NCT05472194

Promoting Inclusive Education Through Executive Functions

Promoting Inclusive Education Through Executive Functions - Study Protocol of a Randomized Control Trial

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 470 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Minho · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 5 Years – 7 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Background: Recently governments worldwide have been doing enormous efforts to ensuring egalitarian educational opportunities for all children. However, the number of children that remain out of the school or lack proficiency in academic performance is still very worrying. One of the factors that seems to contribute to such inequalities is socioeconomic status (SES). SES strongly impacts the developmental trajectory of both the brain and cognitive abilities as off early childhood, further affecting learning and academic success. Despite the great interest in building inclusive societies and the promising results of executive functions' training programs for leveling the SES-achievement disparities, only a few studies have actually included schools from low-SES settings and lack a comprehensive, evidence-based background underlying the intervention protocols. Thus, with a preventive emphasis, the current project aims to implementing and evaluating a cost-effective game-based training protocol to promote and boost the development of executive functions in preschool and elementary school-aged children from disadvantaged contexts, ultimately contributing to prevent school dropout and reduce academic inequalities.

Detailed description

A randomized controlled trial will be implemented in Portuguese schools embedded in low-income settings. It will include a total of 396 participants, 132 per age group: 5,6 and 7 years old. At each age group a total of 132 children will be enrolled in the program for 4 weeks, 66 in the active control group, and 66 in the intervention group. The assessment protocol will include demographics, including SES, and evaluation of executive functions. Both groups -control and intervention- will complete the same assessment protocol at three distinct moments -baseline, post-intervention, and 6 months' follow-up. The training program will comprise the following: (i) 3 weekly sessions of 30 minutes each (ii) each session will be dedicated to train a specific domain of executive functions -working memory, inhibition and cognitive flexibility.

Conditions

• Cognitive Training

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	InSchool Training Program	The goal of the intervention is to promote and boost the development of executive functions in preschool and elementary school-aged children by means of engagement in meaningful and challenging activities. The method to achieve this consists on weekly intervention sessions run by teachers with a set of games specially developed to train executive functions.
BEHAVIORAL	Regular school activities	Children in the control group will be playing with the regular school activities.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-09-01
• Primary completion: 2027-12-09
• Completion: 2027-12-09
• First posted: 2022-07-25
• Last updated: 2024-12-06