The effectiveness of the social competence training program on emotional intelligence, self-expression and self-efficacy of slow- learners

Slow- Learner students are often placed in the gap between normal and special education and are forgotten, while examining the psychological characteristicsthem is essential. The current research was conducted with the aim of measuring the effect of social adequacy program on emotional intelligence, self-expression and self-efficacy of Slow-learners. The research method was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type. The statistical population included all late-learning male students of ninth grade in Ahvaz city in the academic year of 2022-2023. 50 of these students were selected by systematic random sampling and randomly replaced in two experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent the intervention of the social adequacy program for 10 sessions. To measure emotional intelligence, Golman's emotional intelligence test (1998) with a reliability of 0.852, to measure from the self-expression questionnaire of Gamberil, Riechi's self-expression questionnaire (1975) with a reliability of 0.88, and to evaluate self-efficacy from the Scherer, Maddox's general self-efficacy questionnaire (1982) was used with a reliability of 0.79. The result of the multivariate covariance analysis test showed that the emotional intelligence of the research groups did not differ significantly from each other in the post-test. self-expression and self-efficacy of the experimental group increased compared to the control group after the intervention, and the two groups had a statistically significant difference (p≤0.05). As a result, the social adequacy training program can be used as an intervention method to improve self-efficacy and increase the self-expression of late learners so that they can appear in the society as independent and efficient citizens.