Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy最新文献

This mixed-methods study aimed to investigate students' perspectives regarding their behavioral and academic changes following an 8-week combined intervention of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Mindfulness-Based Program (MBP). A total of 552 teenagers (mean age = 13.03, SD = 0.50, 47.5% females) from an urban Chinese private school participated, with 184 participants randomly assigned to each condition (taught, self-help, and active control groups). Paired-sample t-tests were employed to examine changes within groups, while General Linear Models compared academic achievement changes among the three groups. Despite finding no significant improvement statistically on academic achievement, some students attributed their improved academic performance to the course. Thematic analysis was conducted on 115 written responses and 4 focus group interviews from the taught group. The analysis revealed several key themes among the Chinese population, including no changes, state change, attitude change, and behavior change. These themes were consistent with the theoretical foundations of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and aligned with previous qualitative research on Western adolescents. The study highlights the benefits of techniques and cognitive change in facilitating behavioral change and offers practical suggestions for supporting students in behaviour regulation. It also underscores qualitative research's role in detailing these practices' effects on behavior and academic performance. Furthermore, a proposed model aligns with established behavioral change theories, providing a practical visual aid for teachers. This study offers a comprehensive framework for future research on the theoretical constructs of MBPs and provides practical suggestions for supporting students in behavior regulation.

Feel Your Best Self (FYBS) teaches 12 emotion-focused coping strategies to strengthen emotion regulation and day-to-day experiences of positive emotions. Released in 2022, FYBS was designed to be implemented flexibly and with minimal preparation by elementary educators. In this manuscript, we present findings from a case study of early adopters (n = 6), sharing insights into how they have used, adapted, and generalized the program with their students. Participants ranged from first to fifth grade teachers. Four teachers implemented in English and two teachers implemented in Spanish. Findings suggest that early adopters “kept it simple;” leaned into opportunities to promote joy, engagement, and access using FYBS; adjusted instructional activities for developmental appropriateness; and integrated additional best practices. These insights suggest that FYBS is achieving its intended goal of simple and flexible instruction of emotion-focused coping strategies in elementary classrooms. We conclude by discussing next steps in expanding FYBS materials and testing the program’s cultural responsiveness and impact on student outcomes.

American children need access to high-quality early education. One limiting factor is the lack of professional development for the childcare workforce. This study examined the impact of a professional development model designed for teachers working with preschool children in childcare settings. Intervention included an evidence-based early learning curriculum focused on social-emotional learning and early literacy. Center directors were trained to serve as program coaches. Childcare centers with classrooms serving preschool children were recruited from ten counties in [state blinded for review] characterized by concentrated population-level poverty and randomized to intervention and control groups. Teachers and directors showed high levels of intervention engagement and good program implementation. Pre- to post-test comparisons of the intervention and control groups revealed that the intervention promoted responsive teaching practices, emotion coaching, enriched language use, and improved instructional quality. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Student mental wellbeing is an area of concern within higher education, and there is increasing recognition that social and emotional learning has a role to play in supporting student mental wellbeing. This is particularly the case for mature and part time students, who, as outsiders in many traditional university settings, can experience feelings of isolation and a negative impact on wellbeing. This paper presents a study in UK higher education which applied humanisation and social and emotional learning as a theoretical framework to accompany a co-creation methodology, in order to develop resources to support the wellbeing of mature and part time students. This resulted in co-created resources for students and practitioners aiming to support Positive Pedagogies in higher education. Evaluation of the resources found the project had a two-fold effect on mature and part time student wellbeing and experience; it positively impacted on student co-creators’ SEL and overall experience and on student users as they associated an emotional connection with the resource because it had been developed by fellow students, which provided them with a greater sense of agency due to the voice given to the co-creators. Similarly, practitioners found that the guidance embedded wellbeing into teaching practice and encouraged the development of holistic skills such as emotional intelligence and resilience. This paper therefore concludes that the embedding of the humanising framework into co-creation practices can work to positively enhance the resultant emotional response and therefore positive wellbeing of students in a higher education setting.

When successfully implemented, social and emotional learning programs can promote a number of positive social, emotional, health, and academic outcomes for youth over time (Bierman et al., 2010; Durlak, 2022; Taylor et al., 2017). Critical to SEL programming in elementary and middle schools is planning and implementation, which involves a number of resources and stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, families, and students (Shoesmith et al., 2021). This paper contributes to SEL implementation in practice for culturally diverse communities. We 1) discuss the SEL curriculum and steps to integrate it into existing curriculum with 1st-8th grade staff, (2) describe development and continuation of university-elementary/middle school partnerships, including planning with teachers and school administrators, as well as district administrators and parents, 3) outline training sessions with university students to become SEL mentors and coordinators, 4) discuss partnership and shifts since the COVID-19 pandemic, and 5) identify implications of this work for practices to be implemented in other schools, especially best practices of SEL delivery to disadvantaged youth, and methods to address diversity and inclusion in working with youth. Through a university-elementary/middle school partnership, students can receive holistic support and growth in critical social and emotional learning skills to address a number of academic, social, and mental health issues. At the same time, such programming integrating university students can create an environment and pathways that allow them to be future leaders in social and emotional learning.

This paper makes the case for adults in children’s lives to incorporate the science of decision-making skills as a pedagogy for social emotional learning (SEL), the process through which humans acquire a set of five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, 2020). Choices require learners to activate the first four SEL components while being explicit about the fifth, which can be an inclusive protocol for teaching and practicing SEL. The interdisciplinary decision and behavioural sciences (Kahneman, 2003) offer many insights into why a structured decision-making process can help youth move strategically through a choice to create new opportunities and develop their social emotional development while avoiding common missteps (which decrease social emotional development). Missteps are likely in more common approaches such as pros and cons lists, vague directives to “stop and think,” and voting. In terms of collaborative decisions, the decision sciences illustrate how approaches based on understanding values and being curious about others’ perspectives can help to build choices that embrace diversity and minimize polarizing reliance on misinformation. Models of collaborative structured decision-making, in particular, help teachers encourage their students to embrace transformative SEL oriented towards social justice, positioning diversity within groups as a necessary asset in reaching a quality decision (Jagers et al., 2019). The incorporation of a plain-language, science-based framework, such as the one detailed in this paper, provides a foundation for students to responsibly make minor decisions and significant decisions, all while explicitly and implicitly developing their social emotional skills.

To facilitate social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools, assessments must be suitable for progress monitoring, which includes being sensitive to short-term changes in students’ social and emotional competence (SEC) and providing useful and timely information to educators. This paper discusses evidence criteria to help determine whether an instrument is suitable for progress monitoring of student SEC. To illustrate how action-oriented research can help further guide the development of evidence standards and inform SEL practice in schools, the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment-mini (DESSA-mini) is highlighted through two empirical case studies. Data for both case studies are derived from a district-wide implementation of an evidence-based SEL program, Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS), that used the DESSA-mini to assess the SEC of 7681 students in Grades K-5 at three time points over a school year. Multilevel models estimated the growth in student SEC under different implementation conditions and by different student characteristics (i.e., grade, gender, SEC at baseline). Findings suggest significant growth in SEC with some meaningful variation. Results are interpreted to illustrate how routine-practice studies can be used to infer how much growth is typical, among which students, and under what conditions, to facilitate real-time practice decisions.

Impact Statement: To facilitate social and emotional learning in schools, educators need to monitor progress in students’ acquisition of social and emotional competence. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how studies can be used to infer how much growth is typical, among which students, and under what conditions, to facilitate real-time decisions by educators to adjust instruction.

Mental illness is a public health emergency threatening youth's social, physical, and economic vitality (Fahey & Koster, 2019). School-based mental health initiatives have been identified as a sustainable approach to this issue (World Health Organization, 2019). This study employed a qualitative case-based methodology to understand how educational leaders effectively implement mental health policies and programming. Three significant findings were identified: 1) the leadership of mental health initiatives formed a closely interconnected network of relationships with distributed responsibility across clearly identified roles and responsibilities within the school system and externally with the province and community-based supports; 2) Making network attributes and patterns of communication visible provided district and school-based leaders with discernable areas for intervention and growth serving as an impetus for system improvement; 3). Systems that effectively implement mental health policies and programming intentionally utilize multi-level, multi-institutional, and multi-disciplinary implementation teams by co-developing innovative ways to remove barriers to service.

For social and emotional learning (SEL) to be most effective, students must consistently access social and emotional knowledge and apply SEL skills across time and context. This article presents the Framework for the Pedagogies of SEL, which aims to theoretically articulate how teachers can support effective student SEL. We present an overview of how students acquire social and emotional knowledge, describe key processes of learning, and consider relations among culture, identity, and SEL to lay the foundation of the Framework for the Pedagogies of SEL. We then present the framework, which integrates three types SEL knowledge with five teaching practices or pedagogies of SEL. We then describe how the systematic application of these pedagogies of SEL might promote effective SEL and close with the need to support teachers’ SEL implementation and considerations related to SEL instruction and student variability as well as the limitations of this article and conclusions.

The present study systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed the evidence for universal school-based SEL programming within the United States to understand nation-specific trends in SEL implementation and effectiveness, and provide specific recommendations for marginalized students- particularly those with minority gender-, racial- ethnic, linguistic-, and disability identities, within SEL. Analyzing the effects of 90 universal school-based social and emotional learning studies, reflecting 47 discrete SEL programs, and 20,626 students in grades K-12 in the United States, from January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2020, we report that students who participate in universal school-based SEL programs experienced significantly improved academic achievement, school functioning, social and emotional skills, attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of school climate and safety. Furthermore, programs in the United States benefited students in elementary and secondary school equally, and had the strongest outcomes for students when teachers were the program implementors. SEL programs in the United States were varied in their program features, duration, and dosage, had limited engagement with families and community, and did not show evidence of an overall follow-up effect 6 months or longer after a program ends. SEL programs were found to be equally efficacious for boys and girls meta-analytically, and systematic review of available studies revealed preliminary evidence of differential and positive effects for students with marginalized racial and ethnic identities. Limited representation of marginalized linguistic, sexual, and ability identities inhibited exploration of additional effects analytically, and descriptive results, alongside opportunities for increasing reporting and analyses are discussed.