Debrief: HMH Webinar, The Science and Practice of Social and Emotional Learning in Schools, hosted by Dr. Stephanie Jones

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Everywhere I seem to look this year, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is at the forefront. Middle school teacher have always talked about educating the "whole child" and as such, SEL isn't a new idea. That said, the recent educational excitement surrounding SEL means that this important body of research is being actively examined by educators across the world as we decide how to incorporate these ideas into our practice.

At our school, this examination is happening as we dive deeper into solidifying our advisory program. On September 17, a group of teachers met during lunch to watch a webinar sponsored by HMH (not an endorsement) hosted by Dr. Stephanie Jones from Harvard University.

In the webinar Dr. Jones presented the theoretical foundation for the incorporation of SEL programs in schools, the current research from meta-analyses and the implications for teaching and learning. This post is an effort to debrief and visualize my most important learnings from her webinar.

Dr. Jones began with a basic description of what educational research has shown us about successful students.

What Learners Need to Be Successful
  • Focus their thinking
  • Manage their behavior
  • Build positive relationships
  • Understand and deal with feelings
From there, she talked about a 2017 meta-analysis of 25 SEL programs. The report can serve as a conceptual framework for building an SEL program. All programs included in the report featured education that could be grouped into domains and what she called "belief ecologies." From those domains and beliefs, specific skills can be learned and practiced. The Wallace Foundation Paper an be found here.

Exhaustive Reviews of SEL Programs Show the Following Commonalities:
  • Cognitive Domain (managing and shifting attention,  impulse control, planning, etc)
  • Emotional Domain (emotion expression and regulation, empathy)
  • Social Domain (perspective taking, prosocial behavior, conflict resolution)
  • Knowledge of Self/Identity Beliefs (self-efficacy, growth mindset, agency, self-esteem)
  • Character/Values Beliefs (ethical, intellectual and civic values)
  • Personality Beliefs (optimism, gratitude, openness, enthusiasm)
Jones continued by stating movement through these domains is developmental and students that might be struggling with higher-level social domain issues might need "downstream" skills and competencies from the emotional and cognitive domains.

The next segment of the webinar reiterated the importance of instituting SEL programs in schools. Studies conducted in 2011, 2016 and 2017 show that in schools where SEL programs we initiated gains in SEL learning, behavior and most compellingly, academic achievement.

The MOST EFFECTIVE Strategies
  • Establishing safe, caring communities with effective behavior management
  • Instruction in social and emotional skills, where students have agency
Jones pointed out that we often say things like "Pay attention," or "Be respectful," but we frequently don't truly know that students understand what that means. The Wallace Foundation paper cited above also distilled essential components.

Components of the Programs
  • Model the skills
  • Explicitly teaching the skills
  • Practice the skills
  • Discuss the skills (the importance of naming the skills and developing common language around SEL)
Finally, Dr. Jones presented a matrix of Resources vs Flexibility to suggest innovation of SEL programming. Her assertion here was that highly effective programs are Low Resourced and Highly Flexible. This work suggests that full-scale implementation of a packaged program (High Resource/Low Flexibility) are often blockers of successful SEL implementation. A successful Low Resource/High Flexibility program would contain the following:
  • Strategies/practices common to effective programs
  • Targeted to skills
  • Designed to be doable
  • "Rigid" structure that allows for adaptation
  • The hypothesis that greater uptake and implementation lead to higher impact

After the webinar and the subsequent readings, the main takeaways for me are threefold.
  1. Schools need SEL programs because they result in growth in SEL learning, student behavior and academic achievement
  2. Research supports the a model for building an SEL program across three domains and 3 beliefs
  3. Schools should maintain the right to build programs that are based on the research, but retain the flexibility to adapt to local needs
In short, I have the confidence in knowing that there is scientific and research-based support for implementing specific teaching of SEL skills to students (especially ones in "the middle") in order to help them navigate The Middle Course.

Sources/Links for further exploration 

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