'Kindness curriculum' linked to better performance among preschoolers

In a new study, scientists assessed preschoolers on a special curriculum with aim to promote social, emotional and academic skills, and found that the kids did better in school.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not.

Study lead author Lisa Flook, a CIHM scientist, "This work started a number of years ago when we were looking at ways to possibly help children develop skills for school and academic success, as well as in their role as members of a global community," says. "There was a strong interest in looking at cultivating qualities of compassion and kindness."

The team developed a curriculum to help children between the ages of 4 and 6 years learn how to be more aware of themselves and others through practices that encourage them to bring mindful attention to present moment experience. These practices, the researchers hypothesized, could enhance the children's self-regulation skills - such as emotional control and the capacity to pay attention-and influence the positive development of traits like impulse control and kindness.

The researchers measured the impact of the curriculum on sharing by using stickers the kids could choose to give to a variety of others or keep for themselves. They measured the kids' ability to delay gratification by choosing one small reward to have immediately or waiting to receive a larger treat later.

The research team also assessed the students' ability to pay attention by measuring how well they identified particularly oriented arrows on a screen despite the presence of other on-screen distractions, and it examined the students' academic performance in the months following the study.

In addition to improved academics, the 30 students who went through the curriculum showed less selfish behavior over time and greater mental flexibility than the 38 kids in the control group.

Flook cautioned that while the study was designed as a randomized control trial, additional, larger studies were needed to demonstrate the curriculum's true power.

Ultimately, the researchers would like to see mindfulness-based practices become "woven into" the school day, adapted to students across grade levels, becoming a foundation for how teachers teach and how students approach learning, Flook said.

The results are published in the journal Developmental Psychology.