Promoting school engagement in children with cerebral Palsy: A narrative based program

This study assessed the efficacy of an educational program focused on the promotion of school engagement in children with Cerebral Palsy. A 9 weeks, narrative-based intervention program, with a pre-post neuropsychological and self-report evaluation, was developed with a dual focus: a self-regulation theoretical model and executive function stimulation. Fifteen children with Cerebral Palsy participated in the study. Results showed a significant main effect of time (F(2.82) = 6.04, <i>p</i> = 0.0066, partial η² = 0.30; F(2.82) = 9.91, <i>p</i> = 0.0006, partial η² = 0.41; F(2.82) = 26.90, <i>p</i> < 0.0001, partial η² = 0.66) in the three dimensions of school engagement. Findings indicate that the program to train self-regulated competences and executive function skills was efficacious in promoting school engagement in children with Cerebral Palsy. Educational implications were discussed.
This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). A.P., S.L. and T.M. were supported by PhD fellowships from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. P.M. was supported by a Post-Doctoral fellowship from the Research Centre on Psychology (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho.