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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the use of bibliotherapy as an intervention to increase social problem-solving skills in young children, delivered by classroom teachers within a natural classroom setting. Previous research in this area has been limited to bibliotherapy interventions delivered by clinicians in small group settings. However, guidelines for delivering interventions in natural environments suggest that teacher-led, classroom-based, and child-initiated activities would provide the most natural, school-based setting for young children. The intervention for this study was delivered by classroom teachers and integrated into the classroom curriculum.
The participants included 96 students from three kindergarten and three first grade classrooms in a demographically diverse elementary school located in a large urban school district. Classes were randomly assigned to either a treatment group or wait-list control group. The treatment group received the bibliotherapy intervention with reinforcement activities while the wait-list control group received no intervention during the intervention period. A one-way ANOVA, ANCOVAs, and correlations were used to analyze results across groups within a pre-post experimental design. After the intervention, the treatment group demonstrated significantly higher social problem-solving skills than the wait-list control group. Also, the results suggest that children who participated in the bibliotherapy intervention were able to maintain their social problem-solving skills and generalize their skills they to other situations.
