The Klassen Tid psycho-educational intervention to support emotional competence in school-age girls and boys. First validation study
Giulia Maria Calderoni, Daniela Bulgarelli
Klassens Tid, the psycho-educational program outlined here, aims to promote skill development in identifying, defining, expressing, regulating, and appropriately using basic emotions in children aged between 6 and 8 years. A total of 30 children (16 girls; average age = 7.1 years) took part in the study, divided into an experimental group (n = 15) and a control group (n = 15), matched in age and gender. The experimental group participated in a 3-session training, each focused on a workshop activity. Questionnaires were administered pre- and post-intervention to assess children’s knowledge of basic emotions, emotional vocabulary, and emotion regulation. The results showed that children in the experimental group achieved a significant improvement (from pre- to post-intervention) in their understanding of the causes of emotions along with an increase in the range of emotional vocabulary, compared to the control group, supporting the effectiveness of the proposed activities. Given these promising findings, Klassens Tid could serve as a valuable tool for future interventions aimed at enhancing emotional literacy in early childhood. However, future replication of these results with larger, more socio-economically diverse samples is needed to confirm the program’s efficacy.
Keywords
Emotion regulation, emotion comprehension, emotion expression, primary school, training efficacy.