PREDICTORS OF SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION

Publication Date

4-5-2019

Document Type

Poster

Degree Type

Graduate

Department

Psychology

Mentor

Adena Meyers

Mentor Department

Psychology

Abstract

The development of social-emotional competencies is a critical task that may be promoted through the use of programs that teach social and emotional learning (SEL). Given the importance of these skills, efforts have been made at the federal level and at most state levels to encourage the implementation of SEL within schools. At the school level, successful implementation depends heavily on teacher-specific factors that include attitudes towards SEL, their students' emotions, and their own emotions. Teachers' SEL implementation behaviors may be influenced by their beliefs about SEL. Teachers' comfort with, commitment to, and perceived school culture around SEL are of particular importance. Further, teachers' meta-emotive structures as they relate to their own emotions and to children's distressing emotions may provide insight regarding SEL implementation behaviors. The current study seeks to identify predictors of quality implementation of SEL by exploring its relationship to teachers' beliefs about social emotional learning (SEL), their responses to children's negative emotions, and their relationship to their own feelings. The study will also assess teachers' emotional self-efficacy as well as their acceptance or denial of their own emotions. By investigating these teacher-specific factors and implementation behaviors, this study will link research with practice to inform better quality future implementation. Teachers responsible for SEL implementation in their classrooms were recruited for this study. A total of n = 154 Pre-K to 5th grade from various schools (n = 21) and school districts (n = 11) across Illinois participated in this study. Teachers completed a demographic questionnaire, the Teachers Coping with Children's Negative Emotion Scales (TCCNES; Gosney, 2006), the SEL Scale for Teachers (Brackett et al., 2012), and the Crèche Educator Emotional Style Questionnaire - Individual Emotions (CEESQ-IE; Ciucci, et al., 2015). Following the completion of these measures, teachers reported the frequency and duration of SEL implementation every two weeks though an SEL Log. Cronbach's alphas will determine internal consistency of the items and correlations will determine the strength of the association between meta-emotion variables, SEL beliefs, and teachers' emotional style. Simple and multiple regressions will be conducted to identify predictors of teacher SEL implementation behavior. It is expected that teachers' emotion style within the meta-emotion framework will predict SEL implementation. It is also expected that teachers' attitudes towards their own emotions will be predictive of SEL implementation. Lastly, it is expected that teachers' beliefs about SEL will be predictive of the frequency and duration of SEL implementation behaviors.

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