NCJ Number
160988
Date Published
1995
Length
131 pages
Annotation
The Viewpoints curriculum consists of student and teacher manuals for a 10-lesson structured program for adolescents, designed to teach social problemsolving skills, increase impulse control, promote empathy, and develop prosocial attitudes.
Abstract
The underlying premise of the curriculum is that students will behave more responsibly if they learn to set positive goals for themselves, understand the consequences of their actions for themselves and others, and deal effectively with conflicts and problems that occur in everyday social interactions. The lessons emphasize positive prosocial interaction; this has proven to be an effective strategy for violence prevention, consistent with recent social-cognitive approaches to the understanding of aggression and violence. The focus of the social-cognitive model is on skills involved in processing information to solve social problems as well as on attitudes and beliefs that provide a positive framework for solving the social problems. The student manual provides information pertinent to each of the 10 lessons and includes exercises that guide students in learning and practicing the skills taught in each session. The teachers manual provides information and guidelines to assist the teacher in presenting each of the 10 sessions.