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Excellent implementation resource - recommendations, progressions, benchmarks, etc.

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The most effective SEL implementation requires districts and schools to use a strategic, systemic approach that involves everyone from district and school leaders to community partners and families. Everyone needs to work together to ensure students receive the support they need.

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based on standards

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Washoe Co. Signature Classroom Practices

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Washoe Co. Signature Classroom Practices

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Creating conditions for student learning

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Neuroscience of SEL connection/Edutopia - youtube video

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The Heart-Brain Connection: The Neuroscience of Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning

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video

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The Heart of Learning: Compassion, Resiliency, and Academic Success

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Resources - WA Dept of Ed

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New Jersey Document

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with standards and rubrics

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Poster - Creating classroom conditions

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WCSD has increasingly focused on the role of students' Social and Emotional Competencies (SEC) in helping them persist through obstacles and graduate high school college and career ready. Social and emotional competencies are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to be personally and socially competent. Research supporting the significance of social and emotional competencies in promoting positive youth development is abundant. Students with higher social and emotional competencies have higher academic achievement, are more likely to stay in school and graduate, and have better life outcomes than students with lower social and emotional competencies. Not having strong social and emotional competencies is also a leading risk factor for many negative outcomes, including social adjustment problems, academic failure, and dropping out. Supporting students' social and emotional growth alongside their academic growth is a high priority for WCSD, and a critical component in its strategic plan, Envision WCSD 2020 - Investing in Our Future.

What is Social and Emotional Learning?

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process through which students acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to be socially and emotionally competent. WCSD aligns its SEL approach with the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning's (CASEL) widely used Framework for Systemic Social and Emotional Learning, which identifies five core competencies that help "educate hearts, inspire minds, and help people navigate the world more effectively."

These five competencies include:

Self-Awareness: The ability to accurately recognize your emotions and thoughts and know how they influence behavior.

Self-Management: The ability to regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations.

Social Awareness: The ability to adopt the perspective of other people and to empathize with other people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

Relationship Skills: These skills enable a person to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups.

Responsible Decision-Making: A person who makes responsible decisions has the ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behavior and social interactions.

Notice that the five competencies in the wheel above are situated within a broader context of homes and communities, schools, and classrooms. This graphic is intended to emphasize that these competencies are not learned through a single program or teaching approach. Rather, SEL involves coordinating strategies across the entire educational environment, including in the classroom, but also on the playground, school bus, at home and in the community.

SEL and Washoe County School District

Social and Emotional Learning is an integral part of WCSD's strategic plan, Envision WCSD 2020 - Investing in Our Future. SEL classrooms focus on developing students' strong listening skills, disciplined self-awareness, and interpersonal relationships. You can learn more about WCSD's approach to implementing SEL by visiting the WCSD SEL Department's website.

WCSD has developed a set of standards aligned to the CASEL framework. These standards are intended to provide a set of benchmarks and a common language for understanding the social and emotional competencies students (and adults!) need to handle themselves, their relationships, and their work effectively and ethically. You can learn more about each of these standards and indicators (or "look fors") by clicking on the tabs in the graphic below.

Social and Emotional Learning Standards

How Does WCSD Measure Students' Social and Emotional Skills?

WCSD measures students' social and emotional skills in a variety of formal and informal ways, from simply observing students' interactions and behaviors in classrooms, to more formal assessments of students' competencies. One way we assess students' social and emotional skills is by having all students in grades 5th -9th and 11th complete the Annual Student Climate Survey. You can learn more about WCSD's Annual Climate Survey and see the reports for each WCSD school by clicking here.

In addition to questions about their overall school environment, this confidential School Climate Survey asks students to rate how difficult or easy 40 different skills are for them to do. For example, one question assessing Relationship Skills asks students, "How easy or difficult is it for you to share what you are feeling with others?" Students rate their ability to do each skill on a scale from 1, Very Difficult to 4, Very Easy. To find out more about how WCSD, CASEL, and the University of Illinois-Chicago developed this measure in collaboration with students and teachers in the district, you can read our recently published article in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology or by reading an article by Education Week about the work entitled " Students Help Design Measures of Social-Emotional Skills."

Based on how students respond to these survey questions, we can get a sense of which social and emotional skills are most and least difficult for students. This helps teachers and the district understand how best to tailor SEL instruction to better support the needs of all students. For example, the figure below shows how easy or difficult students rated their relationship skills on 28 different questions on the 2015 Climate Survey. As the figure indicates, Sharing what I am feeling with others and Joining a group I don't usually sit with at lunch (in red) were two of the hardest relationship skills for students to do. Students rated I ntroducing myself to a new student at school as average difficulty ( yellow). Being polite to adults and Getting along with my teachers were viewed as the easiest social and emotional skills ( green) by students.

In addition to examining how students rate themselves on individual questions in the survey, it is also important to look at how students rate themselves at different grade levels across multiple questions in a particular domain, or scale. This helps us understand how these social and emotional skills develop over time. The figure below shows the average rating students gave themselves on each of the eight competency scales by grade level. Each competency scale represents about 3-5 different questions.

Overall, students rate their skills more highly in 11th grade than they do in 5th grade, with the exception of Self-Management of School Work, where elementary school students report higher skillsets in this area, than students in middle and high school. To find out which specific Self-Management of School Work skills students find the most difficult, you can dive deeper into that competency area by clicking here.

Also notice students rated themselves most highly on their Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making competencies, and least highly on their Self-Management of Emotions. Taken together, these data raise important questions that help guide planning around social and emotional learning in the future. For example, why do students rate Self-Management of Emotions as more difficult than the other competency areas? Are these competencies more challenging for students, or are the particular questions we asked students in the survey more challenging in this scale compared to the others? What about middle and high school academic content, classroom instruction, structure, and environments might make students less positive about their ability to self-manage their school work? WCSD regularly examines these data in relationship to other academic (e.g., credit accrual, grades, state examinations) and behavioral data (e.g., attendance rates, behavioral referrals, engagement in after school activities) to help enrich the story about students' social and emotional skill development, and its relationship to outcomes.

Why Focus on Students' Social and Emotional Skills?

Although social and emotional skills are critical for many reasons, they have been found to be especially important to academic success in particular. The research base supporting SEL as a strategy for improving academic and life outcomes for students is strong. According to a meta-analysis of 213 studies involving more than 270,000 students, children who participated in evidence-based SEL programs showed an 11 percentile-point gain in academic achievement compared to students who did not participate in SEL programs. Students participating in SEL programs also showed improved classroom behavior, an increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school than students who did not participate in these programs. Further, a 2015 report indicated that every dollar invested in SEL programming yields an $11 return in long-term benefits. These benefits include reduced juvenile crime, higher lifetime earnings, and better mental and physical health.

Research in WCSD finds a similarly strong link between students' ratings of their social and emotional competencies and academic and behavioral outcomes, including their level of risk for being off-track for graduation. The figure below displays the percentage of students who reported that each SEC was Easy or Very Easy for them to do by their level of risk for dropout. Students' level of risk for dropout is a composite measure that includes suspension, absenteeism, transiency, retention, and credit deficiency. Students with a higher level of risk on this measure are less likely to graduate on-time, have lower GPAs, and are more likely to be suspended and chronically absent. These data indicates that there may be a relationship between how students feel about their social and emotional competencies and their likelihood of graduating on-time. That is, students who are considered "high risk" for dropout (red bar) report lower social and emotional competencies than students who are "no-risk" for dropout (blue bar). Future research will help develop our understanding of how these two factors may influence one another.

Future Steps

WCSD has made substantial strides in their efforts to ensure SEL is woven into the fabric of a student's education. This work now needs to be strengthened and sustained in order to have systemic impact on every child along their pathway to graduating high school college and career ready. Our next steps in the data story include ensuring that accurate and valid data are available and able to assess implementation and impact on our system and determine the supports needed for our educators to build and sustain SEL into their curricula. Additionally, given the research base linking SEL competencies with academic outcomes, we must continue to provide improved assessments and data tools to educators so they can effectively identify, and develop, the social and emotional competencies of our 64,000 students.

We want to hear from you! Please provide any feedback or ask questions by using our contact form here!

References

1. Farrington, C. A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagoaka, J., Keyes, T. S., Johnson, D. W., & Beechum, N. O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners. The role of non-cognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.↩
2. Jones, D. E., Greenberg, M., & Crowley, M. (2015). Early social-emotional functioning and public health: The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. American Journal of Public Health, 105, 2283-2290.↩
3. Valiente, C., Swanson, J., & Eisenberg, N. (2012). Linking students' emotions and academic achievement: When and why emotions matter. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 129-135.↩
4. Arsenio, W. F., Adams, E., & Gold, J. (2009). Social information processing, moral reasoning, and emotion attributions: Relations with adolescents' reactive and proactive aggression. Child Development, 80, 1739-1755.↩
5. Barry, M., & Reschly, A. L. (2012). Longitudinal predictors of high school completion. School Psychology Quarterly, 27(2), 74-84.↩
6. Domitrovich, C. E., Durlak, J., Staley, K., & Weissberg, R. P. (provisional acceptance). a. Social-emotional competence: An essential factor for promoting positive adjustment and reducing risk in school children. Child Development.↩
7. Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: A meta‐analysis of school‐based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405-432. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x↩
8. Belfield, C., Bowden, B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., & Zander, S. (February, 2015). The economic value of social and emotional learning. Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York(REVISED VERSION).↩

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WCSD has increasingly focused on the role of students' Social and Emotional Competencies (SEC) in helping them persist through obstacles and graduate high school college and career ready. Social and emotional competencies are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to be personally and socially competent.

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CASEL video

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What is SEL?

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Social-Emotional Learning: What Is SEL and Why SEL Matters

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Miloš Kankaraš, Policy Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD

Javier Suarez-Alvarez, Policy Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD

In response to growing policy interest and increasing body of empirical evidence pointing to the importance of social and emotional skills, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has recently launched a new study on the social and emotional skills of school-aged children. The Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) is part of wider OECD efforts to place greater emphasis on the development of these skills in schools and other settings. The SSES is a new OECD international survey that assesses 10 and 15 year-old students in a number of cities and countries around the world. Apart from examining the level of children's socio-emotional skills, the study will gather information on their family, school and community learning contexts, thus aiming to provide information about the conditions and practices that foster or hinder the development of these critical skills.

The overall purpose of the SSES is to broaden the focus of policy makers, practitioners and researchers and include the domain of social and emotional skills. It will do so by emphasising the relevance of these skills for important life outcomes as well as providing valid, reliable and comparable assessment of students' social and emotional skills across cities and countries.

The SSES will help address numerous questions that are important for policy makers, teachers, school administrators and parents. These include:

Which socio-emotional skills predict children's cognitive, educational, and social outcomes, as well as their general well-being?

Which family learning contexts, such as parental styles or learning resources, influence children's social and emotional development?

Which school learning contexts, such as content or type of teaching methods or school resources, influence children's social and emotional development?

Which community learning contexts, such as sport and cultural resources or safety, influence children's social and emotional development?

What are the social and emotional skill gaps according to children's gender and socio-economic background, and what are their likely causes?

Structure of Social and Emotional Skills
The study will use the most well-known framework in the field of social and emotional skills - the "Big Five" model - to provide a general outline of how these skills should be organised. Social and emotional skills in this model are arranged hierarchically, with five general skill categories that can be split into more specific, lower-order skills. The broad categories of the "Big Five" are:

Open-mindedness (or Openness to Experience),

Task Performance (i.e. Conscientiousness),

Emotional Regulation (i.e. Emotional Stability),

Engaging with Others (i.e. Extraversion), and

Collaboration (i.e. Agreeableness).

Each of the dimensions or categories contains a cluster of other mutually related social and emotional skills. For example, Task Performance includes achievement orientation, responsibility, self-control, and persistence. Apart from demonstrating the degree of mutual similarity, this grouping also ensures a systematic, comprehensive and balanced consideration of social and emotional skills of individuals.

The study will assess 15 social and emotional skills spread across the six broad domains - the "Big Five" dimensions and a group of compound skills. Due to reduced response burden that 10-year-olds can endure, a smaller number of 10-12 social and emotional skills will be assessed in this cohort.
Triangulation: Students, teachers and parents
Social and emotional skills of school-age students are the primary focus of this study. These skills will be assessed both directly and indirectly. The student assessment will have a format of standard Likert-type items, with statements describing typical behavioural patterns and response categories representing various degrees of agreement with the given statement. Similar type of instruments for assessing students' social and emotional skills will be administered to their parents and teachers, thus providing for the possibility of mutual verification and triangulation.

Apart from assessing students' social and emotional skills, the study will also gather a wide range of information on children's family, school and community environments from their teachers, parents, school principals, as well as from students themselves. This information will help to place social and emotional skills in the context of other relevant individual, group and community characteristics and factors that are relevant to the development of these skills.

Some of the main topics covered in these questionnaires are quality of parent-child relations, home learning environment, parental styles, learning activities, school climate, teaching practices and pedagogies, etc.
Target population and sample design
The SSES will survey two cohorts of children: children attending schools aged 10 and 15 at the time of administration of the study. There will be 3,000 students per site (i.e. participating city or country) for each of the two cohorts. A two-stage stratified sample design with initial random selection of schools and a follow-up random selection of students within selected schools will be implemented.

The study will include a diverse list of participants, with different administrative units, jurisdictions and sizes. Both individual cities and entire countries will participate since the study design can accommodate different contexts. Official decisions on participation in the study are to be made by 30 April 2018, but several cities and countries has confirmed their intention to participate in the study and are actively participating in the study setup and initial instrument development phases. The maximum number of participating sites is set to 12 in order to keep the study manageable in this first round.
Project management and implementation
Like all OECD large-scale surveys, the SSES is organised as a project with comprehensive management structure, involving multiple stakeholders, national and international institutions, policy advisors, researchers, experts and administrators. The OECD Secretariat has overall managerial responsibility for the project, monitors its implementation on a day-to-day basis, builds consensus among countries and serves as the interlocutor between the sites and the international consortium contracted to implement the Survey.

The international consortium of this study is led by the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, USA in partnership with the Drasgow Consulting Group, Urbana, Illinois, US (assessment development and analysis); Sanigest International, San Jose, Costa Rica (quality control); Research Support Services, Evanston, Illinois, USA (translation training adjudication); and cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control, Brussels, Belgium (translation verification).

The project implementation is also coordinated together with the International Advisory Group composed of policy experts from participating and interested cities and countries, and a Technical Advisory Group composed of research experts in social and emotional skills and cross-cultural comparability. Throughout the project, this Group will give their advice and guidance to ensure the robustness of the research.
More information:
A dedicated website for the study is available with useful background documentation and regular updates about developments regarding the study. It is available here: www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/thestudyonsocialandemotionalskills.htm
What would you hope to learn from this study of SEL across cities and countries and why? What concerns does it raise?
Disclaimer: The Assessment Work Group is committed to enabling a rich dialogue on key issues in the field and seeking out diverse perspectives. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Assessment Work Group, CASEL or any of the organizations involved with the work group.

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OECD's New International Study on Social and Emotional Skills - AWG

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Miloš Kankaraš, Policy Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD Javier Suarez-Alvarez, Policy Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD In response to growing policy interest and increasing body of empirical evidence pointing to the importance of social and emotional skills, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has recently launched a new study on the social and emotional skills of school-aged children.

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How To Support Social & Emotional Development

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For some, social and emotional skills come naturally. But for those who don't, there are strategies and tips to help encourage those skills.

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Social-emotional learning: Measuring What Matters domain paper | People for Education

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Social-emotional learning: Measuring What Matters domain paper | People for Education