Master of Arts (Counselling & Guidance)

This study intended to find out if the development of social skills in youth, under classroom environment, can improve their management of aggressive behaviour, e.g. anger. Research, largely with individual or small group that had some form of deficiency, had shown that interventions like cognitive behavioural therapy, social skills and the combination of these interventions were effective in bringing about improvement in aggressive behaviours.

The participants for this study included 176 students aged between 13 to 16 years old. They were from the Normal (Academic) stream of three mainstream secondary schools. The students completed the State-Trait Anger Scale (STAS) questionnaire which consisted of two sections of 15 questions each. In addition, focused group discussions were conducted with selected students to glean a deeper understanding to the statistical results.

The quantitative statistical results revealed that there was significant outcome between the interventions on anger management with medium effect size. The students in the school-based CCE group yielded a more positive outcome than the students in the social skills group. However, the qualitative study presented the fact that the students’ improvements were attributed mostly by the interactions of the individual with the peers and the adults. The classroom environment was also an important factor that influenced the change. Most importantly, the mindset of the students was a key personal factor that had a critical effect on the individual’s ability to better manage their emotion, in this case anger.

This study definitely provided a lead to possible future research study to better understand the effect of social skill, under a classroom environment, in the management of anger in youth. Future study could endeavour to explore the type of classroom environment, the different forms of students’ engagement and the outcome when a more structured autonomy for experiential learning is provided.