The effect of problem solving skills training program on the social and emotional learning abilities of 6th grade students

The objective of this study is to examine the effects of the problem solving skills training program on the social and emotional learning needs which are task articulation, peer relations and self-regulation along with the social and emotional learning skills of communication, problem solving, coping with stress and self-esteem enhancing skills for sixth grade primary school students. Within the scope of this research the effects of problem solving skills training program on the total score of social and emotional learning needs along with the total score of social and emotional learning skills of sixth grade primary school students were also examined.In this research true experimental design with pretest-posttest control group design was used and follow-up measurement was also applied to the groups. Within the scope of the study, problem solving skills training program was applied to the experimental group for a period of ten weeks whereas no program was applied to the control group. The study group of the research consisted of 20 experimental and 20 control group students for a total of 40 sixth grade primary school students selected with randomized sampling from two different primary schools located in the Buca province of Izmir during the 2009-2010 academic year. The girl and boy student distribution in the study group was set to 10 students. The students in the study groups were randomly selected from amongst those with low problem solving skills and those without any advanced psychological symptom problems. Problem Solving Inventory for Children and Brief Symptom Inventory were used to determine students for groups whereas the differences between groups following the experimental procedure were examined by using the Social Emotional Learning Skills Scale and the Social-emotional Learning Scale. The Turkish adaptation of the Social-emotional Learning Scale was completed during the research phase of the study. One-way covariance analysis was used during the statistical analyses of the study and for repeated measures multivariate analysis of covariance and covariance analysis were used with an significance level of .050. The analyses of the study were carried out via IBM SPSS PAWS 18 software.The results of the study put forth that problem solving skills training are effective in increasing task articulation, self-regulation and total score of social and emotional learning needs with a permanent effect whereas it was also determined that the difference in measurements during the post-test stage in favor of the experimental group was not observed in the follow-up tests. For social and emotional learning skills it was determined that the education program significantly increased the skills of problem solving, coping with stress along with the total score of social and emotional learning skills and that the difference in favor of the experimental group was also observed in the follow-up tests whereas it was also determined that problem solving skills had no effect on communication skills and self-esteem enhancing skills. Due to the effect of problem solving skills training on the social and emotional learning needs and skills, the education program is suitable for use in developmental and preventive guidance services.