Corrected: An earlier version of this story misidentified Joseph Durlak鈥檚 university. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University Chicago.
Includes updates and/or revisions.
From role-playing games for students to parent seminars, teaching social and emotional learning requires a lot of moving parts, but when all the pieces come together such instruction can rival the effectiveness of purely academic interventions to boost student achievement, according to the largest analysis of such programs to date.
In the , published Feb. 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development, researchers led by Joseph A. Durlak, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Chicago, found that students who took part in social and emotional learning, or SEL, programs improved in grades and standardized-test scores by 11 percentile points compared with nonparticipating students. That difference, the authors say, was significant鈥攅quivalent to moving a student in the middle of the class academically to the top 40 percent of students during the course of the intervention. Such improvement fell within the range of effectiveness for recent analyses of interventions focused on academics.
Compared with their peers, participating students also significantly improved on five key nonacademic measures: They demonstrated greater social skills, less emotional distress and better attitudes, fewer conduct problems such as bullying and suspensions, and more-frequent positive behaviors, such as cooperation and help for other students. Also, the effects continued at least six months after the programs ended.
鈥淲e learned this is very practical for schools and doable in schools,鈥� Mr. Durlak said. 鈥淭here can be a payoff academically for these kids that compares to a lot of straightforward academic interventions, which is really sort of amazing.鈥�
Social and emotional education seeks to provide a foundation for academic instruction by teaching students skills in self-awareness and self-management, getting along with others, and decision-making. Programs vary from afterschool courses taught by outside providers to schoolwide efforts incorporating curriculum, teacher professional development, school activities, and parent training.
For this study, researchers distinguished SEL programs intended to teach social skills broadly from programs focused on fixing specific behaviors, such as bullying.
The research team identified individual practices in 213 school-based studies, covering 270,034 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. About half the studies used randomized controlled trials. The team informally announced preliminary findings in 2007 that suggested SEL programs increased academic achievement. (鈥淪ocial-Skills Programs Found to Yield Gains in Academic Subjects,鈥� December 19, 2007.)
For the final report, the researchers narrowed the focus to include only programs that had no academic component, and were provided during the school day as universal programs, rather than those targeted to specific students with behavior problems.
The researchers found the SEL programs most likely to be effective followed what Mr. Durlak called the SAFE model: 鈥渟equenced,鈥� step-by-step instruction; 鈥渁ctive鈥� learning, such as role-playing; with sufficient time 鈥渇ocused鈥� on each lesson; and 鈥渆xplicit鈥� learning goals. The most effective programs used all four practices together.
Lost Teaching Time
Corinne Gregory, the president and founder of the Seattle-based schoolwide SEL program , suggested the improvement in those soft skills likely caused the rise in academic achievement, in part because educators could teach more efficiently with calmer, more cooperative students. A 2003 by the New York City-based policy-research group Public Agenda found teachers reported losing as much as 30 percent of instructional time to deal with behavior problems in class, and Ms. Gregory said some of the schools participating in the SocialSmarts program reported increasing students鈥� time on task by more than 40 percent.
She agreed with the researchers鈥� decision to test programs that focused on social-skills instruction, rather than preventing specific behaviors like bullying.
鈥淲e focus all of our efforts on that nasty endpoint of the social-emotional continuum, bullying, rather than preventing all the other problems that lead up to that,鈥� such as disrespect in the classroom or cheating, Ms. Gregory said. 鈥淏y then, it鈥檚 almost too late in the game.鈥�
Yet one finding ran counter to both the researchers鈥� expectations and prior research: Simple teacher-led programs vastly outperformed multifaceted programs involving schoolwide activities and parent involvement. While classroom-based programs showed significant improvements across all five social measures and academics, comprehensive programs showed no significant effect on students鈥� social-emotional skills or positive social behavior, and were less effective at improving academic performance.
The finding bears echoes of an Institute of Education Sciences released last fall, which found that seven of the nation鈥檚 most common character education programs failed to yield significant social or academic improvements.
Other previous studies have suggested students respond better to programs that reinforce social learning throughout the school and at home, but this study found that programs with more components were less likely to follow any鈥攏ot to mention all鈥攐f the best practices of sequenced, active lessons based on explicit goals and sufficient focus on each goal.
鈥淭he more-comprehensive and broader programs tended to have more implementation problems,鈥� Mr. Durlak said. 鈥淭rying to do more in the schools tends to be harder, takes more coordination, involves more people鈥攖hey鈥檙e a lot harder to pull off.
SocialSmarts is such a comprehensive program, and while Ms. Gregory said it has shown positive academic and social effects, she acknowledged that coordinating implementation 鈥渉as been a challenge.鈥�
鈥淓veryone from the janitor to the principal has to be responsible for this,鈥� Ms. Gregory said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had schools that said we can鈥檛 send this [parent activity] home; the parents won鈥檛 read it. I say well, you can be sure they鈥檒l never read it if you don鈥檛 send it home.鈥�
To offset the implementation issues, SocialSmarts requires schools to purchase a license for the program, rather than buying a curriculum. It also provides a newsletter, training for teachers and parents, and online platforms where teachers share practices.
Mr. Durlak said the researchers would continue to add to the research database, which now includes studies only as recent as 2007, and hopes to dig into the best practices of effective programs in more depth.
