Social Emotional and Ethical Development (SEED)

Not Applicable

Active, not recruiting

• Conditions: Development, Child; Mindfulness; Mental Well-being
• Interventions: Behavioral: Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum

• Registration Number: NCT06122844
• Lead Sponsor: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Brief Summary

The objectives of the present study are to (1) evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness in implementing teachers' training on mindfulness and developing their competency in delivering the Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum to preschool children and (2) pilot the SEED curriculum at kindergartens to assess its effectiveness.

To investigate the feasibility of SEED teacher training and the SEED Curriculum, randomized controlled trials will be conducted. A minimum of two kindergartens will be recruited to participate in the study. Half of the kindergartens, teachers, and children will receive the training and SEED curriculum, while the other half will be assigned to the waitlist control condition. Upon informed consent from the school principals and parents, parents, teachers, and children will complete pre- and post-assessments, additional follow-up assessments will be conducted in intervention group. Focus group interviews will be conducted with teachers to understand their acceptability, demand, practicality, integration, and efficacy of the teacher training at post-teacher training and delivery of the SEED curriculum for children at post-intervention. Another focus group interviews will be conducted with SEED trainers to get information about teachers' participation rate in the training session.

Detailed Description

According to the World Health Organization, early child development lays a critical foundation for healthy habits and long-term development, including health and well-being, as well as changing the trajectory of the next generation in maximizing human potential. Specifically, social emotional learning (SEL) in early childhood lays the foundation for their later adjustment, including better emotional wellness and fewer internalizing and externalizing problems. Recently, numerous SEL programs have been developed worldwide . Among these evidence-based SEL programs, the Kindness Curriculum is a secular mindfulness-based SEL program designed for children between 4-6 years of age.

In Hong Kong, the Kindergarten Education Curriculum Guide has identified affective and social development as a major objective in early childhood. Better social emotional competence is associated with preschool-aged children's lower anxiety and fewer aggressive behaviors in Hong Kong. However, the implementation of evidence-based SEL programs remains immature, with very few programs available for kindergartens and kindergarten-cum-child care settings and none being mindfulness-based. In response to fulfilling children's psychosocial needs, the Bodhi Love Foundation (BLF) has adapted the Kindness Curriculum for young children in Hong Kong. With concerted efforts of a team of qualified local mindfulness teachers and Prof. Daniel Goleman as the advisor, the curriculum was translated from English to Chinese and has been adapted for implementation in the local cultural context. The adapted Kindness Curriculum, renamed as Social, Emotional, Ethical Development Curriculum (SEED), is a two-part program involving training teachers on mindfulness and delivery of SEED to young children. As such, the curriculum may be beneficial for both teachers and children.

The project's significance is to cultivate mindfulness and loving kindness among our teachers and children so to equip them with the mindset and skills needed for self-care and promotion of mental well-being. Such well-being promotion and distress prevention approach that starts early in childhood lays a critical cornerstone for children to develop healthily, which can potentially reduce the incidence of mental illness among younger generations.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2023-10-10
• Study First Submitted: 2023-11-03
• Study First Submitted QC: 2023-11-03
• Study First Posted: 2023-11-08
• Status Verified: 2024-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-05-15
• Last Update Posted: 2024-05-17
• Primary Completion: 2024-08
• Study Completion: 2025-08

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 160

Inclusion Criteria

• For children: aged 3-7 years old, understand Cantonese
• For parents: aged 18 years old or above, understand Cantonese
• For teachers: aged 18 years old or above, understand Cantonese, currently working at a kindergarten

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Exclusion Criteria

• Cannot understand Cantonese

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Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum	Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum	The kindergartens, teachers, and children will receive the training and SEED curriculum. Upon informed consent from the school principals and parents, parents, teachers, and children will complete pre-, post-, and 4-week follow-up assessments. Focus group interviews will be conducted with teachers to understand their acceptability, demand, practicality, integration, and efficacy of the teacher training at post-teacher training and delivery of the SEED curriculum for children at post-intervention. Another focus group interviews will be conducted with SEED trainers to get information about teachers' participation rate in the training session.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)	12th week	A 20-item internalizing and externalizing problems subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire will be used to access their child's adjustment difficulties on a 3-point scale ranging from 1 (not true) to 3 (certainly true). The internalizing problems subscale capture emotional symptoms and peer relationship problems, whereas the externalizing problems subscale capture conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention.
Nonattachment Scale(NAS)-Short Form	12th week	The 8-item Nonattachment Scale Short Form will be used to assess participants' flexibility and balanced approach towards life experiences on a 6-point scale. Participants rated the items from 1 (disagree strongly) to 6 (agree strongly). Three items were reversed-coded and higher scores indicate higher level of nonattachment. This abridged version was developed and validated using item response theory in Hong Kong Chinese sample.
Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale	12th week	The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale (SCBCS) is a 5-item inventory that measures compassion for others using a 7-point Likert-like scale (1 = not at all true of me to 7= very true of me), which yields a possible range of 5 to 35 points, with higher scores mean a higher level of compassion.
Delay of Shared Gratification Task	12th week	The 5-minute Delay of Shared Gratification Task measures children's sharing behavior involving the small stickers. Children will be asked to share 1-2 stickers with other people over four instances, such as sharing with cost, sharing without cost, and delay of sharing.
Head-Toe-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS)	12th week	The 10-minute Head-Toe-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS) measures children's behavioral regulation. Specifically, the task requires children to do the opposite of commands. For each command, the experimenter uses a 3-point scale to record the child's responses at 0 = incorrect, 1 = self-correct, and 2 = correct.
Disappointing Gift Task	8th week	Disappointing Gift Task measures children's emotion regulation. Specifically, they are informed that they will receive a very nice gift but end up receiving an undesirable gift, e.g., trash paper. Children's facial expression will be observed and coded based on Saarni's (1984) emotion coding system.
Mindfulness in Teaching Scale(MTS)	12th week	The 14-item Mindfulness in Teaching Scale(MTS) will be used to assess the extent to which teachers are consciously aware of various classroom and student activities. It contains 2 subscales measuring teacher intrapersonal and interpersonal mindfulness. Items are answered on a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = never, to 5 = always). The total score of each dimension is obtained by summing the respective items, with higher scores indicating greater levels of Teacher Intrapersonal Mindfulness (ranging from 9 to 45) and Teacher Interpersonal Mindfulness (ranging from 5 to 25).
The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)	12th week	Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale-Short is a 7-item self-report measure of subjective mental well-being on a 5-point Likert scale (1=none of the time, 5=all of the time), giving a minimum score of 14 and maximum score of 70. A higher WEMWBS score therefore indicates a higher level of mental well-being. The Chinese translation has demonstrated high levels of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity in both community and clinical samples.
Copenhagen Burnout Inventory	12th week	The personal burnout and work-related burnout subscale in Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) will be used to measure teachers' burnout in three domains: and client-related burnout. CBI shows good reliability for each subscale (Cronbach's alpha = .85-.87).
The Impermanence Awareness and Acceptance Scale	12th week	The 13-item Impermanence Awareness and Acceptance Scale (IMAAS) measures changes in an individual's state levels of impermanence awareness and impermanence acceptance on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Interconnectedness Scale	12th week	The 12-item Interconnectedness Scale will be used to measure participants' awareness on their interdependent relationship with all matters in the world on a 6-point scale from 1 (totally disagree) to 6 (totally agree). The scale measures interconnectedness in three dimensions: emotional response to interconnectedness, appreciation of interconnectedness on self-development, and interconnectedness in social relations.
Social Skills Improvement System-Rating Scales (Preschool Parents version) (SSIS - SEL)	12th week	The SSIS SEL consists of 20 items which assess children's skills in each of the five social-emotional learning competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, Responsible Decision Making.
Children's Behavioral Questionnaire(CBQ) age 3-7-Short Form	12th week	In the CBQ, parents are asked to rate their child on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (extremely untrue of your child) to 7 (extremely true of your child). Parents are also provided with a Not Applicable response option when the child has not been observed in the situation described. The standard form consists 15 subscales, in this study, 3 subscales (18 items in total) from short form are used, namely Attentional Control, Impulsivity, and Inhibitory Control. A higher score on each subscale reflects a greater level of attentional control, Impulsivity, and Inhibitory Control, respectively.
Mindfulness-Discernment Scale (MDS)	12th week	The 20-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Short Form (FFMQ-SF) and 10-item Mindfulness subscale in the Mindfulness-Discernment Scale will be used to measure levels of mindfulness. FFMQ-SF measures five dimensions of mindfulness including observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity (Baer et al., 2008) on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). Discernment will be assessed using the 14-item Discernment subscale in the Mindfulness-Discernment Scale. Items are rated on a scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 6 (Always).
Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version	12th week	A 63-item Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version will be used to assess their child's behavioral regulation on a 3-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 3 (often)., including inhibition, shifting, emotional control, working memory, and planning/organizing.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Dept of Psychology, CUHK; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong