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

Media and technology have come to play a ubiquitous role in children’s lives. In response, researchers continue to explore the impact of media and technology on children’s overall health and development. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our paradigms have increasingly shifted from asking whether technology is influencing children’s experiences to how technology is influencing child development. Accordingly, numerous studies using varied theoretical frameworks document how context, content, and amount of media and technology use influence children’s social–emotional skill development. This perspectives paper collates and synthesizes theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence relevant to children ages 0-12 years to address the question, “What are the ways, positive and negative, that media and technology use impact children’s social and emotional learning (SEL)?” Our findings point toward opportunities to mitigate barriers and leverage facilitators to support children’s social–emotional learning and development as we progress into a technology-driven future.

Previous evidence suggests that empathy is important for promoting positive youth development, and there is growing advocacy for the inclusion of empathy education within the school system. However, knowledge about the efficacy of empathy-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes in post-primary school settings is limited. The current research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel, empathy-based SEL programme (i.e., Activating Social Empathy; ASE) in promoting empathy and prosocial responding among secondary school students in Ireland.

Method

Participants included 539 (91 male, 392 female, 56 other) students from nine secondary schools across the Republic of Ireland (M_age = 14.29; SD =.83). Participants were randomly allocated to an intervention or a control condition, and completed self-report questionnaires at pre-test and post-test.

Results

Results from mediated regression models indicated that, in comparison to the control group, participants in the intervention condition showed significantly higher levels of empathy post-test. Results also indicated that empathy significantly mediated the relationship between condition and youth’s prosocial behaviour, emotional efficacy, and social responsibility.

Discussion

Overall, the findings from this study indicated that participation in the ASE programme was directly associated with higher empathy, which in turn was indirectly linked with greater prosocial responding, social responsibility, and emotional efficacy. Given the growing importance placed on the inclusion of SEL within education curricula internationally, and robust associations between empathy and positive youth development, these findings have important implications for school-related research, policy and practice.

States have made tremendous growth within the last decade developing and implementing statutory, regulatory, and non-regulatory policies and practices that center student and adult social, emotional, and academic development. Almost all states have some form of guidance or support for local education agencies (LEAs) to implement social and emotional learning (SEL) and over half of states have SEL standards or competencies. Even with this growth, empirical evidence is limited on how state SEL policies and practices influence local implementation. To begin to address this gap, the authors interviewed 16 state education agency (SEA) staff from 13 states to explore what they perceive as effective SEL implementation and any evidence that supports their claim. Through exploring the arc of the development, implementation, and evaluation of their state SEL policies and practices, SEA staff uplifted the significance of engaging with multiple stakeholders (e.g., educators, families, and communities), the critical lever that statutory and regulatory policies hold in supporting locally-driven SEL implementation, key non-regulatory policy and practice efforts (e.g. embedded and explicit instruction, adult SEL, and systemic SEL), the importance of SEL being both a standalone effort and embedded with other pertinent initiatives, and the need for more robust data systems that help determine which policies and practices best support student and adult social, emotional, and academic development.

Study aims were to describe school engagement in strategies to support implementation of a universal SEL program and examine whether strategy engagement predicted end-of-year program adherence (i.e., lesson completion). A multiple case study evaluation was utilized with schools implementing the Second Step® Elementary and Middle School digital program. School implementation leaders (N = 222) completed a survey in fall 2022, indicating level of engagement in four strategies: (1) communication of a shared SEL vision, (2) creation of an implementation plan, (3) identification of data to monitor implementation progress, and (4) provision of SEL training to school staff. They also reported on leader support for the program and barriers to implementation. A small majority of respondents (62%) reported communicating a shared SEL vision to all staff. Less than half to half of respondents (29–51%) reported engaging in the other strategies, and those with an implementation team were more likely to engage in strategies. Schools with a shared SEL vision and an implementation plan were less likely to report encountering barriers to implementation. Having identified data to monitor implementation progress was the only strategy that predicted higher levels of lesson completion.

Transformative social and emotional learning (SEL) is an approach that prioritizes an explicit focus on equity and social justice. In this case study, we explored: how do teachers modify their SEL teaching practices and curricula to incorporate a transformative SEL focus on community issues and social justice? Through analyses of qualitative data from student and teacher interviews and classroom observations as well as quantitative data from surveys administered to students and teachers, we illustrate how teachers at one middle school in Chicago stretched from conventional notions of SEL to engage social justice issues more proactively in their SEL implementation in four key ways: Connecting through Language, Connecting to Students’ Social Identities, Addressing Social Issues, and Encouraging Civic Engagement and Activism. We conclude with support for teachers interested in adapting these practices in their classrooms.

School readiness is critical for the successful implementation of social-emotional learning (SEL) programs in schools. Unfortunately, few interventions exist that aim to build schoolwide readiness for SEL program implementation. This mixed‐method study sought to develop and pilot an innovative, brief schoolwide intervention called ReadySET within two elementary schools in one southeastern school district, and understand the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of the intervention. Data were collected from kindergarten through third grade teachers, school mental health staff, and administrators via pre- and post-surveys, module evaluation surveys, and interviews. Data also were collected from facilitators through implementation checklists. Findings suggest that ReadySET was feasible to implement and acceptable to school stakeholders. In addition, study findings demonstrated a small, statistically significant improvement in SEL comfort over the course of the intervention. Stakeholders’ beliefs related to SEL commitment and culture, however, declined slightly over time indicating areas for future intervention refinement. Implications of this study are shared related to SEL research, practice, and policy.

There are many and varied frameworks for PSS-SEL being applied in many contexts, settings, and situations around the globe. Having diverse perspectives and approaches, to SEL is a positive sign for the field. However, without ways to make sense of this, important variation and to connect frameworks to each other, misalignment and, imprecision can occur. In addition, the majority of research, frameworks, and programs, tied to SEL come from the Global North, leaving out important perspectives and, variation from the Global South. In response to these challenges, the Inter-agency, Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) convened a research-practice, partnership to develop a toolbox for Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional, Learning (PSS-SEL) in Education in Emergencies. The online, open source toolbox, contains data-based visual tools to look within and across approaches to PSS-SEL, from over fifty countries, tools to guide localization and contextualization efforts serving, various objectives, as well as additional resources that provide further information about particular topics of interest within the project and the field. This paper describes, the process of developing the PSS-SEL Toolbox in which researchers partnered with organizations in 13 different countries to field-test the tools before publicly launching the site. We discuss findings and lessons learned from this multi-year and multinational, project including the most salient skills and competencies that surfaced across field testing sites as well as broad priorities and challenges facing practitioners in diverse contexts across the field of social and emotional learning and psychosocial support in education in emergencies.

Universal progress monitoring of student social-emotional competence (SEC) has increasingly been adopted as part of regular educational practices in the context of schoolwide social and emotional learning (SEL). However, an evidence base has not yet been established on the extent of SEC growth to expect across school years under a multiyear school-based SEL implementation setting. An essential but often overlooked prerequisite when measuring student SEC growth is to examine longitudinal measurement invariance of the assessment tools. To address these gaps, this study first tested the longitudinal measurement invariance of a widely-used teacher-completed behavioral rating scale, and then examined the average SEC growth trajectory of elementary school students under a three-year SEL practice initiative. The data involve six waves of teacher ratings of student SEC, collected for three consecutive years using the DESSA-Mini (N = 1146; Grades K-2 at baseline). Using longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis, this study found no violations of measurement invariance across all six occasions, suggesting that the same construct of SEC was measured across different seasons, raters, and grade levels. Then, using second-order latent growth modeling that did not impose any predetermined shape of growth, this study found that (a) student SEC increased within each year, (b) student SEC decreased over each summer by about a half of the yearly gain, and (c) the rate of yearly growth gradually decreased across years. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed with suggestions for future research and practices.

This article explores how schools and the systems that support them can make the shift from traditional ways of “doing school” toward new, more effective ways that are supported by both research and practice. It illuminates stories of successful approaches to promote developmental relationships and safe, supportive learning environments in schools, in the context of intractable education systems, a global pandemic, and a renewed political and social reckoning with equity and justice.

Understanding the effectiveness of universal school-based SEL interventions for minoritized students in K-12 settings is an area of critical inquiry. In this paper, we draw on the evidence compiled from a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of thirteen years of universal school-based (USB) social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions for students in K-12 settings. Results simultaneously revealed that the field of SEL knows a great deal about the variation in effects of SEL programs and very little about the experiences of students with marginalized and minoritized identities within them. This manuscript details key findings and critical areas for future development in the service of gender-, racially-, ethnically-, linguistically-, and ability-minoritized youth. We begin with outlining what USB SEL interventions are and the evidence for them. We next discuss who marginalized and minoritized students are and the evidence of SEL programs effectiveness for them. We then discuss the urgent need for the SEL field to focus on program design, implementation, and research to better determine whether and how marginalized and minoritized students are benefiting from current USB SEL programming. Finally, we provide recommendations for improved research and practice to support a truly inclusive SEL hereafter.