Project Description
With funding from the W.T. Grant Foundation, CASEL President Roger
Weissberg and Joseph Durlak, professor of clinical psychology at
Loyola University Chicago, have conducted a meta-analysis of more
than 700 positive youth development, SEL, character education, and
prevention interventions. This is the largest, most scientifically
rigorous, and up-to-date review of controlled outcome research on
interventions that promote children’s social and emotional
development to date. The sample includes school, family, and community
interventions designed to promote personal and social skills in
children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 18. Because programs
varied in their goals and procedures, the large study sample was
divided into three main areas: (a) school-based interventions
that promote social and emotional learning (SEL), (b) after-school
programs, and (c) programs for families.
Results Summary
Meta-analytic procedures were used to assess the magnitude of the
impact of interventions, and results provided strong empirical support
for the value of the social-emotional development programs. Interventions
in all three areas were effective and tended to yield multiple benefits
for their youthful participants that included gains in personal
and social skills, and reductions in problem behaviors. In two of
these research areas: school-based programs and after-school programs
also produced significant improvement in academic achievement.
The finding in the after-school and school based reviews that interventions
promoting personal and social skills also result in positive changes
in academic achievement confirms the empirical connection between
these two important dimensions of adjustment. Promoting young people’s
personal and social skills can be a way to also enhance their academic
performance. This message should find a receptive audience among
educators and coordinators of after-school programs who feel pressure
to attend to youths’ academic development and may feel that
other programming is unrelated to such a focus. To the contrary,
our findings suggest that social-emotional development programs
can make an important contribution toward enhancing young people’s
development in multiple ways, including their school performance.
Collectively, these findings provide strong justification for continued
research, practice, and policies that foster social-emotional development
for school-age populations. These interventions can improve the
quality of life for young people and help prepare them to become
responsible and contributing members of society.
Research Findings & Reports
School-based SEL interventions:
Reports and presentations:
Research findings:
Universal school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs
yield benefits in three major areas: feelings and attitudes, indicators
of behavioral adjustment, and school achievement. More specifically,
youth show improvement in social and emotional skills, school bonding,
prosocial norms, self-perceptions, positive social behaviors, and
academic achievement and significant reductions occur in such areas
as conduct problems, substance use, and internalizing symptoms.
The gains produced by school-based programs translates into a(n):
- 23% improvement in social and emotional skills
- 9% improvement in attitudes about self, others, and school
- 9% improvement in school and classroom behavior
- 9% decrease in conduct problems such as classroom misbehavior and aggression
- 10% decrease in emotional distress such as anxiety and depression
- 11 percentile point gain in achievement test scores
These positive results do not come at the expense of performance in core academic skills, but rather enhance academic achievement. Moreover, among those studies that collected follow-up data in each of the above categories, the positive benefits to students were found to persist over time. Most schools would welcome interventions that could modify such
important outcomes. As a relative comparison, with respect to academic improvement, the impact of SEL programs is almost twice as large as that achieved through class-size reductions. Overall, school-based SEL programs lead to several
meaningful, practical changes in youth’s lives.
Among other key findings:
- In contrast to programs conducted by researchers, classroom programs conducted by teachers were effective in each of the six outcome areas. The clear implication is that SEL programs can become a part of routine school practice; they do not have to be conducted by personnel from outside the school to achieve good results.
- Program implementation had a strong influence on outcomes. When a program is not well-executed, the chances of it benefiting students are greatly diminished.
After-school programs:
Reports:
Research findings:
In their review of 73 after-school programs explicitly designed,
at least in part, to enhance students’ personal and social
skills, the research team found:
1. Youth who participate in such after-school
programs improve significantly in three major areas: feelings and
attitudes, indicators of behavioral adjustment, and school performance.
More specifically, programs were successful in improving:
- youths’ feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem
- school bonding (positive feelings and attitudes toward school)
- positive social behaviors
- school grades
- achievement test scores
They were also successful in reducing problem behaviors (e.g.,
aggression, noncompliance, conduct problems) and drug use. In sum,
after-school programs produced multiple benefits that pertain to
youths’ personal, social, and academic life.
2. Effective programs that were consistently successful
in producing multiple benefits for youth used evidence-based skill
training approaches. Programs that did not use such procedures were
not successful in any outcome area.
Evidence-based approaches are sequenced, active, focused, and explicit
(S.A.F.E.):
S: use a sequenced set of activities to achieve skill objectives
A: use active forms of learning
F: include at least one program component focused on developing
personal or social skills
E: target specific personal or social skills
Programs included in this study can be found in Appendix B of the
full report. More information about many of the programs in this
analysis can be found on the Harvard Family Research Project Web site..
Family programs:
Universal interventions for families are also effective. Some interventions
attempt to change parenting practices in order to promote youth
development while others target changes in the general family environment.
Both types of interventions are effective. Overall, universal family
programs significantly increase positive outcomes for youth and
significantly reduce negative outcomes. These outcomes roughly correspond
to the above-mentioned general categories of feelings and attitudes
and indicators of behavioral adjustment as assessed in the reviews
of after-school and school-based interventions, although not enough
family interventions have evaluated gains in academic achievement
to reach any conclusions about that particular outcome.
The research report on family interventions is currently in preparation,
and will be posted here when available. |
