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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A Longitudinal Study on Social Development as an Impetus for School Reform Toward an Integrated School Day

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description

The Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, in which the same individuals have been studied from the age of 8 to age 42, has warranted the conclusion that children should be encouraged toward prosocial development at an early age, because it helps them to integrate into the school environment and saves them from the cycle of maladaptation. A project was designed at the invitation of a Finnish parliamentary group for the enhancement of children's socioemotional development at school. The project comprises seven subprojects including interventions at three levels: the child's behavior, school as a learning environment, and the school's relationships with the surrounding world. The core of the project is the subproject for the Integrated School Day. It refers to a new learning culture with different learning, care, and leisure activities organized in cooperation between several professions. Finnish children spend long afternoons alone while both parents are working full-time. The project aims at decreasing the amount of time pupils are without adult supervision, facilitating socioemotional development by creating a firm basis for leisure activities, and strengthening the social capital of the school and initial social capital of children. The project began in 2002 in seven schools within four communities, with about 2000 students from grades 1 to 9. Beginning in the fall of 2004, the law will mandate that supervision of children's activities in the morning and afternoon should be available throughout the country for all first- and second-grade children and for special needs children at any grade.