Roger P. Weissberg

The impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: a meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions

This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students. Compared to controls, SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. School teaching staff successfully conducted SEL programs. The use of 4 recommended practices for developing skills and the presence of implementation problems moderated program outcomes. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the positive impact of SEL programs. Policy makers, educators, and the public can contribute to healthy development of children by supporting the incorporation of evidence-based SEL programming into standard educational practice.

Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning.

A comprehensive mission for schools is to educate students to be knowledgeable, responsible, socially skilled, healthy, caring, and contributing citizens. This mission is supported by the growing number of school-based prevention and youth development programs. Yet, the current impact of these programs is limited because of insufficient coordination with other components of school operations and inattention to implementation and evaluation factors necessary for strong program impact and sustainability. Widespread implementation of beneficial prevention programming requires further development of research-based, comprehensive school reform models that improve social, health, and academic outcomes; educational policies that demand accountability for fostering childrens full development; professional development that prepares and supports educators to implement programs effectively; and systematic monitoring and evaluation to guide school improvement.

No Safe Haven: A Study of Violence Exposure in an Urban Community

OBJECTIVE To examine levels of violence exposure and reports of feeling unsafe in relation to psychological and behavioral characteristics for a general population sample of youths from an urban setting. METHOD A comprehensive survey of high-risk behaviors, attitudes, indicators of adaptive behavior, and daily involvements was administered to a sample of 2,248 students in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades in an urban public school system. RESULTS More than 40% of the youths surveyed reported exposure to a shooting or stabbing in the past year, and 74% reported feeling unsafe in one or more common environmental contexts. Multiple regression analyses indicated significant relationships between violence exposure/feeling unsafe and a set of indicators of psychological and behavioral adaptation and expressed attitudes. CONCLUSIONS These results attest to the picture of violence as a common fact of inner-city life and to the demand that is placed on urban youths to accommodate in their psychological development to chronic threat and lack of safety.

The Scientific Base Linking Social and Emotional Learning to School Success

Schools will be most successful in their educational mission when they integrate efforts to promote children’s academic, social, and emotional learning (Elias et al., 1997). There is general agreement that it is important for schools to foster children’s social-emotional development, but all too often educators think about this focus in a fragmented manner, either as an important end in itself or as a contributor to enhancing children’s health (e.g., drug prevention), safety (e.g., violence prevention), or citizenship (e.g., service learning). Although social and emotional learning (SEL) plays important roles in influencing these nonacademic outcomes, SEL also has a critical role in improving children’s academic performance and lifelong learning. This chapter and book make a compelling conceptual and empirical case for linking SEL to improved school attitudes, behavior, and performance. Intrinsically, schools are social places and learning is a social process. Students do not learn alone but rather in collaboration with their teachers, in the company of their peers, and with the support of their families. Emotions can facilitate or hamper their learning and their ultimate success in school. Because social and emotional factors play such an important role, schools must attend to this aspect of the educational process for the benefit of all students. Indeed most do. There is a long history of

A meta-analysis of after-school programs that seek to promote personal and social skills in children and adolescents.

A meta-analysis of after-school programs that seek to enhance the personal and social skills of children and adolescents indicated that, compared to controls, participants demonstrated significant increases in their self-perceptions and bonding to school, positive social behaviors, school grades and levels of academic achievement, and significant reductions in problem behaviors. The presence of four recommended practices associated with previously effective skill training (SAFE: sequenced, active, focused, and explicit) moderated several program outcomes. One important implication of current findings is that ASPs should contain components to foster the personal and social skills of youth because youth can benefit in multiple ways if these components are offered. The second implication is that further research is warranted on identifying program characteristics that can help us understand why some programs are more successful than others.

A longitudinal assessment of teacher perceptions of parent involvement in children's education and school performance.

This study examines the ways in which parental involvement in childrens education changes over time and how it relates to childrens social and academic functioning in school. Teachers provided information on parent involvement and school performance for 1,205 urban, kindergarten through third-grade children for 3 consecutive years. They rated the following four dimensions of parent involvement: frequency of parent-teacher contact, quality of the parent-teacher interactions, participation in educational activities at home, and participation in school activites. As predicted, the frequency of parent-teacher contacts, quality of parent-teacher interactions, and parent participation at school declined from Years 1 to 3. Every parent involvement variable correlated moderately with school performance and parent involvement in Years 1 and 2, and accounted for a small, but significant amount of variance in Year 3 performance after controlling for initial performance level. Participation in educational activities at home predicted the widest range of performance variables. Results suggest that enhancing parental involvement in childrens schooling relates to improvements in school functioning.

Prevention That Works for Children and Youth: An Introduction.

The widespread implementation of effective prevention programs for children and youth is a sound investment in societys future. The most beneficial preventive interventions for young people involve coordinated, systemic efforts to enhance their social-emotional competence and health. The articles in this special issue propose standards for empirically supported programming worthy of dissemination and steps to integrate prevention science with practice. They highlight key research findings and common principles for effective programming across family, school, community, health care, and policy interventions and discuss their implications for practice. Recent advances in prevention research and growing support for evidence-based practice are encouraging developments that will increase the number of children and youth who succeed and contribute in school and life.

Social competence in developmental perspective

Section I Social Competence in Developmental Perspective: Conceptual Issues.- to Section I.- 1. Significance of Peer Relationship Problems in Childhood.- 2. The Role of Competence in the Study of Children and Adolescents Under Stress.- 3. The Nature of Social Action: Social Competence Versus Social Conformism.- 4. Individual, Differential, and Aggregate Stability of Social Competence.- What to Do while the Kids are Growing Up: Changing Instrumentation in Longitudinal Research (Conversation Summary).- 5. Socially Competent Communication and Relationship Development.- 6. Measuring Peer Status in Boys and Girls: A Problem of Apples and Oranges?.- Section II The Emergence of Social Competence in Early Childhood.- to Section II.- Friendships in Very Young Children: Definition and Functions (Conversation Summary).- 7. Communicating by Imitation: A Developmental and Comparative Approach to Transitory Social Competence.- 8. Co-adaptation within the Early Peer Group: A Psychobiological Study of Social Competence.- 9. Development of Communicative Competencies in Early Childhood: A Model and Results.- Section III Ongoing Social Development In Middle Childhood And Adolescence.- to Section III.- Examining the Impact of Social Behavior on Peer Status (Conversation Summary).- 10. Self-Perpetuating Processes in Childrens Peer Relationships.- 11. Types of Aggressive Relationships, Peer Rejection, and Developmental Conse quences.- 12. The Role of Rough-and-Tumble Play in the Development of Social Competence: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence.- Section IV Setting Factors in Childrens Social Development: The Influences of Families and Schools.- to Section IV.- 13. Young Childrens Social Competence and Their Use of Space in Day-Care Centers.- 14. Childrens Social Competence and Social Supports: Precursors of Early School Adjustment?.- 15. Social Competence Versus Emotional Security: The Link between Home Relationships and Behavior Problems in Preschool.- 16. Maternal Beliefs and Childrens Competence.- Section V Translating Theory into Practice: Social Competence Promotion Programs.- to Section V Challenges Inherent in Translating Theory and Basic Research into Effective Social Competence Promotion Programs.- 17. Between Developmental Wisdom and Childrens Social-Skills Training.- 18. Enhancing Peer Relations in School Systems.- 19. Promoting Social Competence in Early Adolescence: Developmental Considerations.- 20. Appendix: Research Abstracts.

What Works in School-Based Social and Emotional Learning Programs for Positive Youth Development

Two challenges for researchers of school-based action are to identify effective approaches to prevent problem behaviors and promote positive youth development and to support the widespread implementation and sustainability of evidence-based preschool through high school practice. In this article, the authors describe integrated social, emotional, and academic education as a useful framework for conceptualizing school-based positive youth development programming. We then review findings from selected exemplary studies and research syntheses to support this perspective. We conclude with guidelines for implementing integrated social, emotional, and academic learning programs.

Enhancing young people's social competence and health behavior: An important challenge for educators, scientists, policymakers, and funders*

Abstract Large numbers of Americas young people engage in multiple high-risk behaviors that may jeopardize their health and social development. Given the gravity of this situation, many federal agencies and national organizations have called for the implementation of school-based K-12 social competence and health promotion programs. Unfortunately, there is a gap between the comprehensive programs that policymakers are asking educators to implement and the limited scope, duration, and intensity of state-of-the-art health promotion programs that scientists have developed and evaluated. As a result, most schools currently adopt well-marketed programs that lack documented effectiveness. Although current research indicates that brief, well-designed, theory-driven competence promotion and health education programs produce short-term benefits, there have been no controlled, longitudinal field studies to evaluate the long-term effects of K-12 efforts. This paper proposes that policymakers and funding agencies support long-term collaborations among educators and scientists to develop and evaluate K-12 comprehensive social competence and health education programs and identifies critical issues that funded projects should address.