Possibilities of Criterion Referenced Social Skills Development

A prevention-oriented, two-year school-based program for seven-year-olds to facilitate the development of social competence was designed and tested. Conducted by a trained psychologist, the program focused on three groups of social skills and behaviors (interpersonal, self-related and task-related). The authors applied a new theoretical framework for the interpretation of our findings, that of ‘criterion referenced education’. The main idea of this new concept is that training will not be stopped until each and every child reaches optimal acquisition and mastery of skills and abilities. In one third of the subjects involved in the experiment the two-year development resulted in the optimal acquisition of the studied skill group. The results confirmed our hypothesis that social skills can be developed effectively in a school context and that criterion referenced education can be used for developing social skills with success.