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November/December 1998
Some practitioners see critical needs being met by social and emotional curriculum
By Michael Sadowski
Acting out, fighting, racial and other slurs, bullying, willful disruption of learning. Many teachers are faced with problem behaviors like these at one time or another: some face them virtually every day. And as every teacher knows, the educational costs of these behaviors can be tremendous.
Debby Collins, principal of the K-5 Plymouth School in Monrovia, CA, says that until recently most of her staff believed lack of discipline was a serious impediment to learning in their classrooms. Collins recalls several teachers' comments:
- "Kids don't know how to cooperate or act nicely toward each other."
- "There is far too much acting-out behavior."
- "What's killing us, keeping us from being the best we can be, is a lack of discipline."
Having tried traditional approaches such as detention, time-outs, and calls to parents without much success, Collins and her staff decided it was time to look for an alternative. After reading Teaching Children to Care: Management in the Responsive Classroom by Ruth Sidney Charney, the Plymouth staff became interested in and eventually adopted the Responsive Classroom approach to social and emotional learning. They started the program with the 1997-98 school year, and Collins says things are already beginning to change.
Developed at the Northeast Foundation for Children in Greenfield, MA, the Responsive Classroom approach focuses on building such skills as cooperation, healthy assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. Program components geared to building these competencies include "morning meeting," in which students practice conversation and listening skills as they share stories and concerns; "guided discovery," whereby teachers deliberately guide students' introduction to classroom materials to foster curiosity and respect for these materials; "academic choice time," which encourages students to make personal investments in their own learning; and classroom organization that includes student "interest areas" and facilitates collaborative work in different-size groups.
The Plymouth School completed its first year of the Responsive Classroom program last spring, with all 630 students in 31 classes participating. Collins made sure that all adults in the building--not only teachers, but also secretaries, custodians, and other building staff--participated in the training so that messages and expectations would be consistent throughout the school. While it is too early to gauge the program's effect on academics, Collins has been encouraged by teachers' comments and the changes she notices in children's attitudes and behaviors. "The kids are developing more empathy for each other. They're better able to see another person's point of view," she observes. "There are fewer discipline referrals, and kids seem to be able to cooperate better. It really does create a more orderly environment where kids are safer."
Of course, classroom and playground conflicts still occur, but Collins has noted differences in the way children handle them: "In situations where there has been a physical fight or somebody takes something from somebody else, now kids are more likely to be honest about it and to take more responsibility for their actions."
Responsive Classroom is just one of 23 programs listed on the website of the Consortium for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), an organization established in 1994 and dedicated to the development, promotion, and evaluation of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. While these programs vary in objectives, approaches, and grade levels reached (ranging from preschool through grade 12), the overarching idea behind SEL programs is developing social and emotional skills, including self-esteem, respect for others, personal decision-making, avoiding high-risk behaviors, conflict resolution, and effective communication. In this way, SEL educators hope to preempt problem behaviors and help students become happier, more empathetic, more socially skilled adults. "The most successful SEL programs are those that address the needs of the whole child," says CASEL executive director Roger Weissberg, professor of psychology and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Interest in social and emotional skills has been growing lately, as teachers look for new strategies to deal with problem behaviors. In his 1995 best-seller Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues, based on research in psychology, neurobiology, and other fields, that knowing how to manage one's emotions is at least as important for success in life as intellect. He also writes that SEL programs play an integral role in helping prepare children for all of the challenges they face now and will face in the future: "Beyond [the] educational advantages, the courses seem to help children better fulfill their roles in life, becoming better friends, students, sons and daughters-and in the future [they] are more likely to be better husbands and wives, workers and bosses, parents, and citizens."
New Haven's SEL Program
The specific reasons why educators adopt social and emotional learning programs differ, but many have two primary goals that they believe are closely linked: improved social and emotional skills, and better academic performance. Karol DeFalco, a facilitator for social development in the New Haven (CT) Public Schools, says poor academic achievement, especially among high-risk segments of the school population, prompted that system's decision to begin developing an SEL program a decade ago. DeFalco and her colleagues also were deeply concerned about the district's high rates of teen parenting, dropouts, and illegal drug use, all of which appeared to be closely linked to low academic achievement.
About 75 people representing virtually all constituencies of the New Haven school community-parents, <%4>teachers, administrators, business<%0> owners, clergy, and others-met and discussed ways to improve the achievement of underperforming students. The group concluded, based on their observations, that many of these students shared common social and emotional characteristics, including lack of impulse control, poor problem-solving skills, low self-esteem, difficulty in accepting individual differences, and poor communication skills. "We realized we had to do something about students' social and emotional development if they were going to have any hope of improving academically," DeFalco says.
Working with Weissberg, then a psychology professor at Yale University, district staff members developed a program in social and emotional learning that has grown into the New Haven Social Development Project, a wide-ranging K-12 curriculum in which all 20,000 students in the city's public schools participate. The objectives of the curriculum are to improve students' skills in three areas: self-monitoring, problem-solving and decisionmaking, and communication. Within these areas, the program focuses on such issues as self-awareness and anger management at the elementary level; peer-pressure resistance in middle school; and transition-making, violence prevention, and the understanding and acceptance of differences at the high school level.
In an effort to gauge the program's effectiveness, the project's staff developed an evaluation instrument in 1992; they now survey all of the city's 6th-, 8th-, and 10-graders (about 2,500 students) every two years. Their results have been encouraging. While the study does not establish definite links between SEL and academic achievement, statistics for several academically related indicators have shown improvement. According to their surveys, from 1992 to 1996 (the last year for which data are available), the dropout rate, students' attitudes about school, feelings of school safety, retention rates, and the percentage of students who plan to go on to college have all improved. Students also have a greater sense that there is respect for diversity within the schools. Statistics about alcohol and drug use have essentially remained steady. "Kids are fighting less, they report they are less sexually active, they feel happier and safer at school, and more want to go on to college. There's definitely reason for optimism," DeFalco says.
Results Encouraging but Limited
Several recent larger studies of the effects of SEL programs also show promising results, but their findings require some qualification. Stephen N. Elliott, professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, conducted a study of 301 Responsive Classroom and control group students in the Springfield, MA, public schools. Using three social skills measurement instruments and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) to measure academic achievement, Elliott found that over the 1996-97 school year:
- 34 percent of students in Responsive Classroom classes showed reliable improvement in social skills, while only 20 percent of students in the control group did;
- 30 percent of students in Responsive Classroom classes showed reliable improvement in problem behaviors, while only 10 percent of students in the control group did;
- ITBS scores rose 22 percent for the Responsive Classroom students and 3 percent for the control group students;
- there is a correlation (determined by regression analysis) between social skills improvement and improved ITBS scores.
Elliott, who has also studied Responsive Classroom programs in other settings, says he sees the changes effected by the program occurring in several "waves": "In the first wave of change, problem behaviors decrease. This creates the opportunity for more prosocial behaviors to replace some of the problem behaviors. And these prosocial behaviors serve as quite powerful academic enablers for a good 30-40 percent of the students we work with."
In another study of SEL's effectiveness, Metis Associates, a New York research firm, is examining the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP) in the Atlanta public schools. A project of Educators for Social Responsibility (based in Cambridge, MA), RCCP is geared to developing students' social skills and their understanding about alternatives to violence. As RCCP director Linda Lantieri explains, the project focuses on "problem-solving and communication skills used in deescalating conflict." These skills include active listening, expression of feelings, perspective-taking, negotiation, and encountering bias.
Data covering two school years (fall 1995 to spring 1997) show a 17 percent decline in the RCCP high school's out-of-school suspension rate, compared to a 6 percent increase citywide, and a dropout rate that is 1.7 percentage points lower than the city average. Qualitative data from the study show improved self-esteem, more willingness to help others, and greater responsibility for handling conflicts among the RCCP students. Metis Associates senior vice president Stan Schneider says the findings are especially encouraging, given that the RCCP high school had previously been one of the lowest performing in the city. In what is perhaps the study's most impressive statistic, out-of-school suspensions in the RCCP middle school (West Fulton) decreased by 10 percent, compared to an 86 percent increase citywide.
West Fulton Principal Robert Bell credits RCCP and several other new initiatives with improving the suspension statistics. The school has also added peer mediation and Saturday detention as deterrents to potentially suspendable offenses. He adds that RCCP training has also helped teachers manage classroom behavior better, reducing the need for discipline referrals.
Carolyn Lee Hart, liaison specialist in the Atlanta public schools' department of professional development, who has worked closely on the RCCP implementation, says, "I think the program has had a great impact because the schools that we selected [for RCCP participation] were in a difficult area for us, an area where we've had low test scores. The environment of those schools has changed so. It's just an uplifting environment now. Teachers have made changes in what they do, and students respond."
One thing SEL advocates are quick to point out is that neither the need for SEL nor its benefits are limited to urban schools and students. The Oakland, CA-based Developmental Studies Center recently released findings of three evaluation studies, representing urban, suburban, and rural schools participating in its Child Development Project (CDP). Geared to fostering "caring communities" in schools, key components of CDP include the integration of social and ethical content into literature-based reading and language arts programs; specific lesson formats for collaborative classroom learning; "developmental discipline" that emphasizes problem-solving approaches instead of punishments and rewards; and a range of family involvement efforts.
Students in CDP schools, representing eight districts in four different states, were found to have improved prosocial attitudes and behaviors and a greater sense of their schools as communities. Instead of geography, the key factor for success, according to Developmental Studies Center president Eric Schaps, was whether most teachers in a school made "meaningful movement toward implementation" of the program.
Weakness in the Research
One weakness in the overall body of SEL research is that many evaluations (including those of Responsive Classroom, RCCP, and the Child Development Project previously mentioned) have been commissioned or conducted by the organizations whose programs are under evaluation. SEL advocates agree that more independent research is needed. Second, the research does little to answer the question of whether the benefits of social and emotional learning stay with students beyond their experiences in a classroom or school with an SEL component. In other words, do SEL students really grow up to be better adjusted, more caring adults?
Weissberg notes that evaluating the long-term effects of social and emotional learning programs is complicated by a variety of factors. "Doing an accurate longitudinal study with this work would be extremely costly and complex," he says. "How do you evaluate a 12- or 13-year multicomponent social and emotional learning program? Basically, any program that can be evaluated scientifically is probably one that is less ambitious in scope."
Instead of checking outcome data, Weissberg suggests that educators who are considering an SEL curriculum look at what goes into each program: "How are the skills taught? How clearly designed are the lesson plans? How are people trained to implement the programs? Is there follow-up training to support skill applications? These are the kinds of questions to ask."
For Further Information
J.L. Aber, S.M. Jones, J.L. Brown, N. Chaudry, and F. Samples. "Resolving Conflict Creatively: Evaluating the Effects of a School-Based Violence Prevention Program in Neighborhood and Classroom Contexts." Development and Psychopathology 10 (1998): 187-213.
R.S. Charney. Teaching Children to Care: Management in the Responsive Classroom. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children, 1991.
Consortium for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). The CASEL website lists descriptions, target grade levels, and contact information for 23 social and emotional learning programs. Beginning next year, CASEL will also include its evaluations of some existing SEL programs on the site: http://www.cfapress.org/casel/casel.html.
M.J. Elias, J.E. Zins, R.P. Weissberg, K.S. Frey, M.T. Greenberg, N.M. Haynes, R. Kessler, M.E. Schwab-Stone, and T.P. Shriver. Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1997.
D. Goleman. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.
L. Lantieri and J. Patti. Waging Peace in Our Schools. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Michael Sadowski is a freelance education writer. He teaches English and drama at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School in Massachusetts.
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