Abstract:

Presently, educations in all levels are expected to equip students with the 21st century skills, especially critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. In order to support the students to achieve the skills required to succeed in the 21st century, the national education should be reformed. Based on brain, mind, and behavioral research, the 21st century skills are related to executive function (EF), a higher-order thinking of brain processes that draw previous experiences relevant to a current situation for planning, prioritizing, initiating, making decision, solving problems, controlling emotions to achieve a goal-directed behavior. EF skills are also crucial to school performance and future career and life success. Since EF skills develop early in life and continue throughout adolescent years, EF development should be on the national education policies’ agenda. One of the critical factors influences EF development is the quality of interactions. Positive, responsive interactions promote students’ EF skills whereas maltreatment harsh discipline and punishment inhibits EF development and skills. In Thailand, the 101s positive discipline (101s) training program, the nationally honored program in the US for promoting positive interactions and children’s social-emotional and EF skills with positive discipline techniques, has been implemented to ensure that schools support students’ social-emotional and EF skills. Previous research has shown the positive impact of the 101s training program on teachers’ interaction practices, teacher-child relationships, children’s social-emotional and EF skills. However, most of the 101s training programs in previous research were training program for teachers and limited to only preschool levels. The current research; therefore, intended to further study the impact of the 101s training program for students in first grade. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the 101s storybooks program on student’s EF skills. The total sample was 192 first grade students in an elementary school in Thailand. The sample was assigned into 2 groups. While the sample in the intervention group (n = 98) received the 101s storybooks program, the sample in the control group (n = 94) received no intervention. Before and after the program implementation, the teachers of the students were asked to rate their students’ executive function skills, using Executive Function assessment in Mahidol University version (MU-EF). Paired t-test was computed to compare the differences in the pretest EF mean scores and posttest EF mean scores within groups in order to examine the developmental changes in EF skills. Then, a series of MANCOVA was performed to compare the differences in the posttest mean scores on EF skills between the intervention and control groups. The results showed the positive impact of the 101s storybooks program on students’ EF skills. The implications, limitations and suggestions are discussed.

Keywords:

Executive function, The 101s, A Guide to Positive Discipline, Storybook.