Improving the social skills of average and high-ability Primary 1 students in Hong Kong: parents as trainers

Abstract

The research resulted from the perceived needs for face-to-face interactions and parent involvement in developing young children’s social competence. Studies of such school-wide social programmes, with the inclusion of parents as trainers, and their applications with high-ability children in Hong Kong are rare. This study evaluated a social skills programme which has been implemented in the target primary school since 2006. In order to promote parents’ ownership of the programme, parent-trainers were teamed with new parent-volunteers to conduct eight cycles of intervention. Participants were 122 Primary 1 students (age range: 5.67 - 6.75 years) in the target school and the control group comprised 136 students from a comparable school. Raven’s Progressive Matrices was used to identify high- and average- ability. In order to ...