SEL Journal

Editor-in-Chief: Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl is NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  From 1991 to 2020, she was a professor in the department of educational and counseling psychology, and special education in the faculty of education at University of British Columbia (UBC).  In July 2020, Dr. Schonert-Reichl completed a five-year appointment as the director of the Human Early Learning Partnership in the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC.  Known as a world-renowned expert in the area of social and emotional learning (SEL), Kim’s research focuses on identification of the processes that foster positive human qualities such as empathy, compassion, altruism, and resiliency in children and adolescents.  She is the recipient of the 2021 Janusz Korczak Medal for Children’s Rights Advocacy, the 2019 Postsecondary Leader of the Year Award – Canadian Edtech Awards, the 2015 Joseph E. Zins Distinguished Scholar Award for Outstanding SEL Research, and the 2009 Confederation of University Faculty Associations BC’s Paz Buttedahl Career Achievement Award.  Kim’s research has been highlighted in major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and many more.  Since 2006, Kim has been invited to participate in several dialogues with the Dalai Lama on the themes of cultivating compassion and educating the heart.  Kim received her MA in Educational Psychology from the University of Chicago, her PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Chicago, her PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Iowa and completed her postdoctoral work as a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence at the University of Chicago and the Department of Psychiatry at Northwestern University Medical School.  Prior to her graduate work, Kim worked as a middle school teacher and then as a teacher at an alternative high school.

Senior Associate Editor: Catherine Bradshaw is a university professor and the senior associate dean at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development. Her primary research interests focus on the development of behavior and mental health problems and school-based prevention and intervention programming. She collaborates on several federally funded research projects examining bullying and school climate; development of aggressive and problem behaviors; educational and disciplinary disparities; and design, evaluation, and implementation of prevention programs in schools. She collaborates on several trials of school-based prevention programs, including Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and social-emotional learning curricula. She is a former associate editor for the Journal of Research on Adolescence and the editor of Prevention Science. She is a author/editor of several books, including the Handbook of School Mental Health, Handbook on Bullying Prevention: A Lifecourse Perspective, and Preventing Bullying in Schools: A Social and Emotional Learning Approach to Prevention and Early Intervention. 

John-Tyler Binfet is an associate professor in the Okanagan School of Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Dr. Binfet is the Director of Graduate Programs and the Director of UBC’s long-running canine therapy program titled Building Academic Retention through K9s (B.A.R.K.). As the founder and director of B.A.R.K., Dr. Binfet oversees on-campus interventions and community programming that see 60+ therapy dogs brought to campus to reduce student stress. Dr. Binfet’s insights into therapy dogs and the role they play in supporting student well-being are captured in his co-authored book titled “Canine-Assisted Interventions” (Binfet & Hartwig, 2020; Routledge Press). Responding to the need to reach remote audiences, Dr. Binfet’s new co-authored book “Virtual Human-Animal Interactions” (Tardif-Williams & Binfet, 2023; Routledge Press) illustrates how to create virtual opportunities to connect with animals. When not covered in dog hair from work in the B.A.R.K. lab, Dr. Binfet’s second research stream sees him exploring how children, adolescents and teachers understand and enact kindness within the school context. As a former teacher and school counsellor, Dr. Binfet has a keen interest in understanding how school communities can foster students’ prosociality. Along with Drs. Gadermann and Schonert-Reichl, Dr. Binfet developed the School Kindness Scale, the first measure of its kind to assess perceptions of school kindness. His new book “Cultivating Kindness: An Educator’s Guide” (Binfet, 2022; University of Toronto Press) showcases findings from surveys and interviews with over 3,000 children and adolescents around how kindness is conceptualized. An informal look into Dr. Binfet’s research can be found in his blog for Psychology Today titled “Canines, Kids, and Kindness.”

Jennifer DePaoli is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Whole Child Policy Table at the Learning Policy Institute. She also co-leads the Whole Child Education team, focusing on students’ social and emotional learning and well-being, the science of learning and development, and putting the whole child at the center of policy and practice. Jennifer brings with her more than a decade of experience teaching and conducting research and policy analysis in k–12 education. She began her career teaching middle grade students and later taught courses in educational foundations to pre-service teachers at the University of Akron and Ohio State University. Prior to joining LPI, Jennifer served as the Senior Research & Policy Advisor at Civic Enterprises, where she led research on raising high school graduation rates and increasing college readiness, social and emotional learning, and alternative school accountability systems. Before that, she conducted school choice and charter school policy research at Policy Matters Ohio. Jennifer earned her Ph.D. in Education Policy from Ohio State University. She also holds a Master’s in Middle Childhood Education and a B.A. in Communications from the University of Dayton.

Lisa Flook is a Clinical and Research Psychologist. She has conducted research in educational settings for over 20 years. A strong interest in promoting health and well-being led her to study the effects of mindfulness in school settings at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center and UW-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds. She also served as a senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, involved in translating research on children’s learning and development to inform practice and policy. She holds a PhD and MA in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Laura Hamilton is associate vice president of research centers at ETS, leading a portfolio of research on assessment and learning related to K-12 and postsecondary education and workforce development. She also serves as the Eignor Executive Editor at ETS. Prior to joining ETS, she served as distinguished chair in learning and assessment at RAND, directed the RAND Center for Social and Emotional Learning Research, and co-directed RAND’s national teacher, principal, and school district survey panels. Much of her research has focused on promoting effective use of assessment data to support social, emotional, and academic learning and on providing evidence-based guidance to local and state education leaders. She has also explored how civic education can contribute to a more equitable and informed society. Her work has been funded by federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private donors and has been published in a wide variety of venues including academic journals and policy reports. She’s served on numerous committees and panels including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Developing Indicators of Education Equity, the steering committee for the CASEL Assessment Work Group, and the technical advisory committees for several state assessment programs. She’s an associate editor of Educational Researcher and a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She is serving as an associate editor of the policy section of a soon-to-be-launched SEL journal. In 2020 she received the Joseph A. Zins Distinguished Scholar Award for Social and Emotional Learning Action Research. She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology and an M.S. in statistics from Stanford University.

Jorge Gaete Olivares is a Medical Doctor from Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile. He is a Specialist in Adult Psychiatry from the University of Chile. He also has a Master of Science in Psychology with a major in Child-Adolescent Clinical Psychology (University of Chile) and a PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology from the University of Bristol, UK. He did a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Center for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Clinical Research Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at King’s College London. Currently, he is Director of the Research Center for Students Mental Health (ISME), Universidad de los Andes, Chile. His research areas of interest are knowing the risk and protective factors for the development of mental health problems and drug use among children and adolescents. He is also interested in evaluating the effectiveness of preventive interventions in mental health, behavioral problems, school violence, substance misuse, and bullying in children and adolescents. He has more than 60 publications in scientific journals (Web of Science ResearcherID: C-7471-2014) and has directed several research projects funded by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID) and other national and international institutions. He is currently Tenured Professor of the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de los Andes, Principal Investigator at the Millennium Science Initiative Program, Millennium Nucleus To Improve the Mental Health of Adolescents and Youths (IMHAY). He was part of the Guideline Development Group, convened by the World Health Organization for the realization of the School Health Services Guideline. 

Sara Rimm-Kaufman is the Commonwealth Professor of Education at the University of Virginia. She conducts research on elementary and middle school classrooms with the goal of using evidence to improve the quality of schooling experiences for teachers and students. Over the past twenty years, she has led the UVA Social Development Lab, a dynamic team of researchers, students, post-doctoral trainees, and staff toward improved understanding of the systematic ways that classroom social and psychological experiences are productive (or not productive) environments for child and youth development. In all her work, she has a steadfast commitment to educational equity. Dr. Rimm-Kaufman and her team have conducted research on programs including Connect Science, Responsive Classroom, EL Education, Leading Together, RULER, Valor Collegiate & Compass and beyond. She and her team receive funds from National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and private foundations (e.g., Carnegie, Templeton) to do their work. She has authored more than 100 chapters, articles, blogs, and websites including SEL from the Start, an easy-to-read book for teachers. Rimm-Kaufman has served as a research advisor for organizations including World Bank Group, EL Education, and New Schools Venture Fund. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 15) and American Psychological Science. Since 2004, she has been directing and co-directing IES-funded training programs including the Virginia Education Science Training (VEST) doctoral training program and the VEST and EL-VEST post-doctoral training programs. She is a faculty member in Educational Psychology-Applied Developmental Science and invites prospective students to join their research teams. 

Michael Strambler is an Associate Professor and currently directs the Child Well-Being and Education Research at The Consultation Center at Yale University.  He is also a Senior Evaluation Consultant for YaleEval. His work has two main themes. One theme focuses on the role of social environments in the academic, psychological, social, and behavioral well-being of children and youth. A second theme examines whether and how school-based programs and practices improve the academic performance and health of children and emphasizes practical approaches for how to use data to inform practices and policies.  Much of his work occurs in the context of partnerships between researchers and practitioners. One such project he directs is the Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER; http://peer.yale.edu), a research-practice partnership between three Connecticut communities. Mike received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from University of California at Berkeley and conducted his predoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Upon completing this fellowship, Mike was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rush Neurobehavioral Center with funding from the William T. Grant Foundation. He completed his postdoctoral training at The Consultation Center at Yale within the Division of Prevention and Community Research at Yale School of Medicine with support from the Ford Foundation. 

Nick Yoder, PhD, is the Associate Vice President for the Center on Whole Human Education and Research at Harmony Academy at National University. Dr. Yoder leads this center to use evidence to create usable and relevant products, professional learning and support to educators, out-of-school time professionals, and families. He leads innovative solutions for adults and students that support their relationship-driven social and emotional development, as well as lead research projects to understand the use and impact of those solutions. Prior to Harmony Academy, Dr. Yoder was the Director of Policy and Practice at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a principal/senior technical assistant consultant at the American Institutes for Research, a pre-service instructor and field coach at the University of Michigan, and first grade teacher in Chicago Public Schools. He also serves on the board of CREATE and the SEL Provider’s Association, as well as serve on the Local School Council for his local school. He received his PhD in Education and Psychology, a masters and bachelors in Psychology at the University of Michigan, a masters in Instructional Leadership at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and his teaching certificate at Dominican University

Vicki Zakrzewski, Ph.D., is the founding education director at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. She writes articles (Greater Good, ASCD’s Educational Leadership, Edutopia, Handbook of Positive Psychology in Education, and Huffington Post), gives talks and workshops all over the world, and has designed online courses for educators on the science of well-being in education. Vicki also sits on several advisory boards, and consults and collaborates with educational organizations on how to incorporate the science of well-being into education. Sample collaborations include the EASEL Lab and Making Caring Common within the Harvard Graduate School of Education; the CalHOPE project, providing SEL training to every California educator; CASEL’s California Collaborating States Initiative; the Learning and Policy Institute at Stanford University; Generation Citizen on Bridging Differences practices for educators; UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Peace and Sustainable Development; the Delhi Ministry of Education on their Happiness Curriculum; Science for Monks and Nuns in Dharamsala, India; the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai, UAE; the Mind and Life Institute (of which she is a fellow); several social-emotional learning programs, including Second Step, MindUp, Open Circle, Facing History and Ourselves, and Inner Resilience; and Pixar/Disney on The Emotions Survival Guide—a follow-up book for children based on the movie Inside Out. Most recently, Vicki has been the creative lead for the GGSC’s new online resource for educators, Greater Good in Education. A former teacher and school leader, she earned her Ph.D. in Education and Positive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University.