Examining Effectiveness, Mediators, and Moderators of a Culturally Sensitive School-Based Social-Emotional Learning Program for Rural Chinese Children: Evidence from a Matched-Pair Cluster Randomized Trial

Rural Chinese children face intersecting challenges, including parental migration, underresourced schools, limited health and mental health services, and persistent rural–urban inequalities. These structural disadvantages place many rural children at heightened risk for social–emotional, psychological, and academic difficulties. Although school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have shown benefits in Western and higher-resource settings, rigorous evidence remains limited in non-Western, low-resource contexts such as rural China. Even less is known about culturally sensitive SEL programs designed to fit rural children’s family, school, and community contexts. Addressing this gap, this dissertation evaluates Flourishing Minds, an 18-session, teacher-delivered SEL curriculum I codeveloped with local school psychologists, school social workers, and rural teachers for fifth-grade students in rural China.

This dissertation is theoretically informed by ecological systems theory, social learning theory, resilience perspective, the emotional intelligence model, and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning SEL framework. Using a matched-pair cluster randomized controlled trial, 36 rural schools in Southwest China were matched and randomized to intervention or waitlist-control conditions. The analytic sample included 1536 fifth-grade students from 44 classrooms across 18 intervention schools and 18 waitlist-control schools. Data were collected at baseline, postintervention, and 3-month follow-up using student-reported surveys between September 2024 to April 2025.

The dissertation addressed three key research questions: the extent to which Flourishing Minds improved child outcomes, how the program produced change, and for whom and under what conditions. Three-level mixed-effects models were used to estimate treatment effects while accounting for repeated measures and classroom-level clustering. Results showed robust and sustained self-reported improvements in all five social-emotional competency (SEC) domains at postintervention and 3-month follow-up, with effect sizes in the small-to-moderate range. The program produced significant improvements in several self-reported secondary outcomes, including reduced loneliness, stress, aggressive behaviors, and bullying perpetration, as well as improved school performance and school engagement. Effects on self-reported anxiety, learning anxiety, and bullying victimization were not statistically significant.

Longitudinal structural equation modeling was used to examine mechanisms of change. Across internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and academic adjustment, increased self-reported social–emotional competencies (SECs) emerged as the primary and most consistent mediator. Teacher–student relationship functioned primarily as a downstream relational pathway: the intervention improved SECs, which were associated with more positive teacher–student relationships, which in turn contributed to improved follow-up outcomes.

Moderation analyses indicated that the program benefited students equally across most child and family characteristics, including gender, number of siblings, parental migration status, and baseline SECs. Parental marital status was the only significant child/family-level moderator. At the classroom level, larger effects were observed in classrooms with larger class sizes, lower baseline classroom supportiveness, and lower baseline teacher–student relationships, suggesting a compensatory pattern in which the program provided greater added value in more disadvantaged classroom contexts.

Overall, this dissertation provides rigorous experimental evidence that a culturally sensitive, teacher-delivered SEL program can improve self-reported social–emotional, psychological, behavioral, and academic outcomes among rural Chinese children. Findings highlight the importance of culturally sensitive intervention design, high-quality implementation, competency-building as a core mechanism, and classroom context as a key condition shaping program impact. The study contributes to the global SEL literature and has important implications for social work research, practice, and policy by demonstrating how culturally responsive, school-based prevention can promote child well-being and reduce developmental inequities in underresourced communities. It offers practical implications for scaling school-based SEL as a feasible public health and educational equity strategy in rural settings.