Follow the steps of the Quality Implementation Tool (QIT) to support the successful implementation of the SEL initiative. Experts agree that social emotional skills can be learned and that SEL consists of developing these social emotional skills (OECD, 2018). Child development experts in various disciplines emphasize the importance of developing social and emotional skills for children's well-being (Darling-Churchill and Lipman, 2016).
In the same study (Brackett et al., 2012), comfort, commitment, and culture were linked to teacher perceptions related to the implementation of The RULER Approach, an evidence-based SEL program.
Contextual Analysis
Our project team sought to include schools in the survey that also reflected the district as a whole in terms of academic performance. College and Career Readiness is based on the percentage of students in the 4-year cohort who met at least one of the College and Career Readiness. Our project team began the process of data analysis by completing a listening overview of each of the digitally recorded and digitally transcribed interviews to develop a familiarity with the content of each interview.
Due to the timing of the SEL policy rollout and other factors (e.g. survey fatigue), our project team and Manchester Schools have done so.
Findings
I don't know what the broad, correct definition is, but I would say it has to do with affective learning and how individuals learn based on their background and social skills. But when children come to us and don't have those feelings, we punish them instead. If they don't have those skills, it could really affect them.” Another teacher said, “I have no problem doing another initiative.
Like we have to come back and go to a workshop and they don't ask us.”
Discussion
Although MCS is in its early stages, the school district has made small but noticeable progress along Roger's continuum and is appropriately focused on an investigation into the successful implementation of the program. Frameworks for step-by-step execution of high-quality implementation are abundant in the literature, and we suggest using the research-based Quality Implementation Tool (QIT) of Meyers et al. (2012) in the recommendations section of this report. Amid their engagement, we found evidence of varying levels of comfort—a teacher's sense of confidence in teaching SEL—among MCS teachers.
Reflecting the lack of an explicit definition of SEL in the existing literature, MCS educators were unable to provide a clear and consistent definition of SEL. Nevertheless, just as there is conceptual overlap in the literature, MCS teachers felt that SEL was related to student skill development. According to Brackett et al. 2012), improved comfort with SEL is related to both classroom management during lessons and teachers' attitudes about the importance and difficulty associated with implementing new SEL programs.
We find that the level of flux and change within MCS district leadership and the number of initiatives educators have encountered in the recent past has produced teachers, specifically at the elementary level, who are committed but overwhelmed. High school principals and teachers felt the burden of change keenly, with high school administrators questioning how subject matter specialists would have the expertise or time to accomplish SEL implementation and with high school teachers unwittingly acquiescing to a push within some existing research for SEL to to be focused in the lower grades for earlier impact (Boncu et al., 2017). Culture, as defined by Brackett et al. 2012), is school-wide support for SEL and is largely related to teacher perceptions of a core component of school culture—the school leader's support for the initiative.
MCS may find encouragement in the fact that according to research by Brackett et al. likely affected the continuation of their SEL programs. Training and professional development for principals could help strengthen principals' ability to strongly influence the implementation of SEL in their schools, which could lead to less emotional exhaustion and perceptions of greater administrative support for teachers (Brackett et al., 2012).
Recommendations
Interviews with primary educators support these observations as each of the primary educators I spoke with was quick to make a connection between the social emotional and academic development of the children. Many of the schools we visited listed student attendance as a top district and school priority based on chronic absenteeism. The steps in the Quality Implementation Tool (Meyers et al., 2012) closely match many of these. topics we heard in our interviews as well as best practices for implementing new initiatives.
Sixth, evaluate the effectiveness of implementation. 2012) and his colleagues recommend that an implementation group be established. This could include members of the Department of Social and Emotional Learning, but could also include teachers, principals, counselors, community members and students, according to the Stakeholder Trust pillar of the Manchester City Schools Strategic Plan 2018-2023 (school district website) . mentioned March 1, 2019). Manchester City could achieve this in a number of ways, such as sharing data results and the names and roles of the implementation team, providing contacts across the school system for teachers to contact with reactions, comments or suggestions.
Many sections of the interview protocol we used would lend themselves well to these visits (See Appendix C). As the plan is shared, Manchester City Schools officials and members of the implementation team should share how the plan was developed and the efforts they made to engage stakeholders in creating the plan. Throughout our research, educators sought professional development to explain the "what" of the initiative, or what was expected of them, as well as the "why," or anticipated impact on student success.
While this is a recommendation of QIT (Meyers et al., 2012), it is worth noting that implementation research converges on the idea of monitoring being a key element of all successful implementation (Rogers, 2003). During the course of ongoing evaluation, members of the Manchester Schools Department of Social and Emotional Learning and the implementation team will have the opportunity to observe and codify elements of SEL programming that are essential for fidelity to follow, as well as to point out adaptations that have served school communities well.
Conclusion
The effects of a multi-year universal social-emotional learning program: The role of student and school characteristics. The missing piece: A national teacher survey on how social and emotional learning can empower children and transform schools. Social and emotional behavioral profiles in kindergarten: A population-based latent profile analysis of links to socio-educational characteristics and later achievement.
Impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of universal school-based interventions. Overview of the Big Five and Three Composite Skills OECD Social and Emotional Skills Report 2018 I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me about your thoughts and ideas about learning social emotional learning (SEL) and how it can be applied in Manchester City schools.
IRB Language (for use with each participant): This interview is being conducted as a needs assessment for Manchester City Schools in partnership with Vanderbilt University. The purpose of this interview is to obtain information about school and district perceptions of social emotional learning. Your feedback will guide the district in determining next steps to support social-emotional learning for students in Manchester City Schools.
By improving the quality and scope of data collected, we aimed to provide a solid basis for policy decisions within Manchester City Schools. At the end of the interviews at Manchester City Schools, cognitive interviews were conducted with five teachers. That's the acronym for Collaborative for Social, Academic and Emotional Learning, an organization that assembles and leads work related to SEL in the United States.
For example, in all five cognitive interviews, the teachers we spoke to did not understand the CASEL acronym, which we expanded to its full name: Collaborative for Social, Academic and Emotional Learning, to make the item clearer.
Limitations
We centered the social situations and circumstances around the comfort of our interviewees to soften the impact of the setting on their responses. With our analytic constructs and premises, we were sensitive to the way our questions were ordered, from less intense to more, and, for example, we were sensitive to different perceptions of capacity in the way we framed questions. Our data collection and analysis methods are detailed in the methods section and our interview protocols are in Appendix C.
Regarding internal reliability, we will discuss our approach to low inference descriptors, peer review, and mechanically recorded data, three strategies typically used to reduce threats to internal reliability in qualitative approaches. A clear limitation is that our study has not been subject to peer examination, which would otherwise provide confirmation of findings. However, we recorded data mechanically in an attempt to reduce the threat to internal reliability as opposed to simply taking notes.
Here we will discuss the limitations surrounding the validity of our study and will discuss the issue of comparability as a function of external validity (Patton, 2015). We will share how we addressed four questions related to internal validity—process and change, observer effects, selection, and spurious conclusions. On the external validity front, our most significant questions were about comparability and how typical and generalizable our findings are.
Our findings here are limited and may only be potentially generalizable to other similar situations and circumstances, such as those in which our study took place. With regard to internal validity, we did not encounter any significant process or change problems.
