Self-assurance, assertiveness, self-competence – so called soft skills have an immense importance in today’s social and work life. What happens to shy pupils? The danger is that they don’t get noticed in class by other pupils or teachers. There is no manual for teachers available when it comes to shyness in youth. With our innovative project SKY we want to design a compendium for the practice in cooperation with pupils. This Self-Assurance-Training will be available online as well. The Internet has evolved into a very popular medium, especially for adolescents. We want to design an online training for shy adolescents suffering from social fears or phobias. This training will be available on our platform.

Systematic Use of state-of-the-art psychology

Sparkling Science stands for real partnership between pupils, teachers, and scientists. Scientists (Clinical Psychologists and Health Psychologists from the Research and Training Practice) are developing a Self-Assurance-Training especially for adolescents. This training will take 14 weeks (one hour per week). To allow insight into scientific psychological research, the evaluation takes place with pupils. What has changed after this training? Which psychological parameters are important? How do I get from everyday question to a scientific hypothesis and how can I gain scientific data? We cover all these questions on cooperation with pupils and teachers.

Innovative Use of the Internet

This Self-Assurance-Training takes place over the Internet starting in 2009. Sparkling Science offers a great opportunity to create the online-modules as age-appropriate as possible. The main aim is to study the differences between offline-training and online-training.

Aspects of SKY

• A main part of this project is the Online-Training. Scientists (Clinical Psychologists and Health Psychologists from the Research and Training Practice) are developing a Self-Assurance-Training especially for adolescents on our platform. The same training takes place in an offline setting in the cooperating schools. Both trainings are evaluated together with pupils, the main research question being “Are there differences between offline-training and online-training”?
• Our concept of „Peer-Self-Assurance-Trainers“ is an important component. Shy pupils get help from other pupils of the same age. The education of Peer-Self-Assurance-Trainers will take 12-14 weeks (one hour per week). Peer trainers function as a contact point for shy pupils or pupils suffering from social fears.
• During the project (Sept. 2008 to April 2010) several manuals and compendiums are being developed to ensure sustainability. These compendiums enable teachers to conduct Self-Assurance-Trainings without help of psychologists.

This project has been completed.