Social life in the primary school: Towards a relational concept of social skills for use in the classroom

Abstract

This chapter discusses the theoretical assumptions behind social skills training, questions a range of results from social skills training (SST), and offers a theoretical rationale for an alternative model of social development that can be engendered within classrooms. Children of primary school age are under contradictory pressures regarding the development of prosocial skills. The traditional way of handling school-aged children without prosocial skills has been to offer them a form of SST. The programme itself was created in response to requests from primary school head teachers facing the following pupil-based problems. The school wished to maximise children's opportunities to work with computers but, like most primary schools in the United Kingdom, there were only enough computers in the school to place one or two per classroom. The organisation of the programme is informed by criteria for the effective testing of social skills training programmes.