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In This Issue:    

• Spotlight on Research: Preventing rejection between peers; self-esteem: no social pancea; helping children cope with trauma
• Spotlight on Practice: Pressure to perform; beyond academic achievement; caring classrooms and peaceful playgrounds; looking at evidence-based practice; CASEL book review
• Spotlight on Policy: Creating safe learning environments, state by state
• CASEL Up-Close: Upcoming SEL workshop; a CASEL farewell

From CASEL's Leadership  

The Importance of Educational Policy

This past year, CASEL has become engaged more deeply than ever before with the world of policy. Policies—at the national, state, and local levels—can either create barriers to implementing school-wide SEL or actively facilitate educators’ practices in SEL, character education, and prevention. Education Week’s recent special issue summarizing the state of U.S. education, for example, reported on each state’s policies (including financial supports) for programming to affect school climates. Thus, we saw that New Jersey has both character education legislation and funding to support it. In Illinois, CASEL worked closely with policymakers at the State Board of Education and with others to develop model district policies to build the social and emotional development of children into districts’ instructional plans. We also assisted in the development of the state’s new SEL Learning Standards (see last issue).

Another major policy event—the proposed new federal budget—is now in the forefront. Our first news item, below, features Phil Brown, Director of New Jersey’s Center for Character Education (NJCCE). Phil is a close and eloquent friend of CASEL, and our item quotes extensively from his recent newsletter to New Jersey educators.

Roger P. Weissberg                                          Mary Utne O’Brien
President                                                          Executive Director  

Highlight: New Jersey SEL Leader Comments on Federal Budget Proposal

The following statement was made public by Phil Brown, Director of New Jersey’s Center for Character Education.

In his fiscal year 2006 budget request, President Bush recommended eliminating the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) program. This program, which is administered under Title IV of the No Child Left Behind Act, provides $441 million in funding to state education agencies. Almost all school districts participate in the program, which historically serves as the backbone of school-based substance abuse prevention and intervention efforts in the United States. Many schools use Title IV funds to support evidence-based social skills development programs such as the Social Decision-Making and Problem Solving Program, Lions Quest, Second Step, and other evidence-based programs which are at the heart of their SEL, character education, and prevention efforts.

The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) is taking a lead role in lobbying against these budget cuts. Title IV has been attacked before in the federal budgeting process, and protests from state and local educators and their representatives have saved the program. It is important that educators and preventionists review the impact the proposed cuts may have on their programs and services and consider contacting your congressional representatives to let them know how these funds are being used and why they are important to you. For help in crafting your message, see the CADCA website at: http://cadca.org/coalitionsonline/article.asp?id=674. CADCA has also set up a system to facilitate sending faxes to your legislators, through their site: http://capwiz.com/cadca/home .

Being an actively engaged citizen is one important part of social responsibility and character education, and taking appropriate action when the vital interests of our field are threatened is both a moral responsibility and also an opportunity to model what we teach.  

Spotlight on Research 

Preventing Rejection between Peers

Most programs provide social skills training to the children who experience rejection. Yet the effectiveness of this approach is limited because it does not account for the social context, the behaviors of “popular” peers, and the risk of further stigmatizing rejected children.

A new study in the Journal of Primary Prevention documents the effectiveness of a classroom-level, rather than individually focused, approach that offers a promising alternative. The study team led mixed groups of “accepted” and “rejected” children in 24 middle-school classrooms in weekly non-academically oriented cooperative games, cooperative for some academic work, and regular teacher meetings so teachers could support each other in creating socially accepting environments.

Before the study, only 39% of students reported that “almost all” or “all” of their peers respected and listened to them. Afterwards that number increased to 60%. The results suggest teachers can significantly increase peer social acceptance through relatively modest changes in their classroom practices.

An activity booklet of non-academic games can be obtained at no cost by e-mailing the study’s lead author at amori@stanfordalumni.org.

Source: Amori, Y.M., Boucher, M.A., and Humphreys, K. (2005). Prevention of peer rejection through a classroom-level intervention in middle school. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 26(1), 5-23.

Self-Esteem: No Social Panacea

Numerous problems among youth, including peer-related issues, have been attributed to low-self-esteem. For decades raising self-esteem has been proposed as a way to address academic underachievement, substance use, risky sexual activity, eating disorders, and other problems. The alleged correlation between high self-esteem and positive psychological and behavioral outcomes has spawned social policies, educational practices, and therapies. But is this correlation supported by the research?

Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth, an article in the January issue of Scientific American, summarizes the findings from a review of self-esteem studies. According to the article, people high in self-esteem are more likely to initiate social contacts, report greater happiness and less depression, and persist in the face of failure. Yet self-esteem is a weak predictor of academic performance, and some evidence suggests that artificially raising self-esteem may actually lower it. Similarly, low-self esteem does not predispose young people to bullying, sexual activity, or substance abuse; in fact, for certain behaviors, such as bullying, sexual activity, and alcohol consumption, some studies indicated the opposite.

Should parents and teachers strive to boost self-esteem? Rather than artificially trying to bolster self-esteem, CASEL argues that research shows a more effective approach is to provide students with the SEL skills they need to function successfully in academic and social environments, including opportunities to make positive and genuinely valued contributions to their schools, families, and communities.

Source: Baumeister, R.F., Campbell, J.D., Krueger, J.L., and Vohs, K.D. (January, 2004). Exploding the self-esteem myth. Scientific American.

Helping Elementary Age Children Cope with Trauma

Trauma is often cited as another factor in young people’s problem behavior. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, many parents and teachers struggled over how best to help children cope. A study in the October issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry provides insight into children’s reactions to September 11 and offers some lessons for parents and teachers in how to minimize post-traumatic stress.

Parents and children in grades K-6 in Washington, DC were given questionnaires regarding exposure, stress reactions, and constructive actions taken three months after the attacks.

Regardless of their grade, children who watched a lot of TV news the week of the attack experienced significantly more negative symptoms than children who watched only some coverage. Parents of younger children seemed to understand the need to limit TV watching, but parents of older elementary age children were significantly less likely to limit their children’s exposure.

Children who reported knowing a family member or friend who was hurt in the attacks, compared with those who did not, experienced comparable levels of negative reactions. According to the study’s authors, it’s best to target all children in an area heavily affected by a traumatic event, then subsequently focus on children who exhibit more serious or prolonged symptoms.

Children indicated that their own sense of vulnerability and distress was strongly influenced by their parents’ responses to the attacks, suggesting a need for parents to monitor their own reactions, including family-level responses after disasters.

Source: Phillips, D. Prince, S. & Schiebelhut, L. (2004). Elementary school children’s responses 3 months after the September 11 terrorist attacks: A study in Washington, DC. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 74(4), 509–528.

Spotlight on Practice

Pressure to Perform

In the current environment of high-stakes accountability, educators are being compelled to narrow the curriculum and teach to the test rather than address students’ broader needs. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) advocates a more comprehensive approach that recognizes the development of academic skills as well as students’ capacity to develop into individuals who are “knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, motivated, civically inspired, engaged in the arts, prepared for work and economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond their own borders”—goals that extend well beyond an exclusive focus on test scores.

Read ASCD’s Framework for Education in the 21^st Century for recommendations to strengthen learning and address the broader needs of children in the face of the NCLB legislation.

Beyond Academic Achievement  

Arguing that NCLB sets its sights too low by focusing primarily on test scores, David Sobel and Julie Bartsch advocate for “place-based education” as a means to enliven learning by connecting it to the environment and community. Such teaching is underway in schools across the United States as a way to cultivate students’ civic responsibilities while improving the quality of life in their communities. And it’s no surprise that test scores are improving at the same time.

To read about two school-community programs that are making a difference through place-based learning, go to http://www.vermontcommunityworks.org/cwpublications/journal/cwjissuesarchive/cwjfall04-web.pdf

Caring Classrooms and Peaceful Playgrounds

School-wide SEL programs abound, and increasingly they can demonstrate positive impacts through empirical research. Some noteworthy recent resources include:

• Peace Games is a curriculum that incorporates meaningful games as a vehicle to teach children how to deal with conflict and value the diversity of their unique communities. Read about this program at http://peacecenter.berkeley.edu/Fall04_PeaceGames.pdf.

You can learn more about Peace Games by visiting their web site at www.peacegames.org.

• Read about how one teacher transformed her classroom, her students, and herself by attending to social and emotional factors in the article “A Curriculum of Care.” The article highlights the Child Development Project, PATHS, and the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (all of which are “select” programs in CASEL’s Safe and Sound program review) as approaches that get high marks for affecting the school community and enhancing learning. See http://peacecenter.berkeley.edu/watson_spring04.pdf.

You can learn more about all of the programs by visiting the CASEL web site at http://www.casel.org/about_sel/SELprograms.php

Taking a Hard Look at Evidence-Based Practice

Although the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation remains controversial and has met with strong resistance among educators, Robert Rothman, writing in Voices in Urban Education, a publication of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, argues that the trend has had positive effects on schools. Most important, according to the report, is the new awareness of needing to base educational decisions on meaningful data. That requires schools to extend their definition of “evidence-based” beyond an exclusive focus on standardized test scores, however. The latest issue of Voices in Urban Education provides four perspectives on the use of evidence to improve education at the district and state levels and offers provocative ideas about what counts as evidence and ways evidence can inform practice. Go to http://www.annenberginstitute.org/VUE/index.html.

CASEL Book Review: Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice

Fetterman, D. M. & Wandersman, A. (2005). Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice. New York: Guilford Press

Given the need to implement evidence-based social-emotional learning (SEL) programs and strategies, assess their impacts, and sustain and improve them over time, this book is a timely resource on evaluation. Intended mainly as a guide for scholars, practitioners, and funders, it makes explicit the key values of empowerment evaluation (EE). Like SEL problem-solving models, EE provides an ongoing and systematic approach in which program implementation and continual program modification and improvement come together in a cycle of problem definition, goal setting, solution generating and implementation, and outcome evaluation. The special emphasis of EE, however, is on the voice, vision and authority of the client, as opposed to the outside evaluator. This book provides a valuable and humanistic approach to program evaluation.

Spotlight on Policy  

Creating Safe Learning Environments, State by State

Increasingly, state departments of education, state boards of education, and university collaborators are working together to improve school-based social and emotional learning (SEL). Five states have created policies that support the development of SEL to foster the academic achievement of all children. Illinois, California, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Iowa are working to implement comprehensive systems to promote children’s healthy development and address barriers to learning. The Iowa policy includes an SEL component as well as support through the collaborative efforts of schools, families, and communities.

To read about Iowa’s policy, see: http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/iowasystemofsupport.pdf

CASEL Up-Close  

What Is CASEL?  

CASEL—the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning—is dedicated to the development of children’s social and emotional competencies and the capacity of schools, parents, and communities to support that development. Based at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), CASEL is working to create a world in which young people will have the academic knowledge and skills they need to achieve their goals and will also be caring, engaged citizens prepared to participate fully in society. CASEL’s mission is to establish integrated, evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) from preschool through high school.

What Is SEL?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing fundamental social and emotional competencies or skills in children and creating a caring and supportive school climate. A large number of school-based programs and practices are designed to do this. Many evidence-based school programs that focus on positive youth development, problem prevention, service-learning, and character education can be considered SEL. They work to develop students’ social and emotional competencies and create ways to nurture and support students. The resources in this e-newsletter cover a wide range of topics under the umbrella of school-based SEL programming.

About This Listserv

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Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
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CASEL@uic.edu 
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