Zigterman, Robin A. (2010) An Evaluation of the Effect of Innerspace, a Small Group Program for Primary Students, on Participants' Emotional Literacy. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Social-Emotional Learning and, more recently, the broader concept of wellbeing have been identified as necessary to maximise individuals‟ learning potential, life satisfaction and success. Families, social and work groups, neighbourhoods and communities are also believed to benefit from enhanced social and emotional skills and abilities. Emotional literacy, also known as Emotional Intelligence, is usually identified as a key component of Social- Emotional Learning (Goleman, 1996; Spratt, Shucksmith, Philip, & Watson, 2006). This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Innerspace program on enhancing emotional literacy in children. The program, created by Pearson (2009) and which used techniques developed in an Australian Expressive Therapy context, had been implemented as a six week intervention for two groups, a total of twelve students (aged 8 to 11; five girls) in a small regional Queensland state school. Archival data, from pre- and post-measures, was used in the study evaluation. These measures consisted of teacher reports of the participants‟ overall difficulties and prosocial behaviour, collected using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 2001) and measures of emotional literacy using both students‟ self report and teacher report on the Emotional Literacy Assessment and Intervention checklist (ELIA-T; ELAI-C) (Faupel, 2003). All measures were given twice before, and twice after, the intervention. It was hypothesised that the intervention would improve scores for emotional literacy and prosocial behaviour and decrease scores for overall difficulties. When a non parametric analysis of variance for repeated measures (Friedman’s ANOVA) was used to evaluate the data, the results for all the teacher’s reports were both significant (p < .001) and the effect size for the difference in measures before and after the intervention was large (r > .50). The children’s self –reports were not significant (p > .0125) after Bonferroni correction. These results give some support for the program’s efficacy given the reservations that authors have placed on young children’s limited ability to give accurate self-report (Faupel, 2003; Goodman, Meltzer, & Bailey, 1998 ; Haddon, Goodman, Park, & Deakin Crick). Alternative explanations for the teacher’s significant report data could involve the quasi- experimental design where the conditions of being a practitioner-researcher within a small school meant that no control group was used and the informant respondents‟ awareness of the program’s aspirations which may have influenced their reports. Increasing sample size would also improve the design but when assessing program delivery in a real setting, small sample, repeated measure quasi-experimental designs, are both pragmatic and give better information than no evaluation of programs at all.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | Beccaria, Gavin |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Psychology) |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2026 03:29 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2026 03:29 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52908 |
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