Key Points
Back to top- 2024 SEL Exchange speaker and Commonwealth Professor of Education at the University of Virginia Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman offers ways to integrate SEL with academics in the classroom.
- It’s more essential than ever to give youth applied, hands-on experiences that are authentic, meaningful, and link learning to the real world.
- Project-based learning offers an effective, powerful, and creative way to provide students with this kind of learning experience.
We can’t wait for the 2024 SEL Exchange, in Chicago, November 12-14. Our theme this year is “ACCELERATE: Academic Thriving and Lifelong Learning,” and we’ll be hearing from education experts from around the world to explore how social and emotional learning (SEL) supports student academic success and creates the spark that ignites lifelong learning.
One of these experts is Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman. Here’s what she had to say when we asked:
What are some of the most effective, powerful, and/or creative ways to integrate SEL with academics in the classroom you’ve encountered?
There are so many possible examples that come to mind. As for the most effective, powerful and creative, I say we need to call attention to project-based learning. This is not a new idea but one that needs reinvigoration in many schools.
When I think of the challenges facing us—pandemic learning loss, increases in school absenteeism—I think it’s more essential than ever to have one part of the day that gives youth applied, hands-on experiences that are authentic and meaningful and link learning to ideas occurring in the real world. Project-based learning fits that need.
There are many resources available for integration between academics and SEL related to project-based learning. Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (tSEL) offers a vision for what we are trying to achieve. There are countless programs and resources available for schools to adopt in part or in full, such as EL Education, New Tech High, and PBLWorks, among others.
As an example, I’ll describe a program called Connect Science, a project-based learning program that brings together service-learning, SEL, and science. If you look carefully at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or state-specific versions of these standards, you will discover that many of the practice standards require effective social and emotional skills. This reality leads naturally to integration of SEL and science through service-learning.
Connect Science is designed for teachers and students in the upper elementary school grades, and its principles and practices can be used in middle or high schools. In this work conducted collaboratively with Tracy Harkins and Eileen Merritt, we used the NYLC definition of service-learning that formed the basis of the KIDS as Planners Model. By definition, high-quality service-learning links closely to the curriculum, gives students a strong voice in planning, and involves meaningful partnerships in the community.
Here’s what it looks like: In a Connect Science classroom, students learn about what it means to be civically engaged and learn about the responsibilities and privileges that come with being a member of society. Then, students establish the norms for their classrooms and learn some basic social and emotional skills—listening, turn-taking, respecting other people’s perspectives even if they disagree. Then, students launch fully into science learning.
The Connect Science-Energy focuses on energy sources. It is an ideal concept for service-learning because it’s a regular part of the upper elementary school curriculum, energy problems have many different solutions—there is not one right way to fix the problem—and there are ways students can learn about energy and then take action in the community.
For instance, in science, students learn about circuits and electricity, and then the discussion moves along to the sources of and production of electricity. In that process, the students learn about the various renewable and non-renewable resources. As they engage in learning, many students have an “aha moment”: they realize that if we keep living how we’re living, we’ll run out of nonrenewable resources. This comes with a kind of urgency for fourth graders, and we notice they spring into action: “We’d better do something to fix this!”
Then, the class considers options—they can take direct action (e.g., use less electricity), try to change a policy (e.g., the type of lightbulbs in their school), or educate others (e.g., teach others ways to conserve). As an example, one class chose to educate others—they had an energy fair that they called an energy festival. They taught second grade students and their families about energy sources. They had a booth to teach why we need to conserve, a demonstration about ways of conserving, and a “fishing for fact” game. Adults received information on how to get a home energy audit based on a local power company. As part of this, the students gathered information about what their visitors had learned. (In one student-led survey, the students asked their participants how long they should keep the refrigerator open when they need a snack. In case you’re wondering, less time is better than more!)
Our research team conducted a randomized controlled trial and found that students in the Connect Science group showed greater science learning and showed greater awareness and understanding of energy related issues. Plus, when teachers used Connect Science fully, students showed improvements in their social skills. We also conducted focus groups of students in Connect Science and comparison classrooms and discovered that Connect Science students experienced more cognitive autonomy in their classrooms. For instance, they talked more about how they were able to form their own ideas, engage in debate, and make decisions about the direction of their science schoolwork. Connect Science students also talked more about being emotionally engaged in learning. As one fourth grader described, science “is not my best subject, but it’s my funnest subject, and it’s one of my favorites, and I feel comfortable doing it.”
This rigorously conducted study shows that when teachers use service-learning to integrate SEL and academic content, students benefit academically and beyond.
We’re excited to hear from Sara at the SEL Exchange, and we hope you are, too. Learn more about this gathering and register now!
The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.
Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman has been conducting research on elementary and middle school classrooms for the last 20 years. She and her team strive to develop roadmaps for administrators and teachers making decisions for teachers, youth, and children. As Commonwealth Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, she has had a steadfast commitment to examining ways of improving school experiences for students facing adversity. She has conducted research on many SEL programs including Connect Science, EL Education, Leading Together, Responsive Classroom, RULER, Valor Collegiate, among others. She and her team have authored more than 80 articles and have garnered more than $15 million in research grants to study SEL. One challenge she sees is that researchers have extensive knowledge about SEL but rarely share it with educators in an accessible format. This concern led her to write, SEL from the Start, a book for teachers published by Norton in 2020, and SEL in Action: Creating System Change in Schools, published by Guilford. Dr. Rimm-Kaufman serves on the CASEL Research Advisory Board and as an associate editor for SEL: Research, Practice & Policy. In 2007, she was the inaugural awardee of the Joseph Zins Purpose Award for Early Career Contributions in SEL.
Related Posts:
- 2024 SEL Exchange Sneak Peek: Mathematics and SEL Are a Natural Pair
- What Strategies Can We Use to Integrate SEL and Academic Learning?
- Building “STEMpathy”: Engineering Inclusive Classrooms Through Project-Based Learning
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