A qualitative study on the social-emotional competencies of peer support champions

The current research project focuses on the opinions of students in Singaporean classrooms following a school-based intervention that supports self-determination theory (SDT) and social-emotional learning (SEL) frameworks. By fostering and creating peer support initiatives in students’ learning environment, educators and students are given the opportunity to learn from each other and enhance their character growth, prosocial behaviors, set positive goals, and show improvement toward their academic performance. This study carefully and purposefully investigates the benefits of the SEL initiative in a primary school in Singapore where students as peer support champions (PSCs) are tasked with the role and responsibility of helping their peers in times of emotional distress. With that, comparisons can be formed to examine if the PSCs’ SEL and SDT abilities have shown any progress after the intervention. Emerging themes were studied, and they were then investigated in relation to literature, based on semi-structured interviews conducted with the PSCs. Some PSCs require more guidance in enhancing their social-emotional competencies as they lack the experience and exposure to certain problems faced. Teachers are then needed to provide more support and strengthen their training content and methods to better shape the PSCs. Overall, the qualitative data gave insightful and meaningful information about the classroom setting.