Building social and emotional skills to BOOST resilience in children and young people (H2020-SC1-2017-PM-07-755175)
It is widely documented that social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are effective in promoting mental health and wellbeing in children and young people. However, a number of shortcomings of these programs have been identified, which may compromise their sustainability and long-term effect.It is widely documented that social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are effective in promoting mental health and wellbeing in children and young people.
The BOOST project will go beyond state of the art of current SEL programmes and develop an approach to integrate SEL in teachers’ pedagogical skills and classroom interaction and a tool for organisational development to facilitate implementation and uptake of the approach in classrooms, schools and among school owners (the BOOST approach).
The development will involve the young themselves, as well as school owners, teachers, policy makers and a multidisciplinary team of researchers from fields of education, public health, psychology and economics. This is to ensure the relevance, acceptability and organisational and political anchoring of the intervention, as well as to increase the potential for scale-up and sustainability of the intervention locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
The end users of the BOOST approach are schools and teachers, but the target population are children and young people. To ensure the relevance of the BOOST approach in a wide range of European contexts, the approach will be developed, implemented and tested in three diverse European settings, Poland, Spain and Norway. The BOOST approach will be evaluated for its short-term and long-term effects on children’s social and emotional well-being, as well as for its economic benefits
General objectives
The overall aim of the BOOST project will be achieved through the following strategic objectives:
- A formative study will secure the cultural and contextual foundation and will provide the basis for the BOOST approach. The study will be a combination of available evidence of SEL programmes and a study of the various cultural, contextual and political educational environments where the approach will be implemented.
- BOOST will design an organisational and pedagogical approach based on findings from the formative study. The approach will then undergo an iterative consultation process in each of the three countries, and revised according to the experience and findings from this process. This process will involve key stakeholders (school owners, teachers, policy makers and researchers). The approach will strengthen SEL based teaching skills and understanding and facilitate its organisational uptake.
- The BOOST approach will be refined and evaluated in real school environments in at least nine schools in three European countries (Poland, Spain and Norway).
- The long-term and short-term effectiveness of the BOOST approach on children’s social and emotional well-being will be evaluated.
- An economic evaluation of the BOOST approach will be conducted in order to inform policy choices and provide evidence of economic feasibility of possible scalability as well as evidence of cost-savings in years, of adolescents and young adults, in relation to the increase of social and emotional well-being achieved by BOOST.
- Close collaboration with beneficiaries/ target population (children and young people), end-users (teachers and schools) and key stakeholders (municipalities/ local governments) throughout the entire project period. Together with targeted dissemination, this will ensure the relevance, ownership and full exploitation of the BOOST approach and its results.
Role of the University of Cordoba
- To ensure and oversee the implementation of the BOOST approach in real school environments in three European countries.
- To measure the short-term and study the potential long term effectiveness of the BOOST approach on children’s social and emotional well-being.
Investigadoras Principales: Eva María Romera Félix y Olga Gómez Ortíz
Correo electrónico de contacto: eva.romera@uco.es y olga.gomez@uco.es
Página web del proyecto: www.boostproject.eu