The impact of a group intervention based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on the emotional wellbeing of secondary school students with learning difficulties

Educational Psychologists need to know how to promote the wellbeing of children with different learning needs but research is limited.

This thesis addresses social-emotional learning and wellbeing of children and young people with learning disabilities and additional needs.

A 'learning disability' is defined as reduced ability to understand complex information, learn new skills and cope independently.

The term 'learning and additional needs' is also used in this thesis in a broader sense, since participants in the empirical study had a variety of diagnoses but attended a special school with this designation.

The literature review addresses different kinds of social-emotional learning programmes for children and young people with learning disabilities, concluding that play-based and social skills programmes, based on behavioural psychology and social learning theory, show evidence of effectiveness in improving social skills.

The empirical paper addresses the impact of an adapted version of a group intervention based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on secondary school students attending a special school for learning and additional needs. It was a small N mixed methods study of five student participants.

The quantitative part examined changes in anxiety, emotional distress, behavioural and emotional regulation, using visual analysis, PEM and TAU-U statistics.

Impact on reducing emotional distress according to PEM statistics suggested that the intervention was effective for two participants however analysis using TAU-U found the intervention to be ineffective for all participants.

No statistically significant changes in anxiety or behavioural regulation were found but two students showed significant increases in emotional regulation problems.

The qualitative part used inductive content analysis to explore student experiences and perceptions of the intervention.

Main categories include students' feelings about the group, learning and behaviour change, importance of people, preferred and less preferred group activities and importance of snacks.

Implications for practice and strategy for dissemination are discussed.