At a glance
- Social, emotional, and behavioral learning focuses on developing skills to promote physical and mental health.
- Research shows that school leaders strongly support programs that improve students’ social skills and emotional development. The reason: these programs improve students’ mental health and help build positive school climates.
Programs
Programs that improve students' social skills and emotional development also improve academic performance and are a proven prevention strategy widely used in schools.
These programs focus on five key areas:
Self-management
Students' ability to manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations in a way that helps achieve their goals.
Responsible decision-making
Students' ability to make caring and positive choices about their behavior and social interactions in different situations.
Relationship skills
Students' ability to build and maintain healthy, supportive relationships and positively interact with diverse people and groups.
Social awareness
Students' ability to understand the views of and empathize with others.
Self-awareness
Students' ability to understand their own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they affect behavior.
Did you know?
Provide classroom instruction focused on building social skills and emotional development
Classroom lessons that help students build social skills and emotional development should cover topics such as:
- Recognizing thoughts.
- Understanding feelings.
- Making decisions and solving problems.
- Having healthy relationships.
Programs focused on building social skills and emotional development can take many forms, depending on what works best for your school. Some programs consist of one computer-based session. Others consist of multiple lessons delivered by a guidance counselor or taught by a teacher throughout the school year. Universal programs reach all students in either a grade or a classroom.
Summary of evidence
Offer targeted education focused on teaching social skills and emotional development
Targeted social skill and emotional development education focuses on teaching small groups of students who need added support for emotional or behavioral challenges. The lessons are tailored to students’ identified needs.
Teachers and leaders can use different strategies to identify students who would benefit from targeted education. When deciding if targeted education is a good fit for a student, teachers and staff should consider their own observations. They should also consider the student’s age, and reports about students' feelings and experiences. Parent observations can also be helpful, especially for younger children.
Summary of evidence
Focus on equity
- Consider using transformative social and emotional learning to advance equity. A transformative social and emotional learning program includes a focus on understanding and addressing inequities that students experience. For example, the program could give youth the opportunity to find something in their community that is inequitable and develop solutions.
- Consider using screening tools to support students, but examine the tools for possible bias and misuse. For example, you might use screening tools to identify students for targeted skills development. But think about if the screening questions could create a bias or unfair expectation for any student.
Implementation tips
Leaders can support the implementation of social, emotional, and behavioral learning in schools by:
- Incorporating social and emotional skills-based instruction into a range of academic subjects, as well as outside the classroom. Students have also benefitted when these programs are implemented in an outdoor, natural space.
- Integrating programs throughout the school setting.
- Including social skills and emotional development competencies in strategic planning and budgeting, human resources, professional development, and operations.
- Ensuring that teachers have the tools and support to put practices or lessons into place in their classrooms. For example, tools could help teachers: include social skills and emotional development activities in lesson plans; or provide coaching.
- Putting practices in place at the district level regarding students' social and emotional skills development. Improvements at the district level can affect student outcomes like improved academic performance, improved mental health, and fewer disciplinary actions.
- Monitoring implementation and finding opportunities for improvement. Continuous quality improvement could include asking teachers for feedback on curricula or observing social skills and emotional development activities in the classroom.
