The effects of the YCDI! mentoring program on secondary and higher education students' social-emotional skills

• YCDI! Mentoring Program targets 5 skills: confidence, persistence, organisation, getting along, and resilience. • Study 1: 144 secondary students split into control/experimental groups; no significant effects found. • Study 2: 62 higher ed students in similar design; showed significant gains in all five competencies. • Both studies used self-report surveys at pre- and posttest to assess perceived skill development. • Results suggest YCDI! may be more effective for older students; implications and limits discussed. In this article, the outcomes of two studies on the effects of the You Can Do It (YCDI!) Mentoring Program on the social-emotional skills of students in secondary and higher professional education students are presented. The YCDI! Mentoring Program focuses on increasing students’ five key skills (the 5Keys), being the level of confidence, persistence, organisation, getting along and emotional resilience (Bernard, 2005). Both studies used a pretest–posttest control group design. In the first study, 144 secondary school students participated in the experiment, and in the second study, a total of 62 students in higher professional education participated. In both studies, the number of students was equally divided across the experimental and the control group. Questionnaires, covering the five key skills of the Mentoring Program, were administered to measure the self-reported level of students’ social-emotional skills at pre- and posttest. The results of the first study revealed that the YCDI! Mentoring Program had no significant effect on the social-emotional skills of secondary school students. However, the effect of the Mentoring Program on the social-emotional skills of the students in higher professional education was significant and substantial. Limitations and implications for theory and practice are discussed.