Preparing youth to thrive: Promising practices in social and emotional learning
Abstract
The guidebook describes SEL standards and organizational and curriculum features for a set of eight exemplary SEL programs.
... Collaboration is the practice of building interpersonal relationships to accomplish a shared task or goal, which is predicated on the development of group cohesion and trust as members establish and navigate norms and dynamics (Smith et al., 2016). Successful collaboration includes the acquisition and implementation of communication skills, as well as observation and reflection on strategies and behaviors that are effective in different scenarios. ...
... Perspective-taking involves thinking and learning about the views and experiences of others, as taking those feelings or needs into consideration. Empathy is a closely related construct that appears in positive youth development (Smith et al., 2016; United Nations Children's Fund Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa, 2017) and concerns the ability to identify, identify with, and affirm others' human experiences. Gaining an understanding of the systems KID Museum's Mind of a Maker learning framework. ...
... Frontiers in Education 04 frontiersin.org and power structures that impact equity is also a component of empathy (Smith et al., 2016). Perspective-taking in the KID Museum's framework also includes an element of connection from Lerner's (2005) 5 Cs Model of Positive Youth Development, which emphasizes relationships with peers, adults, institutions, and communities in a young person's ecosystem. ...
Invention education offers an exciting combination of knowledge and skill-based learning that is intertwined with important social and emotional competencies, especially for youth engaged in structured programs. KID Museum in Bethesda, Maryland, is an experiential museum and K-12 makerspace whose offerings include a suite of invention programs implemented through formal curricula, field trips, and out-of-school time opportunities. KID Museum’s Mind of a Maker learning framework is a promising pedagogical model for conceptualizing the broad range of learning outcomes targeted in these programs. By comparing to other frameworks developed separately but concurrently, the Mind of a Maker offers insights into the underlying values and learning theories that shape invention education and can contribute to a field-wide understanding of this area of experiential learning. This article explores constructs that promote an inventive mindset that may be reproducible in other learning contexts, as well as the ways in which framework outcomes are integrated into the design, reach, and evaluation of KID Museum’s invention programs.
... Specifically, daily activities should give young people space to process their emotions, share their experiences, listen to the experiences of others, work together in teams, solve problems, and reflect on the outcomes of their decisions. 11 Staff must find the right balance between giving participants autonomy and, through clear and consistent rules and expectations, setting limits on their behavior. Depending on their age and how long they participate in the program, young people may also benefit from increasing opportunities to help set rules and expectations themselves. ...
After-school programs offer young people opportunities for self-expression, exploring their talents, and forming relationships with supportive adults. That is, after-school programs promote young people’s social and emotional learning (SEL) skills-whether the programs use that term or not. Despite these programs’ potential, Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch write, they have yet to make a big impact on the field of SEL. One reason is that studying them poses many problems for researchers-for example, attendance isn’t mandatory, meaning that it can be hard to separate a program’s effects from young people’s personal characteristics that led them to choose the program in the first place. Still, research shows that after-school programs can promote many desirable SEL outcomes, and Hurd and Deutsch outline the factors that make high-quality programs stand out. How could policy help after-school programs promote SEL more effectively? First, positive youth-staff relationships are crucial to effective programs, and competent adult staff are the linchpin of effective after-school programs targeting SEL outcomes. Yet the after-school work force is poorly paid, and turnover is high. Hurd and Deutsch suggest several ways to professionalize after-school work-for example, by boosting professional development and creating more opportunities for career advancement. Second, as schools have become more focused on standardized test scores, funders and policymakers have pushed after-school programs, too, to demonstrate their academic impact. Hurd and Deutsch write that this approach is misguided: overemphasizing academic outcomes leads to neglect of SEL outcomes that can help young people become productive and engaged citizens. They argue for expanding the criteria used to determine whether after-school programs are effective to include SEL. More broadly, they write, high-stakes evaluations create a disincentive for programs to undertake the difficult work of assessing and improving their own practices. A better approach to evaluation would focus less on whether programs “work” and instead seek ways to make them work better.
Organized youth programs provide a context where adolescents experience strong emotions and may develop new ways of thinking about and dealing with emotions. The current study examined youth's reports of positive and negative emotions arising during the course of their work in different types of project-based programs; learning about emotions from different sources (e.g., from observing peers, interacting with adult staff, or engaging in self-reflection); and longitudinal associations between emotional experiences and learning. Quantitative data were collected at two time points from 319 youth (57% female; M age = 15.8 years; 33% Latino, 29% Black, 32% White, 6% other) participating in 14 Midwestern programs focused on Leadership, Arts and Performance (Arts), and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Overall, positive emotions occurred more frequently than negative emotions, but emotional experiences differed based on the focus of the program. There were few significant differences in emotional learning from various sources (self, peers, staff) across the three types of programs. Multiple regression models controlling for prior learning indicated that, consistent with theory, positive emotions predicted subsequent learning about emotions from all sources. In contrast, negative emotions predicted increased learning from peers but decreased learning from self, suggesting that experiencing negative (vs. positive) emotions may lead youth to attend to different sources of information. The study's findings have implications for theory, research, and practice.
The messages youth receive in schools about how they matter as individuals and as members of ethnic-racial groups are influential in constructing their developing ethnic-racial identities (ERI). However, the developing ERI students hold also have a role in shaping their experiences at school. The current study examined the longitudinal and reciprocal association between ERI (exploration and resolution) and school climate (support for cultural pluralism and teacher supportiveness) among 491 Black, Latino, and White middle school youth (Mage = 12.03, SD = 1.05, range: 11–17) in the Midwest. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that greater perceptions of support for cultural pluralism within the school predicted greater exploration and resolution at later time points for all students. Moreover, greater exploration and resolution among White students was predictive of greater perceptions of support for cultural pluralism at the school. Higher quality teacher–student relationships predicted greater engagement in ERI exploration for all youth. The findings highlight the importance of school climate in helping shape ERI among youth attending a culturally diverse school and the role of such youth in shaping the climate at their school.
We investigated adolescent responsibility across 2 developmental contexts, home and an afterschool program. Longitudinal data were collected from 355 ethnically diverse 11–20-year-old adolescents (M = 15.49; 55.9% female) in 14 project-based programs. Youth rated their responsibility in the program and at home at 4 time points; parents and leaders rated youth at Time 1. The first research objective was to evaluate 3 aspects of construct validity concerning scores of responsibility assessed through a new measure. Analyses provided evidence that program- and home-responsibility scores were distinct (i.e., evidence of the structural aspect of validity); that responsibility scores were invariant across age, gender, and ethnicity (i.e., generalizability evidence); and of external validity based on parent reports (i.e., convergent evidence). The second objective was to examine cross-context transfer of responsibility. A series of cross-lagged structural equation models (SEMs) revealed that higher responsibility in each context (home, program) predicted higher responsibility in the other context, even after controlling for the stability and within-time associations. At the last time interval, the program-to-home path was significantly stronger than the corresponding home-to-program path. The third objective was to assess whether these relations were moderated by adolescent ethnicity, gender, age, or years in the program. Multigroup SEMs revealed that pathways of influence did not differ across groups. Taken as a whole, results indicate that experiences in the 2 contexts of home and program lead to interindividual differences in the development of youth self-reported responsibility, but that affordances for responsibility development across contexts change over time.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.