This study investigated the effect of a social and emotional learning skills curriculum, the You Can Do It! Early Childhood Education Program (YCDI), on the social-emotional development, well-being, and academic achievement of 99 preparatory and grade 1 students attending a Catholic school in Melbourne, Australia. One preparatory and one grade 1 class were randomly chosen to receive structured lessons in YCDI, delivered by their classroom teachers over a period of 10 weeks, while the remaining preparatory and grade 1 class served as the control group. The lessons were designed to teach young children confidence, persistence, organisation and emotional resilience. The educational program consisted of explicit, direct instruction lessons drawn from the YCDI Early Childhood Curriculum taught three times a week, supported by a variety of additional social and emotional teaching practices. The results indicated that YCDI had a statistically significant positive effect on levels of socialemotional competence and well-being for the preparatory and grade 1 students, a reduction in problem behaviours (externalising, internalising, and hyperactivity problems) for the grade 1 students, and an increase in reading achievement (decoding text) for the lower achieving grade 1 students. These findings are discussed with regard to issues concerning the role of explicit instruction in social and emotional learning for the early years.

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The first of two studies provided validity data on the Teacher Irrational Belief Scale that measures a set of beliefs of teachers previous research has found to be associated with teacher stress. Employing a sample of 850 primary and secondary teachers in Australia, an exploratory factor analysis resulted in four distinct factors: Self-downing, Authoritarianism, Demands for Justice, and Low Frustration Tolerance. These four sub-scales demonstrated adequate internal reliability and correlated with self-ratings of stress occasioned by different teaching stressors. In a second study, 140 teachers and 26 teachers retired from teaching because of stress completed the Teacher Irrational Belief Scale and a measure of teacher stress. Teachers retired from teaching due to stress scored higher on sub-scales of Selfdowning and Low Frustration Tolerance than teachers still teaching. These results are discussed in terms of Ellis' theory of REBT and implications for consultants and teacher educators offering stress management programs and support for teachers.Keywords Teacher stress Á Irrational beliefs Á Measurement Á Prevention Á Consultation Á Rational emotive behavior therapy Over the past two decades, the number of studies of occupational stress in the teaching profession has dramatically increased reflecting growing international concern with this topic (e.g., Kyriacou 2001;Popov and Popov 2015). Studies indicate that approximately 60-70 % of teachers show some stress symptoms, and about 30 % of them have burnout symptoms (e.g., Bermejo-Toro and Prieto-Ursúa 2006). When compared with other professions, teachers report one of the highest levels of occupational stress (e.g., Smith 1989). Some studies show gender