Social Sprouts: Evaluating a Play-Based Classroom Intervention to Improve Peer Interactions in Early Childhood Education

Teaching prosocial skills in early childhood education settings has beneficial outcomes on immediate behavior change and long-term social-emotional and academic outcomes. However, early childhood educators are in need of effective, efficient, and feasible strategies to explicitly teach and reinforce young children’s prosocial skills, especially those who already struggle with social skills. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline design, the research team investigated the effects of a novel intervention, Social Sprouts, on an individual child’s and class-wide display of positive peer interactions and disruptive behavior. Social validity data were also collected to better understand the teachers’ perceptions of feasibility, effectiveness, and acceptability. Results indicated an increase in both individual children’s and class-wide display of positive peer interactions, with less pronounced effects for disruptive behaviors. All three implementing teachers perceived Social Sprouts to be acceptable, feasible, and effective. These results highlight a promising and feasible class-wide intervention to be implemented in Head Start settings.