The effects of a culturally-adapted social-emotional learning curriculum on social-emotional and academic outcomes of Latino immigrant high school students.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Jovenes Fuertes, a culturally-adapted curriculum, on the social-emotional and academic outcomes of Latino immigrant adolescents. Latino immigrant youth are considered at-risk for mental health problems and high drop-out rates (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Jovenes Fuertes, a cultural adaptation of Strong Teens, is a theory-based curriculum designed to teach Latino immigrant adolescents resiliency skills such as: positive thinking, problem solving, anger management, etc. A total of forty recent-immigrant Latino high school students received the intervention. A multiple-baseline mixed factorial design was employed for this study. Participating students and teachers filled out outcome measures three different times (two times before the intervention and one time after the intervention). The results show that Jovenes Fuertes was effective at teaching students social-emotional concepts. Potential prevention effects of acculturative stress and sense of school belonging are discussed. Research limitations and implications for future research and practice are explained.