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Young children are often faced with reprimands and punishments for wrongdoings, including aggressive behavior. Two members of the University of Maine community are putting their efforts into getting children to cooperate and understand the consequences of their aggressive actions.
Erika Carpenter, a UMaine student working towards her Ph. D., along with Douglas Nangle, associate professor of psychology, are working on a program called Curriculum on the Management and Promotion of Appropriate Social Skills.
Carpenter and Nangle are working with 82 pre-schoolers in four Head Start centers within Penobscot County to test COMPASS. According to its Web site, the Head Start program delivers “comprehensive and high quality services designed to foster healthy development in low-income children.”
“We conducted a formal review of the Psychological Services Clinic records and noted that 40 percent of Head Start referrals involved aggression,” Carpenter said.
COMPASS involves many different interactive learning techniques including puppet shows and role playing games. Scenes are created to display the value of cooperation to children. Teachers are involved in COMPASS as well and are working one-on-one with students to the messages across.
“This research project is a first step in creating a comprehensive curriculum that will serve as both prevention and intervention with respect to aggression in preschoolers,” Carpenter said.
COMPASS is also an important curriculum because trends show that aggressive children can turn into aggressive adults.
“Aggression is found by researchers to be a highly stable behavior once children reach the elementary school years,” Carpenter said. “The hope is that these young children will be deviated from a trajectory of future antisocial behavior.”
Data from COMPASS curriculum testing is still being coded for analysis. With the amount of violence in our society, promoters of COMPASS hope for a significant effect in childhood, where development begins.
“It is possible that programs such as COMPASS could reduce the number of children who are at risk for demonstrating aggressive behavior during elementary school by providing prosocial alternatives to aggression.”
