What's all this hubbub about social emotional learning (SEL)? Explore the resources below to learn more.
What is Social-Emotional Learning?
Alexis Clark, MA, MS | Understood.org | October 2021
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing and using social and emotional skills. (You also may hear SEL referred to as socio-emotional learning or social-emotional literacy.)
People with strong social-emotional skills are better equipped to manage daily challenges, build positive relationships, and make informed decisions. SEL helps students and adults thrive in school and in life. And the skills can be taught and learned from preschool all the way through adulthood.
That’s important because people aren’t born knowing how to manage emotions, solve problems, and get along with others. These kinds of skills have to be developed, and schools can help students learn them. It’s also important to know that some students may need targeted supports to fully benefit from SEL.
Why Social Emotional Learning is Suddenly in the Spotlight
Emily Tate | EdSurge | May 2019
EdSurge Podcast: So if this was the first time that anyone's ever mentioned this concept to me, maybe a question I would have is, "Well, that's great, but it doesn't sound like something you can teach." How do you teach things like emotional regulation and relationship skills?Christina Cipriano, director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a research scientist at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine: My immediate answer is that if you don't think you can teach them, you have a fixed mindset and not a growth mindset. We need to be always open and available to learning through our interactions around us. The ways in which we teach these discrete skills depend upon the cognitive ability and development of the learner, and how they're going to most access them. For instance, when we focus on emotion regulation, we're thinking about students' cognitive reappraisal abilities and their self-talk strategies.
Now, there's a lot of different ways you can manage your emotions in a given situation. For some of us, like myself, you might want to go for a run to regulate, but not all schools are conducive to that. You can't just get up and do that. When we worked with teachers, we found that they want to know how to teach those skills that they can focus on how students will reappraise the situation to make a situation more positive, problem-focused, challenge-based—so that they think about it as something they can solve, and how they're talking to themselves. Really capture the essence of their self talk strategies in ways that are going to be most meaningful.
This doesn't mean that you're providing a pull-in lesson every week on Tuesdays at 3 p.m. to teach them how to reappraise their emotions, but rather that you are modeling those skills in the way that you interact with that student and with that learner before, during and after the situation, so that they're continuously seeing and learning [that].
Why Social and Emotional Learning is Essential for Students
Roger Weissberg | Edutopia | February 2016
Today's schools are increasingly multicultural and multilingual with students from diverse social and economic backgrounds. Educators and community agencies serve students with different motivation for engaging in learning, behaving positively, and performing academically. Social and emotional learning (SEL) provides a foundation for safe and positive learning, and enhances students' ability to succeed in school, careers, and life.
Research shows that SEL not only improves achievement by an average of 11 percentile points, but it also increases prosocial behaviors (such as kindness, sharing, and empathy), improves student attitudes toward school, and reduces depression and stress among students. Effective social and emotional learning programming involves coordinated classroom, schoolwide, family, and community practices that help students develop the following five key skills:
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship skills
- Responsible decision-making
Social Emotional Learning and Why It Matters for Educators
Social emotional learning (SEL) is a methodology that helps students of all ages to better comprehend their emotions, to feel those emotions fully, and demonstrate empathy for others. These learned behaviors are then used to help students make positive, responsible decisions; create frameworks to achieve their goals, and build positive relationships with others.
The Five Social Emotional Learning Competencies
According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), an organization devoted to students and educators to help achieve positive outcomes for PreK-12 students, SEL involves five core competencies that can be applied in both the classroom, at home, and in students’ communities. These five core competencies are:
- Self-awareness – To recognize your emotions and how they impact your behavior; acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses to better gain confidence in your abilities.
- Self-management – To take control and ownership of your thoughts, emotions, and actions in various situations, as well as setting and working toward goals.
- Social awareness – The ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person who may be from a different background or culture from the one you grew up with. To act with empathy and in an ethical manner within your home, school, and community.
- Relationship skills – The ability to build and maintain healthy relationships with people from a diverse range of backgrounds. This competency focuses on listening to and being able to communicate with others, peacefully resolving conflict, and knowing when to ask for or offer help.
- Making responsible decisions – Choosing how to act or respond to a situation based on learned behaviors such as ethics, safety, weighing consequences and the well-being of others, as well as yourself.
What Does the Research Say?
CASEL | October 2021
The benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) are well-researched, with evidence demonstrating that an education that promotes SEL yields positive results for students, adults, and school communities.- SEL interventions that address the five core competencies increased students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points, compared to students who did not participate.
- Students participating in SEL programs showed improved classroom behavior, an increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school.
- Additional meta-analyses echoed these findings. Consistency across independent research teams offers strong support that well-implemented SEL programs are beneficial.
What might this mean for the practical benefits of SEL? About 27% more students would improve their academic performance at the end of the program and 24% more would have improved social behaviors and lower levels of distress.
More recently, a 2021 systematic review found that universal SEL interventions enhance young people’s social and emotional skills and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in the short term. In comparison, other approaches have produced inconsistent results (mindfulness interventions) or limited evidence of impact (positive youth development interventions).
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