Teacher-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
RCTClinical Trial
High dropout rates during the transition to upper secondary school stem in part from socio-emotional skill deficits, but deploying external professional psychologists across public school systems is cost-prohibitive.
Picture this
Instead of hiring external professional psychologists for every school, existing public school teachers undergo short training modules to facilitate group workshops on emotional regulation and decision-making. This functions like training flight attendants in basic CPR so they can treat minor medical issues on board without requiring a doctor on every flight.
What the evidence says
Intention-to-treat analysis demonstrated a statistically significant increase of 0.165 to 0.175 standard deviations in socio-emotional skills measured on the PLANEA scale (p < 0.05), but no statistically significant effect on math test scores or overall enrollment.
- Who was studied
- N = 5,274 students (2,109 assigned to 10 CBT sessions, 1,407 to 20 CBT sessions, 1,758 control) across 20 public high schools in Mexico City.
- How
- Randomized field experiment (RCT) with two-step randomization at the school and student levels.
What to do
Train existing teaching staff in standardized cognitive behavioral therapy modules and student engagement techniques to deploy scalable socio-emotional workshops across public school networks.
From the source
"Rather than using counselors who arrived with a background and expertise in psychology or social work, which would never have been possible to implement across a significant number of upper secondary schools in Mexico, the PODER program used existing teaching staff."
Addressing High School Dropouts with a Scalable Intervention: The Case of PODER