against children their age. Despite the small N, this study showed that using this curriculum, increased social emotional intelligence. The competencies incorporated into this paradigm are vital to improving relations between cultures in the ethnically diverse New York city schools and provides hope that change is possible.

Keywords:

• bullying
• emotional competence
• elimination of prejudice in children
• preschool curriculum
• teaching tolerance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).