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Learn Kind: A cluster randomized controlled trial
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Description: Can you teach schoolchildren to be kinder? Previous studies suggest that general social and emotional learning (SEL) curricula improve students’ social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic outcomes. However, relatively little research has investigated the effect(s) of specific kindness-related curricula. Here we conducted a randomized controlled trial of Learn Kind – an eight-part kindness-based SEL curriculum for grades K-8, designed by kindness.org. Approximately 51 teachers answered a series of questions about 1,202 students, at each of three time points (T1-3). Questions included: kindness grade, happiness, the five subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; emotions, attention, prosociality, behavior, peer relations), math and reading grades. Teachers were randomly assigned to either treatment-first group (which taught Learn Kind in Fall 2022), or a control-first group (which taught Learn Kind in Spring 2023). Using multilevel models, we found: first, from T1-2, the treatment-first group significantly improved on all measures (d̄=0.38); the control-first group did not significantly improve on any measure (d̄=0.03); and the treatment-first group improved on all measures more than the control-first group (except ‘reading’) (d̄=0.34). Second, the improvements in the treatment-first group on all measures (except attention) persisted from T2-3 (d̄=0.01); and on all measures the treatment-first group had improved T1-3 (d̄=0.38). Third, from T2-3 the control-first group improved significantly only on happiness, emotions and reading (d̄=0.09), but did so significantly less than the treatment-first group T1-2 (d̄=-0.28). All results were robust to various controls. Taken together, the study found that Learn Kind had a small positive effect on kindness, happiness, and well-being. The implications, limitations and future directions of this research are discussed.