Sample A: Cover Page of Thesis, Project, or Dissertation Proposal

the potential value of the intervention for children facing socio-economic hardships,
children with low social-emotional pretest scores appeared to benefit most from
intervention participation. Also, high teacher self-ratings of implementing interpersonal
problem solving and emotion understanding techniques positively predicted children‘s
teacher-rated social competence and observed positive affect.
Several specific developmental processes drove the success of Domitrovich et
al.‘s (2007) and Denham and Burton‘s (1996) social-emotional programs. Following
Denham‘s (1998) model linking emotional and social competence, teachers‘ socialization
of children‘s emotions via modeling their own emotions, appropriately reacting to
children‘s emotional displays, and coaching children‘s emotions through programming
lessons and in emotional dialogues throughout the typical preschool day, were
implemented into intervention and curricular programming. Each of these practices
contributed to children‘s understandings of emotions and emotional expressions, which in
turn facilitated children‘s social competence.
Both programs also incorporated teachers‘ appropriately reacting to children‘s
emotional displays and coaching children‘s emotions through emotional dialogues during
the typical preschool day. Previous research has demonstrated positive relations between
mothers‘ uses of questioning and guiding language and children‘s understanding
emotions, using emotion language, and using guiding and socializing language in
discussing an emotion-laden storybook (Denham & Auerbach, 1995). Similarly, in
coaching children‘s emotions following emotion-eliciting situations, teachers helped
children to understand the causes of their emotions (i.e., emotion knowledge) and to
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