What Is Social and Emotional Learning?

What Is Social and Emotional Learning?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to a wide range of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that can affect student success in school and life. Consider the skills not necessarily measured by tests: critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, teamwork. While unable to traditionally quantify, these can round out student education and impact academic success, employability, self-esteem, relationships, and civic and community engagement.

The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) identifies five competencies of SEL: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. CASEL claims that this SEL framework is key to establish equitable learning environments for learning and development. Additionally, other definitions highlight SEL’s ability to build career-readiness skills. These skills are learned in a variety of places, including the home, preschool, and schools. States set their own definitions of SEL and determine what, when, where, and how SEL works in the classroom. For example, Virginia requires the department of education to establish an SEL definition and develop guidance standards specific for all K-12 students. As for when, many states have found that SEL is best emphasized primarily in preschool, while a handful of other states have set SEL standards in the later grades as well.

Under the federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states may decide to account for the social and emotional learning happening in their schools and to use that data to make decisions about how best to support schools. In new state accountability systems, such as school climate or student engagement, states are considering using social and emotional learning indicators.

Research demonstrates that social and emotional learning can:

• Improve Academic Achievement—In a 2011 meta-analysis of 213 school-based SEL programs spanning kindergarten through high school, researchers found that SEL participants demonstrated improved academic performance in an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement.

• Make a Lifelong Impact on Students—A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found significant associations between social-emotional skills in kindergarten and young adult outcomes across education, employment, criminal activity, and mental health.

• Benefit the Economy – A 2015 report reveals every dollar invested in SEL programming yields $11 in long-term benefits. These benefits include reduced juvenile crime, higher lifetime earnings, and better mental and physical health.

• Advance Educational Equity – In the CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL they highlighted that SEL fosters an equitable learning environment for students of all social identities, cultural values, and backgrounds.

SEL in Afterschool Programs

Afterschool programs have long supported skills-building and positive development in children and youth and can be an effective setting for supporting SEL because of the flexibility they have in their programming. Research demonstrates that children and youth who regularly attend afterschool programs that utilize evidence-based practices benefit from improved self-perception, positive social behaviors, reduction in student discipline programs, and increased achievement and attendance. The SEL that occurs in afterschool programs can also contribute to increased employability skills and career readiness.

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