What Works

PATHS Curriculum Helps Children Reduce Aggression

The PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) curriculum promotes emotional and social competencies and reduces aggression and behavioral problems in elementary school children. The program is used by educators and counselors in school and classroom settings, but it also includes information and activities for parents.

The PATHS curriculum is taught three times per week for a minimum of 20 minutes per day and provides teachers with systematic, developmentally based lessons, materials, and instructions for teaching their students emotional literacy, self-control, social competence, positive peer relations, and interpersonal problem-solving skills. A key objective of promoting these skills is to prevent or reduce behavioral and emotional problems. PATHS lessons discuss the difference between feelings and behaviors, controlling impulses, reducing stress, reading and interpreting social cues, understanding the perspectives of others, using steps for problem solving and decision making, and having a positive attitude toward life, self-awareness, nonverbal communication skills, and verbal communication skills. Teachers receive training in a two- to three-day workshop and in bi-weekly meetings with the curriculum consultant.

The PATHS curriculum has been shown to improve protective factors and reduce behavioral risks. Evaluations have demonstrated significant improvements in the following areas:

• Self-control
• Understanding and recognition of emotions
• Ability to tolerate frustration
• Use of more effective conflict-resolution strategies
• Thinking and planning skills
• Decreased anxiety
• Decreased conduct problems
• Decreased symptoms of sadness and depression
• Decreased report of conduct problems, including aggression

The PATHS curriculum is a Blueprints for Violence prevention winning model program and was named one of five promising discipline and violence prevention programs by the American Federation of Teachers. It has been used in schools throughout the United States and in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Norway.

For more information, call Mark T. Greenberg, Ph.D, at 814-863-0112 or email mxg47@psu.edu.