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The data says SEL, Restorative Justice, & PBIS used in combination planned in intentional & used as a fabric of the school community will drive school climate improvement.                                                    

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The data says SEL, Restorative Justice, & PBIS used in combination planned in intentional & used as a fabric of the school community will drive school climate improvement.                                                    

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SEL - Social Emotional Learning   https://casel.org/core-competencies/

PBIS - Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports

https://www.pbis.org/sctg

Restorative Justice  - the power of forgiveness through difficult conversations & with the hope of restoration.  👇🏾

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60 Years After Brown v Board of Education: Segregation in Today’s Educational System with Dr. Pedro Noguera - Leading Equity

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60 Years After Brown v Board of Education: Segregation in Today’s Educational System with Dr. Pedro Noguera - Leading Equity

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Why Is Social and Emotional Learning Important for Equity in Education? 

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Why Is Social and Emotional Learning Important for Equity in Education? 

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American Institutes for Research

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Why Is Social and Emotional Learning Important for Equity in Education?

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A meta-analysis of 213 programs, primarily covering three decades of research, found that SEL interventions that addressed 5 competencies:
1.  increased students' academic performance by 11 percentile points-reduced aggression and emotional distress among students
2.  increased helping behaviors in school
3.  improved positive attitudes toward self and others

As compared to students who did not participate in such SEL programs (Durlak et al., 2011).

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Social Emotional Learning Games - Smartenings

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Social Emotional Learning Games - Smartenings

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Show Article Summary

Show Full Article

What is Social Emotional Learning?

Social emotional learning (SEL) is both a new and an old concept.

It's a method of learning that encompasses the whole person, not just the facts that you learn from books and lectures. As the name implies, this way of learning (and and teaching) incorporates social and emotional aspects into the curriculum.

When Did Social Emotional Learning Come About?

The whole-education concept is not a new one. Nearly 2,400 years ago (in 380 B.C.), Plato wrote The Republic, and in it, he talked about a system of education that covered not only book learning, but learning that encompassed the whole person.

Plato talked about how it was necessary to include 4 elements into education: music, gymnastics, mathematics and dialectics. He felt that including these topics when teaching students would ensure that the components of the soul would be in harmony with each other, and as a result, the student would be well-balanced.

In the 1960's, a holistic education program was put into play at 2 under-performing schools in New Haven, CT by a man named James Comer. 20 years later, the grades and achievements of the students had dramatically improved, and researchers at Yale took notice.

Psychology professor Roger Weissberg and Yale graduate Timothy Shriver created a Social Development program in the New Haven schools to expand on the holistic education concept.

The term "social emotional learning" became mainstream in 1994 when CASEL was formed. CASEL is an organization dedicated to this whole-person education concept, and the acronym initially stood for "Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning".

The goal of this type of educational program was to prevent violence and drug use in the schools, to encourage students to make healthy choices, to strengthen connections between the school and the community, and to help students make responsible behavior choices.

In 1995, David Goldman wrote a book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. The book indicated that character matters more than intelligence in life situations, and the book became a huge success. Another important point in the book is that character can be taught. It's not just something someone is born with or without. This helped push the educational ideas put forth by CASEL and its social emotional learning concept more into the American mainstream pop culture.

In 1996, CASEL moved from Yale to the University of Illinois at Chicago, and in 2001, they changed their name to "Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning". So the acronym stayed the same, but they changed the name to include a focus on academics, as well as the social and emotional aspects of education.

In 2011, Congress even passed H.R. 2437, which is known as the Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning Act of 2011. The purpose of this bill was to provide funding to schools in order to train teachers and educators about how to teach kids the attitudes and skills that lead to social and emotional competency.

What are Some of the Tenets of Social Emotional Learning?

CASEL defines social emotional learning as "the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions".

Some of those SEL skills include being able to recognize their feelings, deal effectively with conflict, and exercise self-control.

Maurice Elias, head of Rutgers University's Social Emotional Learning Lab, describes it this way:

"Think about what it takes for kids to be in school. They have to sit. They have to listen. They have to pay attention. They have to wait their turn. They need to have the ability to remember and follow directions. These are all social-emotional learning skills. If kids don't have those skills - even if they are smart - they are not going to succeed academically. And even if they succeed academically, they are not going to put their intellect to productive use in the context of the workplace. Indeed, it's clear that these same skills are essential for vocational advancement."Maurice Elias

Does Social Emotional Learning Only Apply to Kids, or Can it Be Used in Adult Education, too?

People tend to automatically think that, if you've reached adulthood, you've already matured and have no need for further developing your social and emotional skills.

Obviously that's not the case for a large proportion of adults. Just because you're past the age of 18 doesn't mean you can't benefit from using the principles of SEL.

Supporting and helping an adult socially and emotionally is just as crucial as it is for kids, especially when they're in a learning environment like college. It's important even in informal, non-academic classes and environments.

A 2011 study showed that adults who participated in SEL-enhancing activities showed lower cortisol secretion (the "stress hormone"), better physical well-being, as well as an improved quality of social and marital relationships.

Using Games to Teach Social Emotional Learning

Games make learning fun, and, especially in some subject areas, the research shows that games enhance learning.

Stephanie Jones, a professor at Harvard, has conducted research on which activities are the most effective in teaching kids social emotional skills. She has developed "Brain Games" that teach kids SEL concepts that research has shown to be effective in a fun and engaging way.

I've listed the games according to the social emotional skill that the game helps foster.

GOAL: Regulate Negative Emotions

Neuro'motion has created a video game called RAGE Control, which stands for which stands for "Regulate and Gain Emotional Control". Research studies at Boston Children's Hospital have shown that it works:
After playing it, kids can better calm themselves down in stressful situations. It's a great tool for the 16 million kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD or Autism.

A 2013 study conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) found that people who played the video game Playmancer / Islands showed improved emotional regulation, increased heart rate variability, and reduced respiratory rate and impulsivity measures.

There have been many studies done showing how video games can teach emotional regulation. This study published in American Psychologist shows that many video games (especially puzzle games, but also games like Pokemon and World of Warcraft) teach players to "flexibly and efficiently reappraise emotional experiences,
and learn the benefits of dealing with frustration and anxiety in adaptive ways".

GOAL: TEACH EMPATHY

For this game, you need at least 2 people, but more than that is even better. Or, you can use pets (if they're willing!).

Pretend you're a caregiver, a nurse, a teacher, a firefighter, or an animal rescue worker. Or you could pretend there's been an earthquake or a tornado, and people (or animals) need help. Act out what you would do in your chosen scenario.

Make it as detailed as possible. One person can play the victim in need of help or assistance while the other is the one tending to the other.

GOAL: EMPOWERMENT AND CONFIDENCE

Teach kids (or adults!) that they have the power to affect the outcome of a situation. It reinforces the idea that the current outcome is the result of a previously made decision.

Regular board games or card games are ideal for this. You can enhance the teaching if you prompt the child (or adult) as you're playing, saying things like
"You are in control. What you decide affects the outcome", or "Take time to think about the best move for you".

For younger children, a good board game they can play is called Q's Race to the Top. It's a game designed to teach social skills, better behavior, and manners. It's for ages 3-10, and it has a 5-star rating on Amazon.com.

GOAL: IGNORE DISTRACTIONS

A 2016 study showed that games where people were trained to ignore irrelevant information produced visible changes in the amygdala in the brain. This allowed them to better regulate negative emotions such as sadness and anxiety. It also showed that these types of games reduce the tendency to continually think about a negative event repeatedly. Furthermore, they also help those with ADHD and Autism to better cope with distractions.

Apps and games like Tetris and Candy Crush help players ignore the irrelevant colors. When players are searching for the one color in a display that is different from surrounding colors, performance is badly disrupted by the presence of a shape in a different color in the display. However, players eventually make the right response. Ignoring in this case requires disengaging attention from the stimulus that initially drew attention to itself, and suppressing any response tendencies that came about during that initial misdirection of attention.

Story-Telling Game:
Tell a story with lots of external distractions. You can do this activity with either children or adults. Tell the child (or adult) to think of a story to tell you. Then, set up external distractions. Turn the radio on. Turn the TV on. Sit outside where cars are going by, or go into a room where other kids or animals are running around.

Instruct the person to tell the story. Every time they get distracted, gently remind them to return to the story and ignore the distraction. (You could say things like, "Look at me when you're telling the story", or "Ignore those sounds and think about the story", etc.)

GOAL: Reflective listening, Empathy

How to Play:
Have one person tell a story or describe a situation to another person. Have the second person re-tell what that person said back to the first person. Try to include as many details as you can remember. This works great with kids, because they tend to love to tell stories.

Prompt them along the way when they're retelling the story. Ask questions like, "And what color was the car?" (just point out specific details from the story that they might have overlooked).

GOAL: CONFIDENCE, SOCIAL COPING

Here are two ways to help a child increase their confidence and improve their social coping skills.

Research shows that pairing a child up with an older child who acts like a helpful, supportive mentor helps children improve confidence and social skills. Of course, you have to make sure the older child is actually helpful and supportive, though!

How to Play the What-If Scenario Card Game:
Get some index cards and write down some negative events that can happen to you in life. Ask your child or in the case of adults, a friend, "What are some bad experiences that you think you would have a hard time dealing with?" Write them all down - one per card. Make about 10 cards.

Then make a game, and see who can come up with the most (or the best) ways to effectively handle that situation.

For example, if one of the cards says "My classmate (or colleague) laughs at me when I make a mistake".

First, talk about what your initial reaction would be and what you would do when that happens (e.g., I'd feel humiliated and stupid and want to cry/run away, etc).

For the next step, each person comes up with a list of ideas on great ways to handle that situation.

An example might be, "Use humor. Turn it into a joke and laugh it off" or "Think about all the things I am good at, and realize that everyone makes mistakes. One mistake doesn't make me stupid, so I shouldn't feel humiliated". The person with the most useful (or unique) ways of handling it wins.

If you'd like to share this article, here's a shortlink you can use:

http://bit.ly/2tnpmy3

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What's your experience with Social Emotional Learning? Tell us in the comments below.

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Social Emotional Learning Games - Smartenings

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Show Article Summary Show Full Article Social emotional learning (SEL) is both a new and an old concept. It's a method of learning that encompasses the whole person, not just the facts that you learn from books and lectures. As the name implies, this way of learning (and and teaching) incorporates social and emotional aspects into the curriculum.

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Avoiding Pitfalls | Edutopia

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Avoiding Pitfalls | Edutopia

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Social-Emotional Learning | Policy Analysis for California Education

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Social-Emotional Learning | Policy Analysis for California Education

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Since 2014-15, the CORE districts have surveyed students in grades 3-12 on their social-emotional learning (SEL). School and district leaders use these measures in the context of CORE's multiple measures data system to understand and improve student and school outcomes. Because SEL measurement at scale is so new nationally, studying the properties of these measures and their use is a central focus of the research coordinated by the CORE-PACE Research Partnership. Our work thus far has aimed to answer the following questions:

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Since 2014-15, the CORE districts have surveyed students in grades 3-12 on their social-emotional learning (SEL). School and district leaders use these measures in the context of CORE's multiple measures data system to understand and improve student and school outcomes.

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Podcast: It’s (Not) Academic! Social-Emotional Learning 

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Podcast: It’s (Not) Academic! Social-Emotional Learning 

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CJSF’s Allison R. Brown speaks with David Osher, Vice President and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, about social-emotional learning and its impact on students and teachers alike over the years.

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It’s (Not) Academic! Social-Emotional Learning by Communities for Just Schools Fund

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CJSF’s Allison R. Brown speaks with David Osher, Vice President and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, about social-emotional learning and its impact on students and teachers alike over the years.

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Intention:  Re-align Charter's Mission of Full Inclusion & Diversity

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Intention:  Re-align Charter's Mission of Full Inclusion & Diversity

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1.  We need help to align diversity and equity strategy across governance, operations, pedagogy, student culture, and adult culture.

2.  We need to make sure we are in line with our current charter & prepare to expand on our mission, teaching strategies, & language upon renewal.

3. We need permanent & reproducible systems in place to keep our Charter Mission at the center of our communities focus.

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We're committed to building a new ecosystem that can sustain equitable, diverse schools and neighborhoods. To do so, we must address underlying economic inequity and the ways that our society contributes to those.

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We partner with people and organizations to solve their toughest talent-related challenges. We believe organizations will best maximize their impact and truly thrive when their teams are diverse, their cultures are inclusive, and their practices model the equity they wish to see in the world.READ MORE

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Reinvest in our awardSocial-Emotional Learning | SEL | Second Step

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Reinvest in our awardSocial-Emotional Learning | SEL | Second Step

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Social-emotional learning (SEL) helps students succeed both in the classroom and in life-ultimately setting them up to be thoughtful and productive adults.

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We're taking on the nation's biggest challenges of individual, institutional, and systemic inequity.

The Equity Lab seeks to disrupt racial and ethnic inequity by engaging organizations in issues of race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI). Our signature fellowships and long-term engagements help individuals and organizations to develop a deep understanding of their own identities and the historical and cultural contexts in which we all operate. Through our relationships, our partners become agents of progress in their personal and professional spheres.

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The Equity Lab is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that takes on the nation's biggest challenges of individual, institutional, and systemic inequity. We focus on long-term DEI training and leadership development with education-oriented organizations and individuals who are committed to fighting for equity across

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FuelEd – Fueling schools with the power of relationships

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FuelEd – Fueling schools with the power of relationships

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Professional & Emotional Development for Teachers - FuelEd

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FuelEd understands the importance of professional development for teachers & prepares them with the necessary skills to be emotionally intelligent educators.

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Professional Development: 2019 Social and Emotional Learning Exchange

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Professional Development: 2019 Social and Emotional Learning Exchange

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DID YOU MISS THE LIVE EVENT ON OCTOBER 13, 2022?

All sessions and content from the 2022 SEL Exchange Virtual Summit, Weaving a New Tapestry: Schools, Families and Communities Together, were recorded. On-demand access is available for purchase ($100/person) through April 14, 2023.
Register for On-Demand Access
The SEL Exchange is a unique and timely opportunity for those who are committed to creating caring, productive, and equitable schools and communities that develop the whole child and ensure that all students can thrive.

The 2022 SEL Exchange Virtual Summit is supported by organizations that are making a difference in communities nationwide. Thank you to this year's underwriting organizations: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BMO, The Fetzer Institute, and Stuart Foundation.

Thank you to our 2022 SEL Exchange Virtual Summit Sponsors

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DID YOU MISS THE LIVE EVENT ON OCTOBER 13, 2022? All sessions and content from the 2022 SEL Exchange Virtual Summit, Weaving a New Tapestry: Schools, Families and Communities Together, were recorded. On-demand access is available for purchase ($100/person) through April 14, 2023.

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Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness | AJPH | Vol. 105 Issue 11

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Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness | AJPH | Vol. 105 Issue 11

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Social and Emotional Learning | Edutopia

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Social and Emotional Learning | Edutopia

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Find resources to help students manage their emotions, resolve conflicts, and make responsible decisions—creating the healthiest school culture possible.

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SEL Research Review: Evidence-Based Programs 

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SEL Research Review: Evidence-Based Programs 

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Effective SEL programs addressed the five key competencies

explicitly

sequentially

used active-learning techniques to engage youth in developing understanding of them.

Notice: 2nd STEP, our current program

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Evidence-Based Programs

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Choosing the best program to implement social and emotional learning in your school can be daunting. Edutopia's research analyst Vanessa Vega recommends these research-proven programs.

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR | American Institutes for Research

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR | American Institutes for Research

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Practitioners and researchers agree that social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to academic achievement and well-being in school, as well as success in college and career. As the SEL field advances, more teachers and school leaders are incorporating social and emotional skill-building into school-wide and classroom level practices.

Above and beyond the free supports that AIR's federal technical assistance centers provide, SEL Solutions at AIR offers an approach to keep social and emotional learning at the center of students' educational experiences. AIR staff work closely with district and school staff to create the conditions-vision, leadership, engagement, skills, measurement, and coaching and support-required to promote the skills students need to master academic content and enhance their well-being.

AIR's SEL Solutions staff form a partnership with district and school staff to customize a phased implementation path with concrete steps and strategies that emphasize data-driven decision making, continuous stakeholder engagement, ongoing professional learning, and sustainability. Specifically, SEL Solutions supports district and school staff to embed and integrate SEL with work currently underway within the district and school, creating a coordinated and purposeful SEL and school climate effort.

In particular, members of our team:

Develop a vision and mission that includes SEL and school climate, as well as creating a common definition and framework of SEL and school climate

Support data collection and analysis, financing, and securing additional resources

Provide tools, resources, and expertise to guide integration of SEL and school climate with other initiatives, such as academic instruction, discipline policies, and educator effectiveness

Enact quick cycles of improvement to ensure effectiveness

Conduct leadership and instructional coaching on SEL practices, as well as teacher self-assessment

The SEL Solutions services are modeled after the best practices of our federally-funded technical assistance centers that support states and districts in using data to identify and implement policies and practices that improve school climate, including student and adult social and emotional skills. These include:

Services are also based off the extensive research conducted by AIR staff on SEL, school climate, and conditions for learning.

Key Work

A positive school climate and instruction anchored in supporting the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students brings out great potential in both students and teachers alike. The Ready to Assess suite of tools, available here at no cost, helps education leaders, practitioners, and policymakers decide whether and how to assess social and emotional development.

Mounting evidence shows that social and emotional learning skills may be more predictive than test scores of student success in English language arts and math. In this blog post, Deborah Moroney and Michael McGarrah discuss how states and districts can build systems to support and properly assess these social and emotional skills and competencies.

Social and emotional skills undergird student success-and mold better citizens. Results from the Collaborating Districts Initiative-a first-ever initiative to promote districtwide integration of social and emotional learning into the core activities of eight large urban districts-suggest that even modest investments can pay off for individuals, schools, and society. In this policy brief, Kimberly Kendziora and Nick Yoder share the results of the evaluation and offer policy six recommendations for states and districts implementing SEL initiatives.

Have you ever wondered what social and emotional skills look like in practice? If so, watch this whiteboard animation that follows a student throughout her day and ways in which she applies her social and emotional skills.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) develops people's ability to make successful life choices, to achieve academically, and to be college and career ready. In this video, Nick Yoder explains how SEL can help students and what research says about its effectiveness.

Our nation's top SEL and school climate leaders share ten actions policymakers can take to integrate and align these efforts.

What is social-emotional learning and what does it look like in practice? David Osher and Cleveland Public Schools' CEO Eric Gordon discuss.

In this podcast, Kim Kendziora talks with Melissa Schlinger of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), lead partner in an eight-district demonstration program that aims to establish whether and how large urban school districts can systematically implement social and emotional learning into their work, which AIR has been evaluating since its inception. The results provide insight on how SEL can be a key ingredient to school transformation and success.

Social and emotional learning is the process through which children learn the skills to handle themselves, their relationships, and their work effectively and ethically. This report presents findings about the outcomes of a complex eight-district demonstration project designed to learn about as well and show how and to what end school districts can make social and emotional learning an essential part of every student's education.

During the past 20 years, the afterschool field has been held accountable in varying ways-first, on the ability to provide safe places for young people to spend time while their parents work; then, on success in helping to improve participants' academic achievement as a supplement to the school day. This brief provides an overview of work done to date both in afterschool and school-based settings to define social and emotional learning, shares recent research on how afterschool programs contribute to the development of these competencies, and offers some next step recommendations to both practitioners and researchers.

Both the formal and informal education communities are increasingly focused on fostering opportunities for social and emotional learning (SEL) and the link between SEL and youth outcomes. This self-reflection tool is designed to help afterschool program staff reflect upon their own social and emotional competencies and their ability to support young people's SEL through program practices.

School-day and afterschool programs must work together to support young people as they develop. Although research shows that both in-school and afterschool staff find social and emotional learning important, the ways in which these different settings support young people vary. This tool is designed for afterschool and in-school staff first to reflect independently on their goals for social and emotional learning discuss how best to work collaboratively toward a common goal.
View All Work in Social and Emotional Learning >>

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR

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Practitioners and researchers agree that social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to academic achievement and well-being in school, as well as success in college and career. Above and beyond the free supports that AIR's federal technical assistance centers provide, SEL Solutions at AIR offers an approach to keep social and emotional learning at the center of students' educational experiences.

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Creating Healthy Schools: Ten Key Ideas for the SEL and School Climate Community 

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Creating Healthy Schools: Ten Key Ideas for the SEL and School Climate Community 

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American Institutes for Research

https://www.air.org/resource/creating-healthy-schools-ten-key-ideas-sel-and-school-climate-community

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School Climate Survey Compendium | Safe Supportive Learning

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School Climate Survey Compendium | Safe Supportive Learning

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School Climate Survey Compendium | Safe Supportive Learning

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The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) maintains a compendium of valid and reliable surveys, assessments, and scales of school climate that can assist educators in their efforts to identify and assess their conditions for learning.

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ACT for Youth - Youth Work Professionals - Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Toolkit

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ACT for Youth - Youth Work Professionals - Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Toolkit

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a student-centered approach that emphasizes building on students' strengths; developing skills through hands-on, experiential learning; giving young people voice in the learning process; and supporting youth through positive relationships with adults over an extended period of time. Commonly used in school and after-school settings, SEL programming offers strategies and techniques helpful to other youth work professionals. Many of these strategies align with the features of effective youth development settings identified by the National Research Council.

This SEL Toolkit offers web-based resources to help youth work professionals provide opportunities for social and emotional learning. Resources include manuals, activities, fact sheets, videos, and websites. The Toolkit was assembled by the Risk and Thriving in Adolescence Program Work Team, a collaboration of Cornell University, Cornell Cooperative Extension, New York State 4-H Youth Development, and external stakeholders.

Evidence for SEL

SEL is an evidence-based approach to youth programming; it is not a program in itself. Providing youth with opportunities to develop social and emotional competencies has been shown to decrease problem behaviors and increase school connectedness, achievement, attendance, and positive social behaviors.

Research has also identified after-school program features that make positive SEL outcomes more likely. Best practice programs are "SAFE":

Sequential: skills are taught through sequenced activities

Active: youth have opportunities to actively practice skills

Focused: focused time is set aside for skill development

Explicit: programs explicitly target specific skills

For more on this research by Joseph A. Durlak and Roger P. Weissberg, see The Impact of After-School Programs That Promote Personal and Social Skills (PDF).
Toolkit: SEL Core Competencies and Strategies

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has identified the following interrelated core competency areas that are nurtured in SEL programming. In this toolkit, we use the CASEL framework to describe a set of instructional practices and resources that can be incorporated in any youth programming. Click on the links for tools and resources.

Self-awareness: the ability to identify our own feelings, as well as how our feelings and thoughts influence what we do

Self-management: the ability to manage our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in a variety of contexts

Social awareness: the ability to understand and empathize with others' points of view

Relationship skills: the ability to communicate and connect with a range of people in a healthy way

Responsible decision making: the ability to make positive choices about how we behave

Teaching strategies and tools that support multiple SEL competencies are also included in this toolkit.

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Toolkit

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a student-centered approach that emphasizes building on students' strengths; developing skills through hands-on, experiential learning; giving young people voice in the learning process; and supporting youth through positive relationships with adults over an extended period of time.

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Decoding the Teenage Brain (in 3 Charts) | Edutopia

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Decoding the Teenage Brain (in 3 Charts) | Edutopia

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A recent interview with British neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the author of the 2018 book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, begins with a caveat.

"I think it's important to know before we start that up until 20 years ago we really didn't know that the brain changes at all after childhood," she confides. "That's what I was taught during my undergraduate degree. We now know that's completely untrue."

In matters of settled opinion, science has often found itself in the role of provocateur, even saboteur-prodding at conventional wisdoms until they yield unexpected truths, and sometimes toppling them entirely. The mysteries of celestial bodies, heredity, and mental illness have all undergone dramatic rethinking.

So it shouldn't be entirely surprising that new technologies that allow us to peer into the brain as it processes information are driving a revolution in our understanding of human cognition. Images from fMRI machines, for example, reveal that the brain is less like a collection of discrete, specialized modules-one for speech and one for vision, the old model-and more like an integrated network of functions that support each other. Those same images show that cerebral networks undergo dramatic, global maturation well into our 20s.

The findings have cast doubt on many theories about adolescence. For too long, assertions about teenagers-from their purported irrationality to their apparent sense of invulnerability-have circulated widely and uncritically. The new research suggests that we have plenty of rethinking to do.

Of Mice and Minors

Adolescent rodents and adolescent humans are susceptible to peer pressure-and members of both species take risks at much higher rates when in the presence of companions their own age.

In a study conducted in 2005, neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg asked teenagers and adults to play a virtual driving game that tested their willingness to take risks as traffic lights turned from green to yellow to red. Participants were penalized when accidents occurred. Adolescents responded to the risks as well as adults did and performed about equally when playing alone. But in the presence of peers, risk-taking surged among the teenagers and young adults-risky driving increased threefold for 13- to 16-year-olds, and the number of crashes spiked-while remaining flat among adults.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
A study involving mice and alcohol consumption reached a similar conclusion. That 2014 experiment exposed rodents of different ages to the equivalent of an open bar: They could drink alcohol at their leisure. The adolescent mice-those at the tender age of 4 to 5 weeks-drank about as often as adult mice when by themselves. But in the presence of other juveniles, they settled in for a bender, drinking 25 percent more of the time. There was no change in the drinking of adult mice.

These results aren't just laboratory tricks. Using real crash data from 2007-10, a study published in 2012 found that the risk of death for teenagers driving alone increased by 44 percent per mile when traveling with one peer, and quadrupled with three peers in the car. By contrast, Blakemore writes, traveling companions are actually a "protective factor" for adults over 26, "who are less likely to crash if they have a passenger than if they're alone."

In a few recent experiments, peer pressure emerges as a measurable biological phenomenon, crossing over into the perceptible world like the first earthquake waves etched onto a seismograph. A 2013 study found that when human subjects were told that a peer was watching them, skin conductance readings-a measure of the electricity triggered by stress and arousal-were consistently higher in adolescents than in either adults or children. Brain scans administered at the same time revealed telltale flares of greater activity in key regions of the teenage brain linked to self-awareness and the ability to understand others.

It's never been a question of feeling invincible. For teenagers, there's just something about the presence of peers that is transfiguring-they understand the risks, and take them anyway.

A Telling Mismatch

A likely culprit in adolescent risk-taking is a brain network that stretches back deep into evolutionary history-the limbic system, the seat of primal instincts like fear, lust, hunger, and pleasure. "These are regions in the deep center of the brain," explained Blakemore. "They are much older, and we share these systems with a lot of other animals."

In 2014, Blakemore and two colleagues gathered brain images of 33 people and plotted the growth rates of individual limbic systems over time. They also looked at another critical brain region: the prefrontal cortex.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
The charts that resulted (above) show that limbic structures like the nucleus accumbens changed only modestly during adolescence while the prefrontal cortex experienced a dramatic shift in volume, shrinking and reorganizing as it pruned away unused synaptic connections. The upshot? The brain scans seem to indicate that the limbic system-the brain's reward system-is mature and firing on all cylinders in teenagers, while the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for things like self-control, planning, and self-awareness, is still busy developing.

"One major theory of adolescent development is that there is a mismatch between these two systems," Blakemore elaborated. "The limbic system, which gives you the rewarding feeling of taking risks, is structurally more developed before the prefrontal cortex, which stops you from taking risks."

If that seems too neat to you, Blakemore agrees. "I wouldn't discount social factors like changing schools," she cautions, or "overlook individual differences in teenagers."

Still, there's plenty of evidence that the limbic system is hyperactive during adolescence. It's not youthful irrationality or a flair for the dramatic at work; teenagers actually experience things like music, drugs, and the thrill of speed more powerfully than adults do. In his 2014 book Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence, Steinberg draws a straight line to peer influence as well, noting that teenage peers "light up the same reward centers that are aroused by drugs, sex, food, and money."

All Natural Plastic

It's not all gloom and doom. The teenage years are "the last, great neuroplastic era in our lifetimes," according to Steinberg, referring to the brain's continued capacity for intellectual and emotional growth. The same emerging circuitry that makes teenagers vulnerable to risky behavior and mood swings also confers significant advantage on adolescent learners.
Illustration by Leigh Wells
At the deep neural level, new information is written into the gray matter of the brain itself-expressed in structural changes to synapses, which, through repeated exposure, form increasingly durable webs of memory. A study conducted in 2002 provides a fascinating window into the brain at the very moment of learning. The chart above shows the electrical response in both adolescent and adult mice to a novel piece of information, represented by the red arrow. Like a bell struck more sharply, the brain of the adolescent mouse produces a more dramatic reply-and then sustains it for longer.

That's good news-and a clear signal that the teenage brain is by nature more receptive to learning, says Frances Jensen in her 2015 book The Teenage Brain. Adolescent animals simply "show faster learning curves than adults," and we retain the capacity to improve even fundamental attributes like our IQ well into our teenage years.

Reaching Teenagers in Class

Take the direct approach: Talking to teenagers frankly about their brain development can provide useful context for their emotional worlds, and reset their expectations about their potential for continued intellectual growth. "We know that people like biological explanations. It's true in neurological stroke patients-showing that the brain is plastic and can change and rehabilitate is really useful," Blakemore said.

Explaining the role of the limbic system, the influence of peers, and the malleability of the teenage brain establishes a basis for students to better understand themselves and exert control over their emotional and academic lives. Blakemore insists there's also a simple question of respect at stake: "They have a right to know," she says emphatically. "It's happening in their brains."

Make good use of peer pressure: Peer pressure and social influence can be used for good, too. Smoking research shows, for example, that teens ignore warnings about the long-term health consequences of cigarettes, but respond to the social effects. It's more convincing to remind teens that cigarettes "give you bad breath, or put younger children in danger," said Blakemore. Teens "also respond to the idea that this is an adult industry that is exploiting them to make money. That has been shown to help for smoking and also for healthy eating."

Schools are aware of many of these social dynamics, and have used teen leaders, social influencers, and appeals to fairness and justice to change behaviors around vaping, bullying, and academic cheating.

Teach self-regulation: It's not too late. The prefrontal cortex, which governs executive functions, is still developing and remains highly responsive to the environment and to training during adolescence. It stands to reason that explicitly teaching self-regulation, long-term planning, and empathy might have particular benefits for teenagers.

According to Steinberg, efforts to improve the self-regulation of teenagers "are far more likely to be effective in reducing risky behavior than are those that are limited to providing them with information about risky activities." And social and emotional learning programs that show adolescents "how to regulate their emotions, manage stress, and consider other people's feelings" can have positive effects on executive functions more generally, improving focus and self-discipline, and setting teenagers up for academic and professional success well beyond high school.

The author of this article is the chief content officer at Edutopia. You can follow him on Twitter @smerrill777.

The charts in this story were drawn by illustrator Leigh Wells, and adapted from studies by 1) Margo Gardner and Laurence Steinberg, 2005; 2) K.L. Mills, A.L. Goddings, L.S. Clasen, J.N. Giedd, and S.J. Blakemore, 2014; and 3) N.L. Schramm, R.E. Egli, and D.G. Winder, 2002, via Synapse magazine, courtesy of Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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Decoding the Teenage Brain (in 3 Charts)

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A recent interview with British neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, the author of the 2018 book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, begins with a caveat. "I think it's important to know before we start that up until 20 years ago we really didn't know that the brain changes at all after childhood," she confides.

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Annotated Bibliography | Edutopia

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Annotated Bibliography | Edutopia

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Belfield, C., Bowden, B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., & Zander, S. (2015). The Economic Value of Social and Emotional Learning. New York, NY: Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education. In this study, researchers analyzed the economic impact of six widely-used SEL programs and found that on average, every dollar invested yields $11 in long-term benefits, ranging from reduced juvenile crime, higher lifetime earnings, and better mental and physical health.

Brock, L. L., Nishida, T. K., Chiong, C., Grimm, K. J., & Rimm-Kaufman, S. E. (2008). Children's perceptions of the classroom environment and social and academic performance: A longitudinal analysis of the contribution of the Responsive Classroom Approach (abstract). Journal of School Psychology, 46, 129-149. The Responsive Classroom (RC) approach is a set of teaching practices designed to integrate social and academic learning. Standardized test scores and self-reports from teachers and students were collected over three years from a sample of 520 children in grades 3-5. Cross-lagged autoregressive structural equation results indicated a significant positive relation between RC teacher practices and child perceptions and outcomes over time. Children's perceptions partially mediated the relation between RC teacher practices and social competence but not achievement outcomes. Read more about Responsive Classroom in this report by Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman from 2006 (PDF).

Dusenbury, L., & Weissberg R. P. (2017). Social Emotional Learning in Elementary School: Preparations for Success. Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University. A review of research on SEL programs at the elementary school level. Findings show that SEL programs can promote academic achievement and positive social behavior, and reduce conduct problems, substance abuse, and emotional distress for elementary school students.

Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2014) Academic Tenacity Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. This report analyzes how psychological factors, which may also be referred to as motivational or noncognitive factors, can matter even more than cognitive factors for students' academic performance. These may include students' beliefs about themselves, their feelings about school, or their habits of self-control.

Elias, M. J. (2003). Academic and social-emotional learning (PDF). International Academy of Education, International Bureau of Education (Educational Practices Series-11). This article discusses many of the features necessary for social and emotional learning (SEL) programs to be effective in promoting social skills and academic achievement. SEL teachers must show interest, caring, and empathy. SEL lessons should also be linked to existing school services, such as professional development, clear and consistent discipline procedures, and counseling services. Skills such as goal setting, visualization, and problem solving can transfer quite directly to academic achievement and most transparently to enhanced learning and performance and should not be neglected. Teachers should also employ instructional procedures that require students to apply SEL and receive feedback (such as exhibitions, public presentations, or report cards which include listings of SEL skills/indicators). Evaluation is critical to checking whether SEL practices are being implemented as intended with expected impacts. Several tools exist to evaluate implementation, which is an evolving process. Implementation improvements should be organic, authentic, collectively defined, acceptable to the community. Finally, schools should construct an academic policy that describes how SEL and academics fit together.

Grossman, D. C., Neckerman, H. J., Koepsell, T. D., Liu, P-Y., Asher, K. N., Beland, K., Frey, K., & Rivara, F. P. (1997). Effectiveness of a Violence Prevention Curriculum Among Children in Elementary School: A Randomized Controlled Trial (abstract). The Journal of the American Medical Association, 277(20), 1605-1611. Grossman and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 790 [NOTE: 1100 were eligible] students in six pairs of matched schools from King County, Washington, including 49 second- and third-grade classrooms. Implementation took place over a six-month period. Parent and teacher reported data did not reveal any significant differences between the intervention and control groups in instances of negative verbal behavior. However other findings showed that schools in the Second Step program had less physical aggression, and professional observation showed an increase in neutral, prosocial behavior. Instances of negative physical behavior in the cafeteria or playground decreased from 2.2 to 1.6 episodes per child-observation hour, whereas the control group rates increased from 1.8 to 2.6 episodes per child-observation hour. At six-month follow-up, a modest decrease in physical aggression and increase in prosocial behavior persisted in the intervention schools as opposed to control schools. More information about Second Step on the Child Trends website.

Raikes Foundation. Social-Emotional Learning Assessment Measures for Middle School Youth (PDF). Social Development Research Group, University of Washington, 2011. Identifies and reviews ten assessment tools for evaluating intended impacts of SEL programs, providing reasons why some tools may work better for some schools than others. Some tools require that teachers aggregate data while others require that teachers complete the surveys for each student (as opposed to students self-reporting). Both can be quite time-consuming for teachers. Randomly sampling students from each classroom may provide a way to obtain sufficient reliability in the measurement of SEL outcomes while reducing the time necessary for teachers to survey students.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Fan, X., Chiu, Y-J., & You, W. (2007). The contribution of the Responsive Classroom approach on children's academic achievement: Results from a three-year longitudinal study (PDF). Journal of School Psychology, 45, 401-421. Children enrolled in six schools (three intervention and three control schools in a single district) were the participants in the study. After controlling for poverty and test scores from previous years, the Responsive Classroom (RC) approach contributed to the gains in both reading and math, with a greater difference between the intervention and control schools seen in math. The contribution of the RC approach appeared to be greater over a three-year period than over a one- or two-year period. These findings provide early evidence for the positive contribution of the RC approach to gains in academic achievement. Information on this approach can be found on the Responsive Classroom YouTube channel and the Responsive Classroom website.

Santos R. G., Chartier M. J., Whalen, J. C., Chateau D., & Boyd, L. (2011). Effectiveness of school-based violence prevention for children and youth: Cluster randomized controlled field trial of the Roots of Empathy program with replication and three-year follow-up. Healthcare Quarterly, 14, 80-91. A randomized experiment to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of Roots of Empathy (ROE) in preventing violence (reducing aggression and increasing prosocial behavior) in children and youth, immediately after the program and up to three years afterwards. Youth who participated in ROE showed reduced aggression and improved prosocial behavior up to three years after the intervention, suggesting that ROE is as effective as or more effective than similar programs that have targeted at-risk youth. If an estimated 15 percent of schoolchildren get into a fight in a school year, then such a reduction in aggression would translate into 8 percent, approximately half of the baseline rate. More information on this poster describing the results of the study (PDF).

U.S. Department of Education. (2007). What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Intervention Report: Positive Action (PDF). The WWC reviewed 12 studies including one study that met the criteria for rigorous experimental design and one that met the criteria "with reservations," as determined by the WWC commission. The Positive Action program was found to reduce aggressive behaviors, and improve academic test results.

Additional SEL Research Resources

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is an excellent resource for all kinds of information about social and emotional learning, including a database of research on SEL.
Go to the first section of the SEL research review, Introduction and Learning Outcomes.

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Social and Emotional Learning Research Review: Annotated Bibliography

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Belfield, C., Bowden, B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., & Zander, S. (2015). The Economic Value of Social and Emotional Learning . New York, NY: Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education.

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Equitable Access to Excellent Teachers and Leaders | Center on Great Teachers and Leaders

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Equitable Access to Excellent Teachers and Leaders | Center on Great Teachers and Leaders

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The impact of equity gaps is real. Recent research indicates that inequitable access places poor students two to four weeks behind their counterparts in reading and math, accounting for about 2 percent to 4 percent of the achievement gap. (For a detailed discussion of the research, see this Institute of Education Sciences brief).Because effective teachers and leaders are so essential to student learning, achievement gaps cannot be adequately remedied without addressing teacher access as a wholly necessary, although insufficient, step.
Considering Access to Great School Leaders
Although federal policy does not require all states to focus on equity in terms of school leadership, the GTL Center considers excellent school leaders of critical importance to ensuring equitable access to excellent teachers.. Given the strong influence that principals have on recruiting, hiring, assigning, developing, and supporting teachers, the rigorous support of equitable access to excellent leaders for rural and other hard-to-staff schools is of critical importance.

The Moving Toward Equity online tool includes strategies, resources, and examples to support equitable access to great teachers and leaders for all students, particularly underresourced students such as students with disabilities, English language learners, and rural students.

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Center on Great Teachers & Leaders - at American Institutes for Research

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The GTL Center is dedicated to advancing state efforts to grow, respect, and retain great teachers and leaders for all students. Our mission is to foster the capacity of vibrant networks of practitioners, researchers, innovators, and experts to build and sustain a seamless system of support for great teachers and leaders for every school in every state in the nation.

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Restorative Justice Takes On Oakland Schools - YouTube

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Restorative Justice Takes On Oakland Schools - YouTube

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Restorative Justice Takes On Oakland Schools

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ACT for Youth - Social and Emotional Learning - SEL Strategies and Tools

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ACT for Youth - Social and Emotional Learning - SEL Strategies and Tools

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is not based on prescribed curricula; instead it is an approach that reflects a set of teaching strategies and practices that are youth-centered. Here are several general strategies and tools to promote social and emotional learning.

Young people are diverse in their learning styles and needs. It is essential to assess individual learning styles and be flexible in time management to allow for meeting these different needs. Howard Gardner's "Multiple Intelligences" (PDF) provides a framework.

Program activities are more engaging if they are relevant to young people. Identifying and building on young people's individual assets (PDF) and passions are key strategies.

Use teaching techniques that build on young people's current knowledge and skills, such as scaffolding (PDF). Provide positive and constructive feedback.

Young people need to be active partners in learning. Increase their input and voice through planning and reflection activities. Create meaningful responsibilities and roles for genuine youth engagement throughout programming. Encourage and facilitate young people's shared decision-making through consensus/action planning (PDF).

Use active learning strategies such as hands-on, experiential (PDF), and project-based activities.

Help young people learn to use critical thinking and responsible decision making skills. Use active listening skills (PDF) with youth.

Facilitate peer learning and teaching -- collaborative learning (PDF).

Resources

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)

CASEL promotes evidence-based social and emotional learning strategies and programs primarily in school settings. The website contains information about current research, materials for learning activities, and new initiatives.

Website

Preparing Youth to Thrive

On this website, the Forum for Youth Investment and David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality offer SEL quality improvement tools and resources for out-of-school-time networks.

Website

Social and Emotional Learning Practices: A Self-Reflection Tool

This tool is designed to help after-school program staff reflect upon their own social and emotional competencies and their ability to support young people's social and emotional learning through program practices. Find more SEL after-school resources from American Institutes for Research in this Beyond the Bell spotlight.

SEL Self-Assessment Tool

University of Minnesota Extension: Social and Emotional Learning

This website contains research articles, recorded presentations, and issue briefs by Weissberg, Durlak, and others who have pioneered SEL.

Research and Presentations

Youth Development Insight: Essential Ingredients of Social and Emotional Learning

Kate Walker, University of Minnesota Associate Extension Professor, discusses essential elements of SEL in this blog post.

Blog

Edutopia: Social and Emotional Learning

These videos and blog posts offer educators strategies to help students develop social and emotional skills.

Resources

An Ideal Opportunity: The Role of Afterschool in Social and Emotional Learning

This issue brief from the Afterschool Alliance makes the case for implementing SEL in programs outside of school.

Issue Brief

TEAL Center (Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy): Student Centered Learning

Although it refers to adult literacy programs, this fact sheet provides a thorough description and resources relevant to the principles of student-centered learning.

Fact Sheet

Parent Toolkit: Social and Emotional Development

This NBC News "Education Nation" offers information for parents tailored to the child's age.

Web Page

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is not based on prescribed curricula; instead it is an approach that reflects a set of teaching strategies and practices that are youth-centered. Here are several general strategies and tools to promote social and emotional learning. Young people are diverse in their learning styles and needs.

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This is the Vimeo home for the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Please visit the AIR website for more information: http://www.air.org/.

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Restorative Justice in Oakland Schools: Tier One. Community Building Circle - YouTube

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Restorative Justice in Oakland Schools: Tier One. Community Building Circle - YouTube

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Restorative Justice in Oakland Schools: Tier One. Community Building Circle

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| Think Inclusive:#18 Rob Horner | The Connection Between PBIS and ABA

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Audio Transcipt

Rob Horner: Hello. This is Rob Horner from the University of Oregon, and you're listening to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Tim Villegas: Recording from my office in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you are listening to the Think Inclusive podcast, episode 18. Today we have Dr. Rob Horner, director of the Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. We talk about the history of PBIS and the somewhat controversial foundation in applied behavioral analysis.

Tim Villegas: After the podcast, please visit patreon.com\thinkinclusivepodcast where you can support our goal to bring you in-depth interviews with inclusive education and community advocacy thought leaders. Also, you can help other people find us by giving us a five-star review on ApplePodcasts or wherever you listen to the Think Inclusive podcast. Without further ado, here is the interview.

Tim Villegas: All right. Hello everybody. Thank you for Dr. Rob Horner for joining us on the Think Inclusive podcast. Dr. Horner is a professor emeritus of special education at the University of Oregon. He is the director of the technical assistance center on positive behavioral interventions and supports, otherwise known as PBIS, which is how we're going to refer it to.

Tim Villegas: Dr. Horner has also been the associate editor of JABA, which is the journal of applied behavior analysis. Over Dr. Horner's 25 year ... Dr. Horner has a 25-year history of research grants, management, and systems change related to school reform and positive behavior support, and he has published or 150 professional papers and six texts. Once again, thank you for being here.

Rob Horner: Happy to be here.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. Why I asked you to come onto the podcast was the PBIS and applied behavior analysis is something that gets brought up a lot when we're talking about inclusive education and specifically on how it relates to disability rights and also just supports that we put in place for students with challenging behavior in the schools. Since I know that you have such a body of work in explaining that, and that is a passion of yours with your work, I wanted to have you on and have you explain and talk a little bit about what ABA is in its relationship to PBIS.

Tim Villegas: We have a lot of listeners that are educators, but we also have a lot of disability rights advocates and activists that listen and read the content on our website, and a lot of parents. So, I think this is going to be a worthwhile conversation. Why don't we go ahead and start off with explaining ... I know that people have heard what ABA is, but what in your opinion would be the best definition of applied behavior analysis?

Rob Horner: Okay. I mean-

Tim Villegas: Is that a bit ... That's too big of a question, I'm guessing.

Rob Horner: It's a good place to start.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Rob Horner: Let's do it this way.

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Rob Horner: The basic thing to do is separate a definition of behavior analysis from applied behavior analysis.

Tim Villegas: Fantastic.

Rob Horner: Behavior analysis is the study of the fundamental principles of human behavior. You start with the realization and understanding that people behave in ways that are non-random. There are patterns. There are systems. There are structures. If you accept that as a premise, then you want to say, "Well, there clearly are going to be fundamental, lawful, predictable relationships that help us to understand those patterns of behavior. Behavior analysis is essentially the study of those patterns of behavior with particular emphasis on the relationship between behavior and the environment.

Rob Horner: If you were to think about why people behave the way they do, everyone would agree that some part of behavior is due to the physiology or the nurture effect that you've got. More recently, people have argued extensively that the social context you're in helps to define how you behave. Those are both probably true, but from a behavior analytic perspective, what we're really interested in is how what you learn from the environment around you changes how you behave over time. So, behavior analysis is the study of the fundamental principles of human behavior.

Rob Horner: Applied behavior analysis is the application of those principles to solving socially important problems or challenges. Applied behavior analysis is a very important combination of the use of scientific principles to achieve socially valued outcomes, so it marries values and science. In that regard, it is a much more complex and interfaces much more directly with how we behave as parents, how we behave as citizens, how we behave as friends and partners. When you think about how people behave in context, that's really where you're talking about the role of applied behavior analysis.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So, when we're talking about ... Because what I'm assuming is that with applied behavior analysis, that positive behavior intervention and supports is a framework that is coming out of applied behavior analysis. Is that correct?

Rob Horner: It is. Positive behavior interventions and support, so PBIS?

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rob Horner: I [inaudible 00:06:43] the fact that you got that it's a framework. It's not a curriculum. It's not a specific set of practices, but it uses the fundamental principles of applied behavior analysis in a larger context. We like to define PBIS as always starting with socially valued outcomes. Not just the reduction of problem behavior, but actually the development of the adaptive pro-social and successful behaviors that allow someone to be successful in a family, in a community, in a school, in a work setting.

Rob Horner: PBIS combines a set of practices drawn from ABA with a set of systems that are organizationally designed to promote sustainability and scalability with the data structures that really incorporate the iterative process of continual reflection and improvement. If you think about PBIS, always start with, one, socially valued outcomes; two, scientifically credible practices; three, organizational systems that are necessary for sustainability and scalability and the continual use of data for assessment and improvement.

Rob Horner: In that regard, one of the things that we're most impressed and pleased by is that when in PBIS, we on a regular basis assess not only what the outcomes are for students and families, but we also assess the extent to which we're actually implementing practices as they have been operationally defined. So, we incorporate treatment integrity or fidelity measure as part of the PBIS process. There are right now over 25,000 schools in the United States, a quarter of all schools in the U.S., are actively engaged in implementing PBIS, and data from last academic year allows us to describe over 14,000 of them in terms of the extent to which they're implementing with fidelity, so that gives you a little bit of the ...

Rob Horner: There's a direct link between ABA and PBIS, but PBIS incorporates some of the organizational systems and data structures that aren't necessarily attached to ABA. But then you get into everybody has their own definition.

Tim Villegas: Right. Right, which I guess is going to bring me to one of the main reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with you is that I hear many disability rights activists share concern about PBIS and the roots of applied behavior analysis and how it relates to, I guess, a traumatic or difficult past with having their behavior changed maybe without their consent or in a aversive way. I guess before we delve into that, and I don't know if you have an opinion about this, but is the history of applied behavior analysis ... Is that history problematic because of the, in some people's minds, the emphasis on compliance and control of behavior?

Rob Horner: I think both the emphasis on compliance and control and also the exaggerated emphasis on the use of aversive procedures are sort of blemishes on applied behavior analysis that are atypical and more part of the fantasy than the reality. As with almost everything that you hear about something like this, there are elements of truth, and ABA is no different than any other formal practice. You got to remember, there are no good ideas that we can't do badly. I would argue that for the tremendous positive contributions that applied behavior analysis has made to society, you can definitely find examples where people have used the science inappropriately and unnecessarily.

Rob Horner: Too often, people equate behavior analysis with A Clockwork Orange-type practices, and definitely, there were things that were done in institutional environments where people were not adequately protected. There were not adequate controls. There were not ethical procedures where people did things that were abhorrent. Given that, you stop and say it is important, I think, when you talk about applied behavior analysis. Not just behavior analysis as a set of principles, but applied behavior analysis as a application of those principles, to realize that ABA always starts with values.

Rob Horner: So, if you're a disability rights advocate, or you are a parent, or you are a teacher, you don't do applied behavior analysis unless you first start by saying, "What do we value as formal outcomes? What do we value as critical features?" Applied behavior analysis is about the design of effective environments. It is not about the altering of people. It's about the creation of environments where people can be effective and successful. Understanding those principles is incredibly, incredibly important.

Rob Horner: One of the things that I think Travis Thompson has done well is to argue that the greatest deficit of applied behavior analysis is that we have not informed our society enough about the basic principles that are affecting their behavior. To have people function as friends and parents and citizens without understanding the basic principles of positive and negative reinforcement is very similar to letting people run around in the sun without telling them about the effects of ultraviolet rays. I mean, they can get by for a while, but there's damage.

Rob Horner: The idea that we are not being affected by the contingencies of the environments in which we live is simply unrealistic. Everybody is always in a situation where you are experiencing stimuli. You're responding to things about you. You're getting feedback on the effectiveness and ineffectiveness, and that feedback is altering what you do. We're currently looking at an opiod epidemic. That epidemic is directly understandable from a behavioral perspective. We're looking at concerns around implicit bias in schools and communities. We're talking right now about conversations related to the role of power as it affects harassment.

Rob Horner: Those are fundamental, basic things that we're talking about, all of which are directly affected by the contingencies in which we live. So, the greatest deficit that I would say ABA has is we have done an abysmal job of informing our society about the fundamental principles of human behavior and the power that understanding those principles gives people to establish lives that are much closer to what they actually value.

Tim Villegas: As you were saying this, and you were kind of explaining how that this is really a way that you're looking at the world and how we can solve really big problems, I want to ask you do you think that I guess the behaviorism, or I'm not sure the exact term that you used, maybe behavior analysis, is the best way or the only way to look at explaining why we do what we do? Are there other ways to explain behavior, like personality or self-regulation or biological causes or concerns? Or is that also kind of in how you view or your worldview as far as behavior globally?

Rob Horner: Okay. It's a good question, and it's something that we deal with all the time. The short answer is you combined some things that were similar with some things that were not similar.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Rob Horner: Really, the big thing, Tim, that I would say is don't let applied behavior analysis become a religion. It's a science, so the issue is not we're in favor of applied behavior analysis. I'm not in favor of ABA. I'm in favor of understanding the fundamental principles of human behavior and using those in ways that help us to create a more nurturing and effective environment.

Rob Horner: If you've got a better, faster, cheaper way to provide that explanation, I'm all for it. The notion of self-regulation is completely consistent with ABA principles. Now, even within applied behavior analysis, there's a very dedicated group of people called radical behaviors who very closely adhere to Skinner's writing. And there are people who are strong applied behavior analysts who are not quite as convinced or adamant as some groups. So, don't paint the entire field with a single brush. Allow for the fact that there are different levels and different understandings of some of the same variables.

Rob Horner: At the same time, if you're a behavior analyst, you really believe in formally monitoring and observing behavior. Now, so what that does is it creates a big challenge for people who say, "Well, it's her personality," or, "It's her temperament." Most behavior analysts are very comfortable with the notion that physiology affects behavior. There are massive differences between the physiological, the hormonal, the biological structures of men and women, of people of different kinds.

Rob Horner: You do in fact have biological characteristics that make certain behaviors more likely than others, and we really need to understand those. Understanding changes in physiology is what allows us to understand some of the traits and characteristics of autism, allows us to understand why some children have real difficulty reading and speaking. It also affects the extent to which people find social interaction reinforcing or not. So, there's no question that biological variables affect behavior.

Rob Horner: It also, however, is I think unquestionable that simply assuming biology dictates everything is silly. We have unremitting sequences of formal, systematic studies demonstrating that learning history affects how you behave. What we're really about is conducting the research that will better help us to understand that with greater precision. I look especially at the work of Gerald Patterson, who looked at social learning theory and the impact of negative reinforcement on how family dynamics developed.

Rob Horner: Patterson described just with phenomenal eloquence and clarity the effect of allowing escape from unpleasant situations to guide the training of your behavior leads to incredibly coercive and unhappy social interactions, especially among children and parents. It was his research, not just describing that, but then using that knowledge to both prevent and remediate family and child interaction patterns that has led to at least a dozen formal systems of responding to children with significant disabilities.

Rob Horner: I would encourage you to look at the work of Joe Lucyshyn, University of British Columbia, work around families and children who are in different kinds of support and care facilities. The point is there are people who have used those principles eloquently. It's not that easy, so in part, that's what we are trying to do with PBIS. We want to take everything we know about basic principles of behavior and say, "If you know that, how do you create a classroom that is just a welcoming, a systemic, an effective learning environment, not just for those well-adjusted kids who will learn almost regardless of what you do, but for the full set of kids that you're going to experience in a pluralistic society?"

Rob Horner: Now, if you can teach everybody, that means you're really teaching well. That's a hard thing to do. Understanding and building the ability to do that, in my mind, is going to require a very good understanding of basic principles of behavior.

Tim Villegas: Thank you. Thank you very much for that, the explanation. I hear you talking about teachers and setting up their classrooms and administrators setting up their schools so that everyone can be successful. I know that that is part of PBIS. I have conversations with a lot of teachers who maybe they are in a PBIS school. Maybe they're not, but they have a classroom with students that do have challenging behavior.

Tim Villegas: Many times, the assumption is, well, this particular student has significant and challenging behavior. It's disrupting the learning of everybody in the class, so therefore, they must be educated somewhere else, like a self-contained classroom, where there's going to be children who are working that also have challenging behavior or different intellectual disabilities or learning disabilities. How does PBIS and maybe applied behavior analysis ... How does that help us inform what we know about the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of removing a child from a general education classroom into a more segregated or self-contained classroom?

Rob Horner: Okay. That's a much more detailed question, so here's the actual answer to that.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Rob Horner: First off, don't think about children as having challenging behavior. That makes it sounds as if Eric's defiance is inside him. Eric has learned to be defiant under certain situations. He will be defiant in situations A and B. He will be absolutely wonderful in situations D, E, and F. So, be careful about the mistake of labeling a student by her behavior or assuming that the behavior is somehow inside the student and in inextricably linked to that student.

Rob Horner: Behavior is situation specific, so yes, you've got a kid. That kid is doing behaviors, and those behaviors are disruptive and interfering with everybody's education. So, if you're going to create a school, on the one hand, you have an obligation to everybody. You can't allow one student to nullify the educational opportunities of everybody else. That argument is what has led over and over again to exclusionary practices.

Rob Horner: The second thing we know, and this is largely due to work of Tom [Deshawn 00:26:41] and others is taking a group of kids who behave badly and putting them together increases the likelihood that those kids will learn more bad behavior from each other, and therefore, that is ... It's very, very hard to argue that that's in the best interest of the student with a problem behavior. So, now you're sort of caught between a rock and a hard place.

Rob Horner: You can't just leave a student in a room destroying the educational opportunities for everybody. Taking them out and isolating them allows ... It makes the other room easier for a little while. But our experience is that if you create an environment where one kid is behaving badly and you remove that student, that buys you about three weeks. Within three weeks, there will be another student who has learned to behave badly in that environment. So, tie behavior not just to students but to context of the environment.

Rob Horner: Here's what PBIS does. PBIS says we will not be able to organize effective behavior support if the only thing we're doing is one student at a time interventions. We love functional behavioral assessment, individualized planning, comprehensive systems of care, but they are expensive. And quite frankly, very few schools do it with a level of precision that we would consider to be an elegant use of the technology.

Rob Horner: Instead, let's do this. Let's start by saying, "What's the smallest number of critical features of an effective classroom? What's the smallest number that we should expect from everybody? Every classroom that you walk into, what would you see?" If we say this is sort of like the ground or the floor of an effective environment, then we can build from that much more efficiently. Whatever we say is the ground cannot require any new resources, so what can we [inaudible 00:29:01] existing resources?

Rob Horner: If you look within PBIS, we have identified 10 events, 10 features of effective classrooms, that are very strongly supported in the literature. They are features that there is no teacher in the United States right now who can't do them, and they are directly related to not just improved social behavior, but improved academic outcome. And they're not that complicated. They're things like start within the first 10 days of school and identify three to five positively stated behavioral expectations, like be respectful, be responsible, be safe.

Rob Horner: Teach not just the words, but teach what it means. So, being respectful means you raise your hand. Don't just tell people raising your hand is what you do. Teach them. Teach them how to do it and when to do it and use good teaching pedagogy. Actually show this is an example of doing it the right way. This is an example of doing it the wrong way, so let's actually practice it.

Rob Horner: Second, don't just teach isolated behaviors, but teach routines. Most classrooms involve a series of five to nine routines. A routine would be something like how does the teacher get everybody's attention at the beginning of class? How do you move from individual activities to group instruction? How do you in an elementary school break into small groups? Get ready to go to lunch? Come back from recess? What's the routine that we do? All teachers tell kids what to do. Good teachers teach those routines, so teach expectations. Teach the routines.

Rob Horner: Third, build at least a formal system for acknowledging doing things the right way so that in your classroom, students are recognized for doing things correctly at least five times as often as they're corrected for doing things wrong. Create a positive environment. This is not hard to do. I was a teacher. We built this because we were teachers, not because we're a bunch of university people. In part, those are simple examples.

Rob Horner: The other big one is consequences for problem behavior need to be tied to the function of the behavior, not the form of the behavior. Function means it's as important to know why somebody keeps doing something as it is to know what they do. It's also important to know where and when problem behavior is most and least likely. If you know that a student is behaving disruptively to get attention, one of the last things you want to do is give them attention. If you know that a student is behaving badly because she's embarrassed that she doesn't know how to do the work, sending her out of the class is negatively reinforcing that behavior.

Rob Horner: Think what I've just said. What I've gone through sounds like intuitively obvious information. That is not information that is reflected in schools. So now, I actually am answering your question, but I'm trying to do it systematically.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Rob Horner: With PBIS, you've got this one student who's behaving badly. Our first question is not, "What are you going to do to fix that student?" Our first question is, "Does that classroom deliver the 10 core features of a minimally effective environment?" If you're not doing that, start with those things because that draws the student in. Regardless of what else you do, if you don't do those things, the positive behaviors that the student does are not going to get acknowledged and trapped and rewarded and encouraged. So, unless you are teaching and encouraging what you want, you have no right in our framework of complaining about what they're doing wrong.

Rob Horner: Second, now, you're going to have ... Our experience is you will have about 80 to 85% of students who behave well if you do things with instituting the smallest, cheapest set of practices for making a school work. But you're still going to have 10 to 15% of kids who are creating unhappiness, and that's still too many. Then, you stop, and you say, "Well, wait a minute. What are those kids doing?" and again, what's the smallest thing we could add that would make life better?

Rob Horner: We look at the literature again, and we look at the work of Leanne Hawken, and we look at the work of many people who have studied more systematic self-regulatory systems, and it says here's what you want to do. You want to make sure you've done the teaching so the student understands what they're supposed to do. Then, you want to increase the structure, so you exaggerate the prompts and the cues in the environment for when to behave well and how to get feedback. Three, you want to up the frequency and precision of feedback. Four, you want to really make sure that problem behaviors are not being rewarded by peers or inadvertently by teachers.

Rob Horner: How would you do that? There are four practices, four programs. One is called Check In Check Out. One is called First Step to Success. Another is Check and Connect. Another is a social skills program. There are programs. All have the same core features. They increase structure, increase instruction, increase feedback, increase the precision with which consequences are tailored to function. The great part is they're cheap. You can implement Check In Check Out for an entire elementary school for a cost of about 10 hours a week, and the data indicate you'll get at least a 50% reduction in problem behavior with two-thirds of the students who go on the case.

Rob Horner: What that means is now ... Remember, we've got 80, 85% of kids who are behaving pretty well. Now, we captured another 12%. That means we've only got 2 to 3% of the kids who have really much more significant needs. They actually have mental health needs, or they have social situations that are exaggerated and dangerous and traumatic. Or, they have disabilities that actually alter their ability to respond successfully to an otherwise effective environment. For those students, there is no program. You've got to individualize.

Rob Horner: To do that, you need to understand their behavioral profile, their academic profile, their mental health profile, their social context profiles, and you build a comprehensive individualized plan. Those are likely to be successful, but they're also quite expensive, So, those are not things that you can do a lot of. That's where you're going to rely on social workers, counselors, special school psychologists, people with much more in-depth behavioral training who can work not just with the teacher and the student but also often with family and peers.

Rob Horner: Now what you've got ... Look what just happened. You created a question, which is how do we deal with Eric when he's stabilizing room nine? I'm giving an answer that says, "Here are three tiers. I want you to start with basic stuff. I want you to add a second layer, and only then, if Eric is still a player, then we're going to have the resources basically to deal with Eric." Now, you raised it as what about inclusive versus exclusive? You could convince me that we need to remove Eric for a brief period of the day to do training on the academic skill that he's behind because when he's with the other kids and sees that he's not operating like everybody else, that's highly aversive to him.

Rob Horner: But I would say there are other ways of dealing with that. I could do peer instruction. Look at what Charlie Greenwood has taught us about peer interaction and instruction as a way to obviate that kind of problem. If you take the time and actually combine both respect for the child and application of the science of human behavior, the intervention you're going to come up with is far less draconian and far more tailored to both the context and the student. Because the other thing you do is you do not build behavior analytic programs that don't fit the context. There's never one way to solve the problem, so what you want to do is to come up with something that is both technically sound and a good contextual fit. It must ...

Rob Horner: The things that we ask a teacher to do or that we ask the behavior specialist to do must fit her or his values, skills, resources, and administrative support. When you build programs that are tailored to function and designed to fit the context, you get things that are both implemented with fidelity and implemented with impact.

Tim Villegas: What I heard you saying before about how many schools around the country that are implementing PBIS, which I think if I remember correctly is around 25,000. Is that correct?

Rob Horner: [inaudible 00:39:49] Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Rob Horner: The United States has a little over 100,000 schools.

Tim Villegas: Okay. You said that about 14,000 of them are implementing PBIS with fidelity.

Rob Horner: No, I said 14,000 of them measured fidelity.

Tim Villegas: Measured fidelity.

Rob Horner: So, part of ...

Tim Villegas: Oh, okay.

Rob Horner: Yeah [inaudible 00:40:06]

Tim Villegas: Okay. I see what you mean.

Rob Horner: The reason why that's so important is if you're really a behavior analyst, I mean, come on. The most important contribution of behavior analysis to the world is to teach the measurement of behavior over time in iterative manner and using those data for decision making. I mean, the principles of behavior are really fascinating and fantastic and wonderful, but there is no doubt in my mind that our major contribution to the world is really getting much more emphasis in the collection and use of data for decision making. And we see that so often in PBIS.

Rob Horner: We actually have done two randomized controlled trials in North Carolina and Oregon where we've shown that teams in schools that would meet and talk about behavior problems shifted from discussions that were essentially just admiring the problem to being taught this is actually how you use data to organize and implement solutions. When they did that, they were the exact same humans. It was really great. You can see people implement practices that are locally relevant and effective, and over time, they actually produce change in student outcomes.

Tim Villegas: Now, I know that there's a big push in schools in general with data and using that to make decisions educationally, and I wonder if the schools that are using PBIS, if they are taking that into consideration. They're using the information that they gather from doing their formative assessments in creating interventions for students who have gaps in their academics.

Tim Villegas: But I don't see that necessarily with behavior, and I wonder if it's really the same kind of way of answering the ... or coming up with the solutions to the problems is if we can get school to buy into both of those. Is that what you see when you look at our educational system as it stands right now, that the concern about accountability and test scores ... If we maybe focus that energy into also expected behavior and those values, that we would also see the same sort of transformation?

Rob Horner: Okay, several different questions.

Tim Villegas: Sorry. Sorry.

Rob Horner: [crosstalk 00:43:13] This is actually a really big topic. Using annual assessments of student performance is a realistic thing to do, and we should hold ourselves accountable for the performance of kids on reading, math, science, writing performance. Even if what you really believe is we need to do a much better job of teaching problem solving and critical thinking, there's no difference between saying, "Yep, we need to do that, but come on, you still have to teach people how to read and do basic math and science."

Rob Horner: Those are things that the school system should do. Pretending that an annual assessment is going to have any effect on actual day-to-day student behavior is not very impressive. Part of what we know is you need data that is much more frequently collected, much cheaper and easier. We need strategies where you're not spending two weeks assessing kids. For literacy in elementary schools, we know that you can assess the literacy scores of a student in about five minutes. Within that time, you can get a pretty good idea of where a particular student is moving, and that ability is going to become easier and easier and easier to collect as the technology becomes better at interpreting voice recognition.

Rob Horner: So in part, a teacher in second or third grade who's teaching reading should know regularly how well kids are doing in terms of literacy. When I say know, they should know not just oral reading fluency, but they should be able to say, "Is this child having difficulty due to vocabulary deficits, due to phonemic segmentation, due to lack of mastery of the alphabetic principle?" I mean, you can look and say, "How should I tailor support?" And if I've got 12 kids who have really significant vocabulary deficits, and I've got nine kids who are vocabulary rich, I should build groups where the kids are doing different things. I can tailor that and make that work, and I'm going to give each set of kids the things that they need. You can do differentiated instruction. You can differentiate to accommodate three or four groups of kids in an elementary classroom with existing resources.

Rob Horner: Now, behaviorally, you're going to do exactly the same thing, so part of what I want to know is if you sit down as a school, not as a classroom, but as a school, and you say, "How many times in the past week did we send kids to the office for problem behavior?" And of the 22 times, where was that most likely to happen? In the classroom? In the hallway? In the cafeteria? In the playground? If I know how often and I know where, then I want to say, "What were they doing, who was doing it, and what's our best understanding of why they keep doing it?" You may be able to say, "Well, we've got a problem in the cafeteria because we've got a whole bunch of hungry elementary kids lining up in the hallway for nine to 12 minutes." Is that developmentally wise? Isn't there a different way that we could release kids so that we decreased that clumping of kids in the hallway, just waiting to screw up? When you change the structure, you decrease problem behavior.

Rob Horner: One elementary school in Portland, Oregon, was having a huge amount of aggression on the playground. They were particularly worried because kids of color were being sent to the office much more frequently than white kids were, so they brought in a bunch of people to take a look at doing sensitivity training. But when they actually looked at their data, what they saw was the vast majority of problems on the playground were really related to kids playing basketball. You had one group of kids who came from a low-income area who were playing street rules with respect to basketball, and you had another group of kids who were using NBA rules.

Rob Horner: Well, street rules basically argue that it's not a foul unless you're bleeding. That didn't work very well for the teachers and staff. So, the result was not to do a whole bunch of odd things, but rather to get every kid out there and say, "Okay, look. This is how you do a wall ball. This are the rules for basketball. In this location, we're playing NBA rules. Anybody have any questions about that? Let's go through what that looks like." After having taught that, they got a 65% reduction in instances of aggression on the playground. It was an example of paying attention to the data, defining and teaching low-cost, high-impact intervention. Behavior analysis and PBIS is not about control. It's about the design of effective environments where people can use effective self-regulation efficiently.

Tim Villegas: I think that that is the ... I think that is the main thing that I'm gleaning from this conversation is that both PBIS and ABA are really looking at the environment first, and then what can we change about the environment that is going to help the environment be successful for everybody? Then, once we look at that, then we can narrow it down and say, "Well, it's successful for the majority of students except for these," and then focus a more strategic and individualized approach for those particular students.

Tim Villegas: Like you said, the changing of the environment doesn't necessarily have to be expensive as far as monetarily. I think teachers in schools sometimes have to rearrange their resources. That sometimes becomes expensive in the sense that that means they have to change how they're doing things, which I think is part ... This can be a longer conversation, so I'm not really ... Because we only have a few more minutes. But I think that is part of the pushback, and I wonder if you see that, that schools aren't willing to change because that means they have to change what they're doing and how they've been doing it for so long.

Rob Horner: Change is always difficult, so two things that I would suggest, Tim. One is it would be really good if your listeners would take a look at a recent book by Tony Biglan, Anthony Biglan, called The Nurture Effect. It is a book about using the science of human behavior to create a more nurturing society, and it's very accessible. It's not difficult. You don't have to know about statistics or research design to understand it, but it's an example of doing just what you were saying. The second thing about change is there is an entire field that's developing around what's called implementation science. It really is all about how do we implement effective practices not just so that we get them in place, but so we get them in place with a level of stability and rigor that they are producing social outcomes and they sustain over time?

Rob Horner: One of our messages from PBIS is never produce a change in a school that you don't expect to last for a minimum of a decade. Don't do things for this week. Don't do things for this year that you're going to change next year. Think about a 10-year cycle and say, "What is it that we're going to put in place that's really going to be durable and effective?" One of the reasons you get such resistance to change is most teachers who have been in the field for 10 years or more have been asked to sweat blood to do changes almost every year. Every year you show up, and people say, "Well, we're going to try a new literacy curriculum. We're going to try a new bully prevention program. We're going to try a new this." Then, you work really hard to put it in place only to have it replaced by something else the next year. You do that two or three times, and it really decreases your interest in getting excited about change.

Rob Horner: So, when I talk to people about PBIS, I always do this. I say, "Look. First off, do you think the kids are going to change unless we do something different? Do you think that somehow over the summer, they're just going to get better?" Everybody says, "No." Then, you say, "Okay, let's agree. Let's agree, one, that we're not going to stop anything that's already working. If you got something that's working, we're going to keep doing it. Second, we're only going to do things that are evidence based. We're not just going to do what your cousin recommends. We're going to do things that actually have empirical documentation that they'll be helpful.

Rob Horner: "Three, we're going to look for the smallest change that'll have the biggest benefit for children." So, we're not going to change everything. We're going to say, "What's the smallest two or three things we could change that would make the biggest impact? Let's do that, and do that well. Then, we can add some additional things. Finally, let's agree this. We're already working full-time, so if we're going to add something new, we need to define what we're going to stop doing to create the resources to make that possible and palatable." One of the great things right now is that schools do lots of things that are not very effective, and so part of being a good leader is building consensus not around what to do but why.

Rob Horner: Then, coming up with an agreement that says, "We're not going to do new things on the backs of the children, family, or staff. We're actually going to be administratively responsible, and then, we're going to do it together, and we're going to measure. We're going to measure if we've done what we said we would do and if it benefits students. And we're not going to do that just once a year. We're going to do it regularly, and we're going to use that information to put in place the smallest number of procedures that'll make the biggest effect in this community, this school. Over time, we're going to build a highly inclusive, equitable environment, where kids can come from many, many different contexts and still be academically and socially successful."

Tim Villegas: Well, Dr. Rob Horner, thank you so much for this fascinating conversation. I am very pleased that you took the time to speak with us today.

Rob Horner: You're very welcome, Tim. I wish you well.

Tim Villegas: That is our show. We would like to thank Dr. Rob Horner. Make sure you check out the PBIS website, pbis.org, for more information. Follow Think Inclusive on the web at thinkinclusive.us as well as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Instagram. Today's show was produced by myself, talking into USB headphones, a Zoom H1 Handy Recorder, MacBook Pro, GarageBand, and a Skype account. You can also subscribe to the Think Inclusive podcast via ApplePodcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Podomatic, the largest community of independent podcasters on the planet. From Marietta, Georgia, please join us again on the Think Inclusive podcast. Thanks for your time and attention.

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#18 Rob Horner | The Connection Between PBIS and ABA | Think Inclusive

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Rob Horner: Hello. This is Rob Horner from the University of Oregon, and you're listening to the Think Inclusive podcast. Tim Villegas: Recording from my office in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you are listening to the Think Inclusive podcast, episode 18. Today we have Dr. Rob Horner, director of the Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.

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How to Integrate Social-Emotional Learning into...

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How to Integrate Social-Emotional Learning into...

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Do the Common Core State Standards undermine social-emotional learning?

Many educators think so. In a recent Ed Week op-ed, an elementary principal argued that teachers were too busy teaching Common Core to address the social-emotional development of their students. I've heard the same argument from many teachers. This is troubling given that researchers strongly suggest that the learning process is 50 percent social-emotional and 50 percent cognitive.

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Yet when I read through the Standards, I quickly realized that social-emotional skills are implicitly embedded in the Standards-whether or not teachers, school leaders, policy-makers, or even the creators of the Common Core realize it.

In other words, for students to successfully meet the Standards, they must possess social-emotional skills. And unless students magically come to school with all these skills in place, deliberate teaching of these skills will be necessary.

(For readers who are not familiar with the current U.S. public education landscape, the Common Core State Standards outline what students are supposed to know in language arts and math at each grade level so that they will be prepared for college and/or the workplace. While 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Standards, there is still much disagreement on how to implement and test them and whether they're appropriate at all.)

Predicting if the Common Core Standards will survive the multitudinous controversies currently raging in state legislatures is beyond my psychic abilities. But there are hundreds of thousands of educators striving to put the standards to work in classrooms-and it's worth exploring how the Standards naturally align with CASEL's framework of social-emotional learning outcomes. Here are some examples.
Common Core Math Standards and SEL
At first, math and social-emotional learning may not seem like natural allies. But if you think back to a time when a mathematical concept completely confounded you (like, ahem, proofs in high school geometry), social-emotional skills such as perseverance, hope, optimism, and asking for help would have come in handy.

The Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice outline "processes and proficiencies" that math teachers should help students develop. These qualities, in particular, align well with social-emotional learning. Here are a couple examples:
Common Core Math Standard:
Students make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Corresponding SEL "self-management" skills:

Possess self-efficacy

Work toward goals

Attention control

Manage personal stress

Regulate emotions such as impulses, aggression, and self-destructive behavior

Seek help when needed

Exhibit positive motivation, hope, and optimism

Display grit, determination, or perseverance

Problem-solving (particularly word problems) is for many students the most challenging part of math. Often students will take one look at a problem and decide that it's too hard without even trying-especially those with "math phobia." This is where social-emotional skills can help.

Students need to first trust in their ability to solve a problem (self-efficacy) and then work towards that goal. They must be able to focus on the problem rather than get distracted by what the kid on the other side of the room is doing. If they get stuck, students must manage their stress-levels by regulating their emotions and, if necessary, ask for help. Staying optimistic throughout the process will help them persevere to the end.

For example, before beginning a lesson, have the students practice a couple minutes of mindfulness. Research suggests that this will calm their emotions and focus their attention. For longer-term impact, help students see how their personal goals align with math outcomes. Scientists have found that this will help students develop hope-one of the most important factors in student academic success. Click here for specific science-based suggestions on cultivating hope in students.
Common Core Math Standard:
When constructing viable arguments, students justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and respond to the arguments of others.
Corresponding SEL "social awareness" and "relationship management" skills:

Respect others (e.g., listen carefully and accurately)

Understand other points of view and perspectives

Identify social cues (verbal, physical) to determine how others feel

Predict others' feelings and reactions

Manage and express emotions in relationships, respecting diverse viewpoints

Emotions can run high when students try to defend their point-which can all too often lead to hurt feelings. Educators need to teach students how to transform "you're wrong!" or "that's a stupid answer!" into "from my perspective" or "I respectfully disagree."

Creating a caring and safe classroom builds respect among students. They learn to understand and accept that other people have different perspectives than them. Educators who build students' emotional literacy by teaching them how to identify emotions in themselves and others are giving students the tools to predict how others' feel and then respond appropriately-all of which will lead to much more effective (not to mention fun and engaging) academic discussions.

One of my favorite examples for building a safe and caring classroom comes from a Greater Good Summer Institute for Educators participant and is based on the RULER program. At the beginning of the year, she asked students how they wanted to feel in the classroom. After getting over their initial shock that a teacher actually cared about how they felt, students began to say things like "be respected" and "no laughing at each other."

Everyday, the students and teacher started class with everyone stating how they were currently feeling. Anyone who felt out-of-sorts was given a little bit of time to visit the "balancing table" where they could draw, write, or practice mindfulness to feel better. While many teachers may feel this practice would take too much time, in the long-run, the benefits far outweigh the time factor. Multiple studies show that students who are part of a safe and caring classroom where they feel seen, heard, and respected have better peer relationships and are more successful academically.
Common Core and English Language Arts Standards
Many SEL programs such as PATHS and RULER already use writing and literature as part of their lessons. And research indicates that reading literary fiction can help develop empathy-a wonderful justification for English teachers to assign more books like Crime and Punishment and Heart of Darkness.

While not explicitly calling them "social-emotional skills", many of the Common Core Language Arts Standards give teachers the opportunity to incorporate mini-lessons on emotions, communication, relationships, and other social-emotional skills directly into their language arts curriculum. Here are a couple examples:
Common Core English Language Arts Standard
RL.3.3 Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
Corresponding SEL "self-awareness", "social awareness", and "responsible decision-making" skills:

Label and recognize own and others' emotions

Analyze emotions and how they affect others

Evaluate others' emotional reactions

Reflect on how current choices affect future

In order to identify feelings of other people-whether real or fictional-students need to have a well-developed emotion vocabulary. Being able to recognize and label these emotions as they occur within themselves helps students do so in others. Examining how emotions impact fictional characters' lives also provides a non-threatening opportunity for students to reflect how emotions affect their own lives and the people around them.

For example, have students create a double-entry journal to examine how the emotions of a character impact the world around them. Follow this up with a journal entry in which students self-reflect on their own emotional experiences. To make it easier for students to label emotions, hang an emotions poster in your classroom.
Common Core English Language Arts Standard
W.7.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.
Corresponding SEL "relationship management" skills

Exhibit cooperative learning and working toward group goals

Communicate effectively

Cultivate relationships with those who can be resources when help is needed

Provide help to those who need it

Demonstrate leadership skills when necessary, being assertive and persuasive

Prevent interpersonal conflict, but manage and resolve it when it does occur

Anyone who has ever had to collaborate on a group project for school knows that it's not exactly a bed of roses. Pulling one's own weight (and getting others to do so), agreeing to disagree, and compromise are all part of the process-but social-emotional skills can go a long way in smoothing the road for everyone.

Effective and respectful communication is key to collaboration, as well as motivating and helping each other along the way. Students who develop these kinds of skills in school will be considered the "cream of the crop" when it comes to future workplace success.

For example, rather than telling students your version of good teamwork, have them come up with their own rubric for evaluating their collaborative efforts. This will help them "own" the process and make them more accountable to each other. Then have students share with the class after each workgroup session what worked and what didn't. Ask them to role play possible solutions for any problems they might have encountered. Allow them to adjust their rubric as they gain deeper insight into what makes a good team.
What's Missing
Overall, I found the Common Core Standards provide an excellent excuse for the teaching of social-emotional skills. And I applaud teachers who make the effort to do so. But even then, there's still something missing.

No Standard and no SEL program can replace a teacher's enthusiasm and passion for the curricula being taught. To me, that is the magic of teaching-and what often separates the good teachers from the great ones. The truly gifted educators are those who care for their students and show them the "awesomeness" of the world around them-and then go the extra mile to help them find their unique and purposeful place in it.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How to Integrate Social-Emotional Learning into Common Core

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Implementing the Common Core doesn't mean educators have to abandon SEL-in fact, just the opposite might be true.

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Speaking the Language of Social and Emotional Learning

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Speaking the Language of Social and Emotional Learning

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR

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American Institutes for Research

AIR provides rigorous research and evidence-based perspectives on issues relate to education, health, and the workforce—both domestically and across the globe.

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Practitioners and researchers agree that social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to academic achievement and well-being in school, as well as success in college and career. As the SEL field advances, more teachers and school leaders are incorporating social and emotional skill-building into school-wide and classroom level practices.

Above and beyond the free supports that AIR's federal technical assistance centers provide, SEL Solutions at AIR offers an approach to keep social and emotional learning at the center of students' educational experiences. AIR staff work closely with district and school staff to create the conditions-vision, leadership, engagement, skills, measurement, and coaching and support-required to promote the skills students need to master academic content and enhance their well-being.

AIR's SEL Solutions staff form a partnership with district and school staff to customize a phased implementation path with concrete steps and strategies that emphasize data-driven decision making, continuous stakeholder engagement, ongoing professional learning, and sustainability. Specifically, SEL Solutions supports district and school staff to embed and integrate SEL with work currently underway within the district and school, creating a coordinated and purposeful SEL and school climate effort.

In particular, members of our team:

Develop a vision and mission that includes SEL and school climate, as well as creating a common definition and framework of SEL and school climate

Support data collection and analysis, financing, and securing additional resources

Provide tools, resources, and expertise to guide integration of SEL and school climate with other initiatives, such as academic instruction, discipline policies, and educator effectiveness

Enact quick cycles of improvement to ensure effectiveness

Conduct leadership and instructional coaching on SEL practices, as well as teacher self-assessment

The SEL Solutions services are modeled after the best practices of our federally-funded technical assistance centers that support states and districts in using data to identify and implement policies and practices that improve school climate, including student and adult social and emotional skills. These include:

Services are also based off the extensive research conducted by AIR staff on SEL, school climate, and conditions for learning.

Key Work

A positive school climate and instruction anchored in supporting the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students brings out great potential in both students and teachers alike. The Ready to Assess suite of tools, available here at no cost, helps education leaders, practitioners, and policymakers decide whether and how to assess social and emotional development.

Mounting evidence shows that social and emotional learning skills may be more predictive than test scores of student success in English language arts and math. In this blog post, Deborah Moroney and Michael McGarrah discuss how states and districts can build systems to support and properly assess these social and emotional skills and competencies.

Social and emotional skills undergird student success-and mold better citizens. Results from the Collaborating Districts Initiative-a first-ever initiative to promote districtwide integration of social and emotional learning into the core activities of eight large urban districts-suggest that even modest investments can pay off for individuals, schools, and society. In this policy brief, Kimberly Kendziora and Nick Yoder share the results of the evaluation and offer policy six recommendations for states and districts implementing SEL initiatives.

Have you ever wondered what social and emotional skills look like in practice? If so, watch this whiteboard animation that follows a student throughout her day and ways in which she applies her social and emotional skills.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) develops people's ability to make successful life choices, to achieve academically, and to be college and career ready. In this video, Nick Yoder explains how SEL can help students and what research says about its effectiveness.

Our nation's top SEL and school climate leaders share ten actions policymakers can take to integrate and align these efforts.

What is social-emotional learning and what does it look like in practice? David Osher and Cleveland Public Schools' CEO Eric Gordon discuss.

In this podcast, Kim Kendziora talks with Melissa Schlinger of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), lead partner in an eight-district demonstration program that aims to establish whether and how large urban school districts can systematically implement social and emotional learning into their work, which AIR has been evaluating since its inception. The results provide insight on how SEL can be a key ingredient to school transformation and success.

Social and emotional learning is the process through which children learn the skills to handle themselves, their relationships, and their work effectively and ethically. This report presents findings about the outcomes of a complex eight-district demonstration project designed to learn about as well and show how and to what end school districts can make social and emotional learning an essential part of every student's education.

During the past 20 years, the afterschool field has been held accountable in varying ways-first, on the ability to provide safe places for young people to spend time while their parents work; then, on success in helping to improve participants' academic achievement as a supplement to the school day. This brief provides an overview of work done to date both in afterschool and school-based settings to define social and emotional learning, shares recent research on how afterschool programs contribute to the development of these competencies, and offers some next step recommendations to both practitioners and researchers.

Both the formal and informal education communities are increasingly focused on fostering opportunities for social and emotional learning (SEL) and the link between SEL and youth outcomes. This self-reflection tool is designed to help afterschool program staff reflect upon their own social and emotional competencies and their ability to support young people's SEL through program practices.

School-day and afterschool programs must work together to support young people as they develop. Although research shows that both in-school and afterschool staff find social and emotional learning important, the ways in which these different settings support young people vary. This tool is designed for afterschool and in-school staff first to reflect independently on their goals for social and emotional learning discuss how best to work collaboratively toward a common goal.
View All Work in Social and Emotional Learning >>

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Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Solutions at AIR

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Practitioners and researchers agree that social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to academic achievement and well-being in school, as well as success in college and career. Above and beyond the free supports that AIR's federal technical assistance centers provide, SEL Solutions at AIR offers an approach to keep social and emotional learning at the center of students' educational experiences.

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Advancing Social and Emotional Learning - CASEL

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CASEL is helping make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education, preschool through high school.

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Teaching Tolerance | Diversity, Equity And Justice

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Teaching Tolerance | Diversity, Equity And Justice

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Understanding how school discipline policies can contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline is essential for educators and families. Harsh punishments, automatic out-of-class time and police involvement for discipline can push young people out of classrooms and into the criminal legal system. But educators, parents and caregivers can help to change this harmful system by advocating for and implementing practices that prioritize mental health and well-being.

We offer this new resource page that highlights LFJ articles and content to open dialogue, shift practices and foster change to benefit all young people.

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Funding Social Emotional Learning: Where’s the Money?

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Funding Social Emotional Learning: Where’s the Money?

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Presented by Dr. Rita Oates, President, Oates Associates
WATCH THE EDWEBINAR RECORDING If you view the recording and would like a CE certificate, join the Education Funding community and go to the CE Quizzes link in the Community Toolbox.
Succeeding in life and in school takes more than great scores on math and reading tests. Other skills-such as how to communicate effectively, negotiate conflict, manage emotions and behavior, and make responsible decisions-are critically important for student success. "The extent to which schools help students develop interpersonal skills, such as cooperation, respect, and persistence," was extremely or very important in school quality to 80% of respondents in a Phi Delta Kappa poll released in August 2017.

In this edWebinar, Dr. Rita Oates, President of Oates Associates, helps you think about how you might fund social emotional learning (SEL) activities for your district, school or classroom and where you might find funding.

This edWebinar addresses:

How to develop a concept for a grant that includes social emotional learning activities

Who to partner with in your school or community on a grant for SEL

Where to find research to support your request for funding social emotional learning

How to measure social emotional learning for grant purposes

Where to find funding sources to impact social emotional learning for a classroom, school or district

Educators, administrators, and people who seek grant funding for K-12 schools and universities in partnership with them will benefit from watching this recorded event. Learn more about getting funding for social emotional learning activities.

About the Presenter
Dr. Rita Oates, President of Oates Associates, has helped schools win grants from $500 to $1.9 million. As EdTech director in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation's fourth largest district, Dr. Oates initiated innovative uses of technology, partly funded with more than $10 million in grants. Dr. Oates has also been the external evaluator on several collaborative federal grants. While director of the EdTech graduate program at Barry University, she taught a three-credit grant-writing course. She has presented grant-writing workshops at conferences such as FETC, TCEA, for university faculty, and is presenting at METIS 2018 (in Mississippi). Dr. Oates has presented several other webinars for edWeb's Education Funding community and has written more than a dozen books on educational technology. She earned undergraduate degrees from the University of Kansas, and a master's and PhD from Indiana University. Follow her on Twitter@ritaoates.
Join the Education Funding community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming webinars, view past edWebinars, take a quiz to receive a CE certificate for a past edWebinar, and access free resources.

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Funding Social Emotional Learning: Where's the Money?

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Presented by Dr. Rita Oates, President, Oates Associates WATCH THE EDWEBINAR RECORDING If you view the recording and would like a CE certificate, join the Education Funding community and go to the CE Quizzes link in the Community Toolbox. Succeeding in life and in school takes more than great scores on math and reading tests.

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The home of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). FInd more information on PBIS, how to implement PBIS, get resources and materials, and how to get support. Funded by the U.S.

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Digging Deeper into Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Exploring the SEL Landscape | American Institutes for Research

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Digging Deeper into Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Exploring the SEL Landscape | American Institutes for Research

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Social and emotional skills and competencies are essential for young people to succeed in school, work, and life. In the past decade, there has been an increasing number of studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and syntheses that focus on the key role that social and emotional learning (SEL) plays in the success and well-being of children and youth.

The American Institutes for Research, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), designed and executed two related activities to explore and describe SEL for practitioners and researchers. Specifically, AIR and RWFJ, along with an esteemed group of SEL experts, sought to (1) explore the relationship between SEL and healthy learning environments, and (2) understand the social and emotional competencies categorized and detailed in social and emotional competency frameworks.

Advancing the Field: How SEL Contributes to a Safe, Nurturing, and Healthy School Environment

AIR explored and described the relationship between SEL and school climate with an esteemed group of practitioners, researchers, and synthesizers. At three expert convenings, participants discussed the intersection of school climate and SEL, gaps in existing theory and research, and barriers and opportunities to integrate SEL and school climate. In the resulting report, The Intersection of School Climate and Social and Emotional Development, AIR staff members summarize the state of the research and present a set of propositions developed from the convenings. In addition, we developed 10 recommendations for practice from discussions at the first practice convening, Creating Healthy Schools: Ten Key Ideas for the Social and Emotional Learning and School Climate Community. Together, these resources can support researchers and practitioners integrate the role that healthy learning environments and SEL play in the positive development of youth.

Social and Emotional Competency Frameworks: A Comprehensive Scan and Analysis

AIR conducted a comprehensive scan and analysis of 136 different social and emotional competency frameworks from over 20 areas of study, spanning from school-based competency development, positive youth development, and character education, to foster care, juvenile justice, and public health. The search focused on childhood through early adulthood. In the final report, Identifying, Defining, and Measuring Social and Emotional Competencies, AIR staff members offer an inventory of the diverse frameworks and competencies identified in the scan, as well as related measures. The report can serve as a guide for researchers and practitioners who are interested in identifying and making decisions about what social and emotional frameworks, competencies, and measures to use in their own work.

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Digging Deeper into Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Exploring the SEL Landscape

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Social and emotional skills and competencies are essential for young people to succeed in school, work, and life. In the past decade, there has been an increasing number of studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and syntheses that focus on the key role that social and emotional learning (SEL) plays in the success and well-being of children and youth.