What should post-pandemic schools look like? To address this question, we developed and evaluated a novel art-based intervention aimed at supporting school transition and socioemotional learning in young children. The Puppetry and Emotional Resilience programme (P&ER) has been motivated by the growing need for a holistic and learner-centred approach to wellbeing education, and for offering children and teachers appropriate tools and ecosystems to support their social and emotional needs, communication, and ultimately learning.

Globally, the educational landscape in a post-pandemic recovery is undergoing a radical transformation in order to respond to the emerging challenges of poverty, socio-economic inequalities, and climate emergency. In order to equip learners with tools for active citizenship, schools across the EU have begun to integrate social and emotional education across their curricula. The post-pandemic social and emotional landscape has also further highlighted the need for a balanced, but progressive and holistic approach to education, which addresses the academic, social, emotional and mental health needs of children, staff and the community (European Commission, 2021; UNESCO, 2021; WHO, 2021). Schools do this not only by offering a physical space where children can interact with their peers, share interests and negotiate differences, but perhaps more importantly, by providing a structured environment which enables them to practice communication and problem solving, and to develop friendship, self-confidence, and emotion regulation (Colao et al., 2020).

The question now posed by local and global policymakers and education researchers is the question that motivated this research; how can post-pandemic schools promote health and wellbeing education, respond to the needs of learners, and offer them experiences and foundations for lifelong success? There is an agreement that modern schools should be inclusive, adopt a holistic approach to learning, and offer more opportunities for cooperative learning and participatory activities relying on art or theatre (Colao, et al., 2020). UNESCO (2021) is also recognising the need for integrating health literacy into the school curriculum; this includes teaching children about wellbeing and emotions. To address this need, interventions that enhance social and emotional learning have been implemented worldwide (e.g. WHO, 2021). Their success, however, depends on how well the new skills and strategies are embedded within the wider school ethos, environment, and community (O’Toole & Simovska, 2022). Interventions based on art, storytelling and puppetry (e.g. Webster-Stratton & Reid, 2004) naturally offer such a rich and embodied experience for children, as they readily accept the fantasy world around them and the apparent magic they create (O’Hare, 2005). Theories of art education, (e.g. Romanski, 2019) and social cognition (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985) illustrate the mechanism underpinning this transformative power of puppetry, which allows children to innovate, build new representations, mentalise, and discover the complexities of social relations. 

The P&ER programme was developed to support school transition and to promote socioemotional learning and wellbeing education in nursery and primary school children. Based on Zins et al. (Greenberg et al., 2017; Zins et al., 2007) framework for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), the programme utilised the power of puppetry and storytelling to promote five broad clusters of competencies in children: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and decision making. The strong environmental focus of this framework highlights that it is not sufficient to address individual skills development, but it is imperative to enhance the social ecosystem of the classroom, school and the community. This approach complements O’Toole & Simovska’s (2022) reimagined concept of Bildung, which notes the need to stress the mind-body-world connection in wellbeing initiatives in schools. Here, we evaluate the impact of the P&ER programme on the development of complex emotion and social competency skills in children.

Intervention programmes based on puppetry, where hand puppets are used to model appropriate social behaviours, have been successful in improving children’s social skills such as emotional literacy, empathy, perspective taking or friendships (e.g. Webster-Stratton, et al., 2008). However, often they required to be administered by professionally-trained puppeteers or an educational psychologist. Our programme has been developed and validated to be to delivered solely by the class teachers or nursery practitioners. The programmes addresses Zins et al.’s (2007) core SEL competencies, by focusing on a key competency in each of the six weekly sessions. Teachers took part in a bespoke training in puppet theatre form with professional puppeteers and received custom-made puppets, books, games, and arts and crafts activities – all designed to promote wellbeing and SEL. The shape and scope of the evaluation of the programme has been designed as inclusive and is underpinned by the ethical values of working with vulnerable groups in research (Aldridge, 2016). It examined children’s experience of working with the puppets and the potential benefits on their social and emotional development. Delivered between October 2021 and September 2022 in seven schools and nurseries across rural and urban areas in Scotland, the programme reached over 300 children from low socio-economic backgrounds. In a mixed-methods research, we collected data from teachers (n=11), and parents and children (n=15) at two time points; before the P&ER programme was introduced to the setting and 8-12 weeks later. To measure key social and emotional competencies in children, we obtained: 1) teachers’ assessment of children’s behaviours, emotions and relationships with peers and adults using a Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ); 2) parents’ assessment of children’s affective and cognitive empathy using Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM); 3) children’s emotions recognition and Theory of Mind (ToM) skills using a computer-based emotion authenticity detection task (Wincenciak et al., 2022). In addition, we asked children to draw themselves at school to measure the relationship quality their peers and the school experience. Drawings are a useful tool for measuring children’s experience, as children use drawings as an alternative language to express their feelings and thoughts before they acquire complex communication skills and the emotional maturity to communicate these to the external world. The research was approved by the University of Glasgow College of Social Science Ethics Research Community and the local authorities’ Ethics Boards.

The results of the evaluation of the programme showed both a positive response to the puppets improving the overall classroom atmosphere and school ethos, which were assessed using children’s drawings, and the positive impact on children’s socioemotional development. Analysis of within-individual changes in empathy showed an increase in empathy in all but 1 of the participating children (n=9). On average, children showed 15% more empathy following the programme, with particular benefits being observed for an affective component of empathy (e.g. emotional response towards others), with an increase of 22%. Children’s socioemotional competencies, emotion regulation and behaviour also improved following the programme, with teachers’ reporting 26% less negative symptoms (e.g. less tearfulness), 26% less peer problems (e.g. bullying), and 10% more pro-social behaviour (e.g. helping and sharing). Accuracy in recognition of the emotional states of others increased by 16% following the programme. Taken together, the P&ER programme has proven to be accessible to children and teachers and has had a positive impact on wellbeing and socioemotional learning. We believe that art-based interventions using puppetry have the potential to contribute to the development of health literacy, wellbeing, and ultimately contribute to the reduction of educational inequalities. There is an urgent need for interventions that enhance not only the academic, but also social and emotional learning in young children. Such interventions might mitigate the psychological and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but most importantly, will provide a better start for children who are already at higher risk of developing emotional dysregulation and behavioural problems, and in consequence, have more negative educational outcomes.

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