Many of America’s greatest challenges can be viewed through the lens of social-emotional deficits. Political issues and parties increasingly polarize American society. Over one-fifth of American students aged 12-18 report that they experience either physical or emotional bullying in school. Many Americans struggle with mental health, with 20% experiencing mental illness during any given year and suicide being the third-leading cause of death among teenagers.
In order to work toward a future where these problems are less prevalent, schools have turned to Social-Emotional Learning, instilling social-emotional skills within America’s youth. The philosophy of SEL maintains that an optimal education consists of more than fact memorization or test taking, and instead can provide future generations with the social-emotional skills to create and shape a better society. Based on the issues facing contemporary American society, there is clearly a desperate need for the effective, high-quality teaching of social-emotional skills that SEL can provide.
What is SEL, Anyways?
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, one of the most popular SEL frameworks, defines SEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
Class time devoted to SEL enhances the teaching of core academic topics. Skills such as respect, responsibility, and emotion regulation are crucial to learning, and these skills are routinely reinforced via SEL teaching. The so-called CASEL 5, or five areas of SEL skill-building as suggested by the CASEL framework, include self-awareness, relationship skills, self-management, responsible decision-making, and social awareness. Many other SEL frameworks suggest focusing on similar areas of social-emotional growth.
In practice, SEL often consists of dedicated classroom time in combination with continual reinforcement of those lessons taught within the classroom throughout the school day. Teaching SEL might look like instructing students directly about SEL skills and managing emotions, but it can also include daily greetings, journaling about feelings, positive affirmations, daily reflection, SMART goals, mindfulness, and check-ins. For older students, SEL may also include activities such as goal-setting, discussions about SEL attributes, mentoring, creating a classroom charter, or using a mood meter.
Across all of these activities, the goal remains the same: teach the social-emotional skills that are fundamental for student success. School districts routinely implement outside programs and externally-developed SEL frameworks to foster engaging and successful SEL teaching, such as those developed by Harvard’s EASEL Lab, Yale’s RULER Framework, SEL4US, and CASEL, in addition to smaller, local organizations. The effectiveness of SEL, however, depends less on specific programs or frameworks and more so on the thoroughness and continuity of its implementation.
The Rise of SEL
Modern American SEL has its roots in Yale’s Dr. James Comer’s Comer School Development Program, which began during the late 1960s at two low-income New Haven schools and demonstrated the benefits of this pedagogical approach. SEL was not widely known until around 20 to 30 years ago, but it has since become mainstream in American schools. SEL’s ever-increasing popularity may be explained by a variety of factors.
Findings from meta-analysis educational studies have shown that SEL teaching can create a better classroom environment, enhance academic success, and ultimately improve lifetime outcomes. SEL has also been praised for its ability to enhance emotional, academic, and social wellbeing.
COVID has created deficits of knowledge spanning many areas of education. Online learning has both made SEL teaching more difficult and decreased opportunities for the social-emotional development that occurs through in-person interactions. In large part due to the need arising from the pandemic, and also due to the extensive research spanning decades that supports SEL teaching, educational funding in recent years has been increasingly available for SEL education.
School district spending on SEL grew 45% between the 2019-2020 and the 2020-2021 school years according to a report by Tyton Partners, which has also coincided with significant increases in government funding for SEL. New funding allows schools to determine the best course of action to implement SEL, especially in regards to paying for outside programs or frameworks.
Of the federal funding available for SEL, perhaps the most significant is the American Rescue Plan Act, which designated $123 billion toward K-12 education. A recent CASEL report recommended that state and local officials target this funding toward SEL by supporting SEL programs, improving current SEL guidelines and curricula, investing in training and additional personnel, and carrying out needs assessments.
Thinking Locally
When it comes to SEL, just as in other areas of education, there is no one size fits all approach. A plethora of SEL nonprofits, programs, and frameworks exist, allowing school districts to identify the program that best suits their needs. Such variety allows districts to identify the best resources for them, taking into account factors such as evidence-based practices, community support of various programs or frameworks, and the specific needs and challenges facing students in their community.
Community stakeholder engagement may also be taken into account to most effectively implement SEL within districts. Sacred Heart University education professor David Title described in an interview with the HPR how SEL programs can be most optimally implemented: “one of the key elements of successful SEL programs is that families and community members are engaged in the process, and that the entire community has a voice in it.”
School districts across the country vary wildly, and the needs of a predominantly rural district would differ not only from large, urban districts, but also vary from other rural districts. Although many of the skills that SEL teaches are nearly universally accepted as desirable, every classroom’s unique surpluses or deficits of specific SEL skills mean that any SEL curriculum may require customization. One of the primary advantages of SEL teaching is its adjustability and variety; stakeholders and educators may choose from a wide range of SEL frameworks and organizations to determine what lessons, activities, and curricula best suit their community needs. In turn, community engagement can help to create support and understanding of SEL.
More Than a Name
Within both school districts and state legislatures, however, efforts have been made to remove SEL. Legislators and elected officials have opposed funding for SEL training for teachers or removed third-party SEL frameworks. Others have confused SEL with critical race theory or disavowed SEL as a rebranding of left-wing ideologies.
The actions of political figures and community members hold tremendous consequences for SEL accessibility, and sometimes, those actions aim to suppress SEL. Title told the HPR that “there’s a political angle to this. That can be very challenging because if there’s political gain to be made for preying on the fears of parents and community members, then there are people who will try to exploit that.”
Although SEL represents the greater concept behind it, the name “Social-Emotional Learning” itself has proven challenging.
A Fordham Institute report in 2021 found that “there is broad support among parents for teaching SEL-related skills in schools, although the term ‘social and emotional learning’ is relatively unpopular.” More support exists for the concept of teaching SEL when the teaching practice is described using words other than “Social-Emotional Learning.” The report further found a partisan split: Democratic parents are more likely to support current SEL terminology than Republican ones, and Republican parents may be more cautious of SEL.
Stephanie Jones, Harvard professor and Director of the SEL-focused EASEL Laboratory, explained in an interview with the HPR that “there is a lot of support for this work, because parents, educators, human beings alike, recognize that the social and emotional world is part of everything that we do.”
Informing community members about what is or is not SEL remains a hurdle. Because of the extensive research backing SEL, schools have widely implemented SEL practices, but the benefits of SEL may remain unknown to parents and community stakeholders. In order to build an understanding of SEL’s practices and research-backed benefits, CASEL recommends conducting SEL-focused presentations, creating promotional videos, utilizing web and social media outreach, and interviewing with local media about SEL as possible ways of bridging this gap.
SEL on the Horizon
In order to support students, educators must be equipped with the proper tools. When asked by the HPR about how elected officials could best promote SEL going forward, Maurice Elias, Rutgers University psychology professor, cited a lack of educator training in SEL as a potential target for policymaking and funding. He explained to the HPR that “the implementation, investing in your staff, teachers who know how to carry it out, administrators who know how to organize it, those things will have tremendously long payoffs.” Regardless of the amount of funding allocated toward student SEL education, teachers must be properly trained in order to implement SEL effectively.
One way of supporting educators has various names that represent the same concept depending on who you ask. Called “Instructional Rounds” by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education or “Peer Coaching” by Sacred Heart University, this educational approach consists of educators observing other educators while teaching lessons, allowing for friendly, constructive assessment of peer teaching practices. Title, who is currently leading a research study on peer coaching, indicated that his implementation of peer coaching has yielded positive results for faculty at Sacred Heart University. Peer coaching or instructional rounds pose themselves as potentially valuable methods of enhancing SEL instruction within schools across the country.
Another proposed way of improving upon SEL instruction is named with yet one more acronym: SECD, or Social Emotional Character Development. For those who worry that teaching SEL skills alone may not provide the direction that students need, proponents present SECD as a way of building off of the foundation of SEL. During his talk with the HPR, Elias, who leads Rutgers University’s Social Emotional and Character Development Lab, explained SECD as providing direction to students by establishing character, positive purpose, and virtue alongside SEL skills. He compared SEL skills to the propellers of boats and described SECD as giving the boat its direction.
Given the wide array of resources and programs available to educators, communication about available assistance may also provide value to school districts. National education organizations could also work toward providing clear stances on SEL teaching, as community stakeholders often look to larger organizations and prominent educators for guidance.
Our present decisions regarding SEL education span far past the classroom. Future generations have a right to learn the social-emotional skills that will shape their lives, and SEL teaching provides a path to alleviate the strife created by several societal issues. It has been shown to decrease school violence and bullying, improve interactions in the workplace, enhance empathy and kindness toward others, and lessen stress and depression.
Without a doubt, America’s youth face many issues, from large-scale political disagreement to worrisome amounts of bullying to struggles with mental health. American youth have a right to receive an education that provides them with the means to thrive: in classrooms, in workplaces, in communities. Prevalent, effective, and high-quality SEL empowers students to thrive and confront America’s issues head-on, providing a pathway to a brighter future for America.
Image by the CDC is licensed under the Unsplash License.
