The third edition of Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum (Committee for Children, 2002) is designed to promote social competence and reduce children’s social-emotional problems. The curriculum teaches students several skills central to healthy social-emotional development: (a) empathy (Halberstadt, Denham, and Dunsmore, 2001); (b) impulse control and problem solving (Crick and
Dodge, 1994); and (c) anger management (Eisenberg, Fabes, and Losoya, 1997). Second Step: A
Violence Prevention Curriculum is a universal prevention program. That is, it is taught to every student
in the classroom rather than to selected children.
Guiding Theory
The Second Step program is designed to improve children’s skills in three general areas. Each unit covers one of these areas. In the Empathy Training unit, children are taught the empathy skills needed to identify emotions and to recognize possible causes of the emotions that occur in their interactions with others. Then, in the Impulse Control and Problem-Solving unit, children are taught to respond to social interactions thoughtfully rather than impulsively. To do this, they learn problem-solving steps that promote a neutral rather than hostile orientation toward peers. Finally, in the Anger Management unit, they are taught how to manage their own anger constructively.
These Second Step units are based on cognitive-behavioral methods (Kendall, 1993; Kendall, 2000). This is an approach that has grown out of Bandura’s social learning theory (1986) and models of social information processing (Crick and Dodge, 1994). Research now offers considerable evidence that thoughts affect people’s social interactions. For example, if a girl thinks that her peers dislike children who taunt others, she may hesitate to taunt. But if she thinks that taunting will make her peers see her as superior, she may look for opportunities to taunt others. Researchers have demonstrated that there are many ways in which feelings, thoughts, and behaviors affect each other. At the same time, they have also shown that the relationships between thought and behaviors can be put to practical use. This line of research began with Luria’s (1961) demonstration that people can use self-talk to control their behaviors. These lines of research provide the theoretical foundation of the Second Step lessons.
