The objective of present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a primary prevention program—“Mindfulness Education” (ME)—a classroom-based program designed to foster children’s mindful awareness, psychological well-being, and social-emotional competencies. This study will provide an examination of multiple areas of functioning—cognitive, affective, behavioural, interpersonal and physiological through the collection of data from multiple-informants (self-reports, peer reports, teacher reports). The evaluation approach departs sharply from previous evaluations of classroom-based social-emotional competence primary prevention efforts in two ways. First, we will include in our battery of outcome measures not only those traditional measures which assess children’s social and emotional competence through self, peer, and teacher reports, we will also include an index of children’s stress reactivity via a biological marker– salivary cortisol. Second, the present study represents a university-community partnership that has been developed among both researchers and practitioners, namely Dr. Schonert-Reichl and the Vancouver School Board, who possess a shared interest in identifying the factors that promote social and academic competence in elementary school children. This research will commence in September 2007 and will be carried out via a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) pre- and posttest design. Results are expected by June 2008.
