Positive Peer Culture and Social Skill Interventions

It is noted that high school students are more influence by the peers than the adults and found to be more interested to try an intervention by their peers rather than the teachers or other staff members. Laursen 2005 suggested that a positive peer group can provide acceptance emotional support and a place to try out new social behaviors. Positive peer culture (PPC) tells that all the students have the ability to solve their own problems and suggest solutions to their peer problems. Laursen 2005 described “Teaching values rather than imposing rules”. Students decide their appropriate participations and come up with alternative solutions to maladaptive behaviors. These group sessions allow the students with social skills deficits to learn and to accept suggestions from one another and help their peers in positive way. PPC uses a consistent problem solving process which help the students to learn problem solving skills also prepare the school staff to take a step that and trust the peer group to settle the student issue.

There are evidences which suggest that teachers don’t use social skill interventions with their students despite of the knowledge that they can be quite successful. A national survey consisting of 131 teachers found the result that teachers often did not employ any social skill training intervention in their classroom and those who tried to employ it, remain unsuccessful. The confidence and enthusiasm of the teacher for social skill intervention seems to be critical for the implementation and success, since there is very less research work focused on the implementation of social skill training intervention. A study also compared the effectiveness of a teacher led social skill training intervention with the same intervention led by the school psychologist. The result of the study ensures that the students in teacher led group had significant improvement.

Johns et al., 2005 found that teaching social skills is essential to successful education of the students with social skill deficits however most of the teachers fail to be the part of this program. The acceptance and use of the specific intervention by the teacher is determined by the self-efficacy (belief and confidence in oneself) and philosophical acceptance of the teacher. It was also suggested that few factors inhibit the teachers from using effective social skill interventions such as teachers may not have the training to use specific intervention techniques and many teachers resort to negative approaches such as punishment in response to disruptive behavior and others may not be easily persuaded to try new techniques or interventions. Therefore, the training which includes information on replacement behavior, skill deficits, performance deficit, modeling, reinforcement schedule, assessing the teachers perceived knowledge and confidence in regard to the content covered by the teacher through a pre-test and a post-test survey.

The success of social skill training intervention is related to generalizability and maintenance of the skills which are acquired in classroom or in any normal environment. However the teachers need more information and training about social skills intervention to ensure the effective use of these interventions. The positive perception and confidence of the teachers in teaching social skills determines the success in social skill training for the students with social skill deficits. Specific training and ongoing support throughout the implementation play a critical role in providing accurate and consistent intervention training.

The common view about the social skill intervention program states that the intervention must watch specific deficits of the individual and successful intervention used direct instructions through which the skill is split down into smaller and specific step which help the learners to learn and practice in easiest possible way. The use of modeling is also considered as one of the most effective technique as it allows the students to observe the skill being performed appropriately and children get opportunity to practice it in the same environment and are also reinforced for performing it.

Bavolek 2005, strongly stated that successful intervention program must target cognitive and affective levels of learning and the use of a multisystem approach i.e. involvement in education and home environment also help to increase the rate of success. Johns et al., 2005 emphasized that adolescence social skills training intervention often focus on conflict resolution training and strategies for self-regulation of behavior. Many of interventions at this age also focus on communications skills. But the overall success of intervention program depends upon the effective implementation by the teachers and evidences suggest that teachers need sufficient training to develop confidence and to get correct knowledge in using the techniques. The appropriate use of social skills may significantly decrease the disruptive behavior exhibited by the students which may improve the academic outcome which in turn will lower down the dropout rate.