Social Policy Report V26, #4: Social and Emotion Learning in Schools: From Programs to Strategies

S chools are an important context for children’s social and emotional development. In classrooms and other school settings, children and adolescents need to have skills such as managing negative emotions, being calm and focused, following directions, and navigating relationships with peers and adults. To build and support these skills, schools have widely adopted social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. When well-designed and well-implemented, SEL programs are associated with positive outcomes; however, effect sizes are generally modest even for the most promising interventions. This issue of Social Policy Report proposes that schools should take a new approach: integrating the teaching and reinforcement of SEL skills into their daily interactions and practices with students. It explains that research warrants a new perspective and highlights a range of new approaches and support strategies that are designed to be time-efficient, low-cost, and integrated with (rather than distracting from) academic curricula. These strategies are grounded in an organizing framework for SEL and a review of current programmatic approaches to SEL. They are introduced with a set of principles for creating better integration of SEL into educational practice and accompanied by recommendations about the role of policy.