SEL Basics » FAQs
What is social and emotional learning (SEL)?
Why is SEL needed?
Why is SEL essential to the school and life success
of all children and youth?
What skills do socially and emotionally competent
children and youth have?
What instructional methods are commonly used in SEL?
What can principals do to promote SEL?
What can teachers do to promote SEL?
What can parents to do to promote their child’s
SEL?
What can student support services professionals do
to promote SEL?
What are the components of evidence-based school-wide
SEL programming?
What empirical evidence supports the effectiveness
of SEL programming?
What impacts does SEL have on the adult learning
community?
What are the key steps in implementing school-wide
SEL?
Why is it important to use an evaluated, evidence-based
SEL curriculum?
How should the effectiveness of SEL programming be
evaluated?
How is SEL related to other youth development and
prevention initiatives?
Where can I find funding to support SEL programming?
What is social and emotional learning
(SEL)?
SEL is the process through which children and adults acquire the
knowledge, attitudes, and skills they need to recognize and manage
their emotions, demonstrate caring and concern for others, establish
positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging
situations constructively. Although SEL is not a program, many available
programs provide instruction in and opportunities to practice, apply,
and be recognized for using SEL skills. Competence in the use of
SEL skills is promoted in the context of safe and supportive school,
family, and community learning environments in which children feel
valued and respected and connected to and engaged in learning. SEL
is fundamental not only to children’s social and emotional
development but also to their health, ethical development, citizenship,
motivation to achieve, and academic learning as well. (Elias
et al., 1997, and CASEL, Safe and Sound, 2005)
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Why is SEL needed?
There are a great deal of data indicating that large numbers of
children are contending with significant social, emotional, and
mental health barriers to their success in school and life. In addition,
many children engage in challenging behaviors that educators must
address to provide high quality instruction. Data from the 2005
Youth Risk Behavior Survey stated that:
- 6.0% of U.S. youth 14-17 years old did not go to school
on one or more of the previous 30 days because they felt unsafe
at school or on their way to or from school.
- 7.9% of these youth reported having been threatened
or injured with a weapon on school property during this same period.
- 28.5% of these youth reported having felt so sad or
hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row during
the previous 12 months that they stopped doing some usual activities.
- 13% reported actually having made a plan to attempt
suicide during this period.
Data on developmental assets considered important to children’s
mental health and social/emotional development are also cause for
concern.
A 2003 Search Institute survey of 202 U.S. communities found that:
- Only 29% of students in 6th through 12th grade thought
their school provided them with a caring, encouraging environment.
- The same percentage reported that that people who know
them well would say they know how to plan ahead and make choices.
Data reported by the Illinois
Children’s Mental Health Task Force in its 2003 Final
Report state that:
- At least 1 child in 10 suffers from a mental illness
that severely disrupts daily functioning at home, in school, or
in the community.
- 70-80% of children in need don’t receive appropriate
mental health services.
- 25-30% of American children experience school adjustment
problems.
- 32% of children (including toddlers) at 10 Chicago childcare
centers are deemed to have behavioral problems.
- 14% of students 12-18 years of age report having been
bullied at school in the six months prior to being interviewed.
Providing children with comprehensive social and emotional learning
(SEL) programs characterized by safe, caring, and well-managed learning
environments and instruction in social and emotional skills addresses
many of these learning barriers through enhancing school attachment,
reducing risky behaviors and promoting positive development, and
thereby positively influencing academic achievement.
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Why is SEL essential to the school
and life success of all children and youth?
Our emotions and relationships affect how and what we learn and
how we use what we learn in work, family, and community contexts.
On the one hand, emotions can enable us to generate an active interest
in learning and sustain our engagement in it. On the other hand,
unmanaged stress and poor regulation of impulses interfere with
attention and memory and contribute to behaviors disruptive to learning.
Moreover, learning is an intrinsically social and interactive process:
it takes place in collaboration with one’s teachers, in the
company of one’s peers, and with the support of one’s
family. Hence, the abilities to recognize and manage emotions and
establish and maintain positive relationships impact both preparation
for learning and the ability to benefit from learning opportunities.
Because safe, nurturing, well-managed learning environments are
essential to the mastery of SEL skills, they too are essential to
children’s school and life success. SEL skills and the supportive
learning environments in which they are taught contribute to the
resiliency of all children—those without identified risks
and those at-risk for or already exhibiting emotional or behavioral
problems and in need of additional supports.
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What skills do socially and emotionally
competent children and youth have?
Socially and emotionally competent children and youth are skilled
in five core areas:
- They are self-aware. They are able
to recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values,
and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded
sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.
- They are able to regulate their emotions.
They are able to manage stress, control impulses, and persevere
in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward
the achievement of personal and academic goals and express their
emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.
- They are socially aware. They are able
to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize
and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences.
They are able to seek out and appropriately use family, school,
and community resources.
- They have good relationship skills.
They can establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships
based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure;
constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict;
and seek and provide help when needed.
- They demonstrate responsible decision-making
at school, at home, and in the community. In making decisions,
they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms,
respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses
of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic
and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being
of their schools and communities.
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What instructional methods are
commonly used in SEL?
Effective instructional methods for teaching SEL skills are active,
participatory, and engaging. Here are a few examples:
- Young children can to be taught through modeling and
coaching to recognize how they feel or how someone else might
be feeling.
- Prompting the use of a conflict-resolution skill and
using dialoguing to guide students through the steps can be an
effective approach to helping them apply a skill in a new situation.
- In class meetings, students can practice group decision-making and setting classroom rules.
- Students can learn cooperation and teamwork through
participation in team sports and games.
- Students deepen their understanding of a current or
historical event by applying it to a set of questions based on
a problem-solving model.
- Cross-age mentoring, in which a younger student is paired
with an older one, can be effective in building self-confidence,
a sense of belonging, and enhancing academic skills.
- Having one member of a pair describe a situation to
his partner and having the partner repeat what he or she heard
is an effective tool in teaching reflective listening.
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What can principals do to promote
SEL?
As the primary leader in a local school, principals have a major
responsibility for implementing SEL programming. Principals can
support SEL programming by:
- Indicating to school personnel and families that they
are committed to school-wide SEL as a priority
- Developing and articulating a shared vision of their
students’ social, emotional, and academic development
- Supporting completion of a school-wide needs and resources
assessment
- Creating opportunities for teachers and support staff
to participant in development of an action plan for SEL implementation
- Assuring that all staff members have initial and on-going
professional development and support for implementing programming
- Making sufficient resources available for implementing
the SEL action plan
- Involving others in exercising school leadership functions
and decision-making
- Modeling win-win resolutions to conflict
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What can teachers do to promote
SEL?
In addition to providing instruction in social and emotional skills,
teachers’ involvement in promoting SEL goes beyond the classroom
and includes the following:
- Participating on a school team or committee that selects
an SEL program and oversees the implementation and evaluation
of SEL activities
- Communicating regularly with students’ families
about SEL classroom activities to encourage reinforcement of SEL
lessons at home
- Modeling and providing opportunities for students to
practice and apply SEL skills in the classroom
- Using participatory instructional methods that draw
on students’ experience and engage them in learning
- Using SEL skills in teaching academic subjects to enhance
students’ understanding. For example, in language arts or
social studies lessons, students can be encouraged to discuss
how characters or historical figures did or did not express understanding
of others’ feelings or use good problem-solving skills
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What can parents to do to promote
their child’s SEL?
Parents can promote their child’s SEL by learning more about
their school’s SEL initiative and modeling behaviors and adopting
practices that reinforce their child’s SEL skills at home.
Examples of such efforts include:
- Participating in family informational meetings at their
school to learn more about its SEL initiative
- Asking their child’s teacher about how SEL is
used at school
- Participating in their school’s planning, implementation,
and evaluation of SEL programming
- Participating in SEL trainings to become more familiar
with SEL concepts being taught in their child’s school
- Volunteering to assist in their child’s classroom
- Participating with their child in SEL-related homework
assignments
- Emphasizing their child’s strengths before discussing
what might be improved upon.
- Making a list of feeling words with their child and
being an “emotions coach,” encouraging him/her child
to express feelings.
- Giving their children choices, asking what they can
do to solve a problem and helping them identify pros and cons
of alternative solutions
- Making sure that the consequences of misbehavior are
fair and consistently enforced
- Encouraging their child to share and be helpful to others
by participating in community service projects
More examples of how parents can promote SEL and recommended readings
can be found in our free parent packet.
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What can student support services
professionals do to promote SEL?
Student support services (SSS) professionals’ knowledge of
human behavior, program planning and evaluation, community resources,
classroom management strategies, and the challenges to learning
that students may be experiencing at home make them valuable members
of an SEL steering committee. Their perspective on student needs
and the resources being used to address these needs is essential
to an adequate SEL needs and resources assessment. Since their work
is not confined to the classroom, they also bring an important perspective
to identifying school-wide SEL programming needs.
In small group work, SSS professionals can reinforce classroom
instruction in SEL skills with students who need more practice.
When conferring with parents on approaches to addressing learning
challenges their child is experiencing, SSS professionals can use
SEL language, which has been introduced in the classroom. When consulting
with teachers on classroom management issues, they can assess problems
and suggest solutions with reference to SEL skills and the characteristics
of a safe and supportive learning environment. When developing and
assessing student progress on IEP goals, they can relate these goals
to specific SEL standards. SSS staff are also typically the link
between schools and the community-based services that students may
access. As such, they can extend the SEL framework to these relationships
as well.
Finally, coordinating classroom-based SEL instruction with services
provided by student support staff can be especially effective in
promoting the school success of children who have social, emotional,
and mental health problems that interfere with learning.
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What are the components of evidence-based
school-wide SEL programming?
Effective SEL programming includes:
- Instruction in and opportunities to practice and apply
an integrated set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills
- Learning environments characterized by trust and respectful
relationships
- Implementation that is coordinated and reinforces classroom,
school-wide, out-of-school, and at-home learning activities
- Systematic and sequential programming from preschool
through high school
- Developmentally and culturally appropriate behavioral
supports
- On-going monitoring and evaluation of implementation
for continuous improvement
Effective SEL programming provides students with opportunities
to contribute to their communities, families with opportunities
to enhance their children’s social and emotional development,
school personnel (administrators, teachers, student support services,
and support staff) with ongoing professional development, and community
groups that affect the lives of children and youth (e.g., after-school
and before-school programs, juvenile justice, mental health and
health care providers groups) with opportunities to partner with
schools (Elias et al.,1997; and CASEL, Safe
and Sound, 2005).
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What empirical evidence supports
the effectiveness of SEL programming?
Several hundred studies conducted using experimental designs with
control groups have documented the positive effects of SEL programming
on children of diverse backgrounds from preschool through high school
in urban, suburban, and rural settings. Some of the best reviews
of this body of research have been done by Greenberg, et al., 2003;
and Zins, et al., 2004). Joe Durlak of Loyola University (Chicago) and Roger Weissberg of the University of Illinois at Chicago have recently completed a research synthesis of 300 studies of such programs. The research clearly
demonstrates that SEL programming significantly improves children’s
academic performance on standardized tests. Moreover, compared to
control groups, children who have participated in SEL programs have
significantly better school attendance records, less disruptive
classroom behavior, like school more, and perform better in school.
The research also indicates that children who have participated
in SEL programs are less likely than children in control groups
to be suspended or otherwise disciplined. These outcomes have been
achieved through SEL’s impact on important mental health variables
that improve children’s social relationships, increase their
attachment to school and motivation to learn, and reduce anti-social,
violent, and drug-using behaviors. The research also indicates that
SEL programs with the best outcomes are multi-year in duration,
use interactive rather than purely knowledge-based instructional
methods, and are integrated into the life of the school rather than
being implemented as marginal add-ons. (CASEL, Safe and Sound, 2005)
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What impacts does SEL have on
the adult learning community?
New lines of research provide promising glimpses of positive impacts
on professional staff members in schools that take on schoolwide
SEL programming….[MORE TO COME!]
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What are the key steps in implementing
school-wide SEL?
Implementing school-wide SEL involves a cycle of 10 key steps and
simultaneous attention to six related “sustainability”
factors. The steps in the cycle can be grouped into three phases—readiness,
planning, and implementation. Although these steps do not constitute
a strictly linear progression, earlier steps generally have chronological
priority. Since the steps constitute a cycle, it is expected that
after their initial implementation, earlier steps in the process
will be revisited at a later point in the cycle.
A. Readiness Phase: The principal (1) commits
to implementing and sustaining a school-wide SEL initiative and
(2) engages key stakeholders (e.g., teachers, families, student
support services professionals, support staff, and community members)
in the establishment of an SEL steering committee authorized to
make decisions regarding SEL implementation.
B. Planning Phase: The principal and steering
committee (3) create and share school-wide a vision of student social,
emotional, and academic development; (4) conduct a school-wide
assessment of needs and resources (i.e., readiness to implement
SEL as a school-wide priority, possible barriers to implementation,
current SEL programs and practices, school climate, student concerns
and behaviors); (5) develop an action plan based on the needs and
resources assessment with goals, benchmarks, and an implementation
timeline; and (6) review and select evidence-based SEL programs/strategies
to implement the plan.
C. Implementation Phase: Key steps in the implementation
phase are: (7) conduct initial professional development activities
for implementation staff (e.g., administrators and teachers) on
the program’s theory, principles, and strategies (usually
provided by trainers from the selected program); (8) launch pilot
SEL instruction by selected teachers with opportunities for reflection
in preparation for school-wide expansion; (9) build on the success
of the pilot by making necessary adaptations and expanding SEL instruction
to all classrooms, and integrate SEL practices into other school
activities; and (10) monitor program practices and outcomes for
continuous improvement.
The sustainability factors are activities that research has found
to be important to the long-term quality and impact of schoolwide
SEL programming. The are: (a) ongoing professional development,
(b) evaluation of practices and outcomes for continuous improvement,
(c) infrastructure development, (d) SEL integration throughout the
school, (e) active partnering with families and communities, and
(f) ongoing communication or social marketing of SEL efforts.
The implementation steps and sustainability factors are explained
in depth, and tools to assist in carrying them out are provided,
in Sustainable Schoolwide SEL: Implementation Guide and Toolkit
(2006)
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Why is it important to use an
evaluated, evidence-based SEL curriculum?
Many available SEL programs have core elements based on an underlying
theory of how desired student changes are achieved. Schools interested
in implementing an SEL program are urged to start by familiarizing
themselves with a few such programs, as reviewed in CASEL’s
Safe and Sound, 2005. This will
give them a better understanding of how these programs work and
enable them to adapt such a program to meet the needs of their students
and get buy-in from their teachers without compromising the integrity
of its core elements. Educators who pick and choose activities and
strategies from one or more programs run the risk of missing some
of these core elements and as a result not achieving the desired
results with their students. Such an approach also may contribute
to further programmatic fragmentation or result in conflicts with
other programs already in place. Using a well-designed and evaluated
program is also much less work for educators than creating their
own program from pieces of existing programs.
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How should the effectiveness
of SEL programming be evaluated?
To determine effectiveness, educators must keep two considerations
in mind: (1) Getting positive program outcomes depends upon high-quality
implementation; (2) Measuring program impacts on school climate
and student behavior and academic performance are key indicators
of its effectiveness. One tool for monitoring SEL implementation
is CASEL’s Practice Rubric for Schoolwide Implementation.
The Rubric helps school districts look at what implementation supports
they currently have in place and helps them identify next steps
they might take to further their implementation. Other evaluation tools can be found in our Assessment section and in our Sustainable Schoolwide Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Implementation Guide and Toolkit.
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How is SEL related to other
youth development and prevention initiatives?
SEL addresses the social and emotional variables that place youth
at risk for school failure (e.g., lack of attachment to a significant
adult, inability to regulate emotions) or promote school success
(e.g., ability to empathize with and work with others, effective
conflict resolution skills). In addressing these variables, SEL provides
educators with a common language and framework to organize their
activities, thus overcoming fragmentation, minimizing competition
for resources, and undermining program effectiveness. Many examples
illustrate this link between SEL and other youth development and
prevention initiatives. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports
(PBIS) is being used by many Illinois schools as the common basis
for their discipline system, and educators are exploring how it
relates to the universal programming being implemented to address
the SEL standards. Another example is character education, for which
SEL can provide an essential skill foundation for achieving positive
outcomes such as responsible and respectful behavior. Similarly,
service-learning opportunities provide ideal situations for applying
SEL skills, while these skills also enhance the quality of service-learning
experiences. In health education and promotion classes, SEL skills
provide a coordinating framework for addressing the risk and protective
factors shared by many health conditions. (CASEL, Safe and Sound,
2005).
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Where can I find funding to
support SEL programming?
As a starting point, school improvement planning teams should examine
how current prevention and youth development efforts could be best
coordinated to offer quality SEL programming. Are current practices
efficient? Is money being spent on redundant or ineffective programming?
Can current programming be changed to make it less expensive, or
can several existing programs be replaced with one more comprehensive
effort? Can an SEL program that effectively prevents disruptive
classroom behavior and promotes engagement in learning actually
save time and dollars in the long run? Can the instructional day
be reallocated to allow time for SEL professional development?
In addition to funds from your own district, some foundations and
corporations also support such programming in the communities they
serve. Several federal agencies sometimes fund programs related
to the SEL standards:
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