Abstract
Student success should incorporate not only academic achievement, but also the skills and competence to identify and effectively pursue personal life goals. However, success has become narrowly defined by test scores, which minimizes students’ opportunities for growth and development. Research findings show the interrelatedness of social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of learning and how these dimensions shape positive student outcomes. In this article, we discuss how schools can integrate social, emotional, and academic development in optimizing student learning. Foregrounding teachers, the engines that drive the educational practices within schools, we describe their role in shaping student outcomes and identify the essential knowledge and skills needed to create academically and emotionally enriched spaces for students. We discuss the gaps in current teacher education and professional development (PD) programs that result in teachers being ill-prepared for the realities of the classroom. Finally, policy implications for teacher education, PD, and school reorganization are discussed.
Keywords
Tweet
To improve student outcomes, we need to acknowledge the interrelatedness of the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of learning and better prepare teachers to attend to these aspects of students’ development in how they organize their classrooms.
Key Points
Classrooms designed to promote students’ academic growth and social-emotional competencies (SEC) better support students’ learning and development.
Teachers need strong content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and social-emotional learning (SEL) skills to yield positive student outcomes.
Support to incorporate SEL in classroom instruction benefits students’ prosocial behavior and achievement; attitudes about self, others, and school; and teachers’ well-being.
Mandating SEL and human development courses in teacher education programs and teacher recertification can better prepare teachers to develop academically and emotionally enriched classrooms.
Programs designed to promote teachers’ own social, emotional, and psychological development are essential for teachers to develop the skills needed to effectively manage the rigors of the classroom.
Introduction
Student success used to mean virtues and skills related to personal and social responsibility, creativity and critical reasoning ability, political consciousness, and community advocacy. Now success tends to be narrowly defined by test scores, in particular in reading (English language arts, ELA) and mathematics (Time, Learning and After School Task Force, 2007). Whether or not schools adopt a more holistic perspective on student success, most would agree that schools should promote positive personal development to include intellectual, social, and psychological well-being.
Nevertheless, a common perception holds that attending to social and psychological development will minimize time for what is “most important”—intellectual growth and academic performance (Malecki & Elliot, 2002; Oberle, Schonert-Reichl, Hertzman, & Zumbo, 2014). Critiques of this view come from educators and researchers in education (e.g., Jennings & Greenberg, 2009), psychology (e.g., Elias & Haynes, 2008), and child development (Osher, Kendziora, Spier, & Garibaldi, 2014). In fact, students’ social and psychological development (i.e., social-emotional awareness and social-emotional competencies [SEC]) can improve academic and life outcomes (Jones & Bouffard, 2012; Leary, 2007; Schonert-Reichl, 2017). Neuroscience, education research, psychology, and economics together show the interrelatedness of social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of learning and how these dimensions shape positive student outcomes (Jones & Kahn, 2017). In particular, individuals with more positive socioemotional development tend to have greater capacity for understanding, problem-solving, and propensity to work collaboratively (Leary, 2007).
This article builds on this wealth of evidence, to discuss how schools can integrate social, emotional, and academic development in their daily approach to educating students. This discussion foregrounds teachers, as the engines that drive the educational practices within schools (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). The following sections describe teachers’ roles in producing positive student education outcomes that integrate social, emotional, and academic development. In particular, we describe the knowledge and skills teachers need to organize classrooms in these ways, the education and support prospective and practicing teachers need to provide this kind of support, and the effectiveness of this education on students. Finally, policy implications follow for teacher training, professional development (PD), and school reorganization.
Teacher Knowledge and Skills Essential for Positive Student Outcomes
Effective teachers are perhaps the most significant factor influencing student success. However, optimizing student outcomes—both academic achievement and SEC—incorporate three interrelated dimensions: “the learning context, students’ social emotional learning (SEL), and teachers’ SEC” (Schonert-Reichl, 2017, p. 138).
The Learning Context
Effective structuring of the learning context involves several components: identifying and implementing cognitively demanding tasks differentiated appropriately to align with students’ learning needs, engaging learners in activities that make them feel competent and empowered, orchestrating an emotionally safe, caring, and supportive environment where students can learn from errors, and promoting interaction that engenders empathy, self and emotional regulation, and a strong sense of community (Boettcher, 2007; Hiebert et al., 1997).
More broadly, the guidance and advocacy teachers provide as social support can be subdivided in four types: emotional support, instrumental support, informational support, and appraisal support (House, 1981). Instrumental support describes the ways teachers meet students’ needs by giving them time, sharing their skills, and using their expertise (House, 1981; Malecki & Demaray, 2003 Instrumental support predicts students’ subjective well-being (Suldo et al., 2009), improved students’ depression (Cheng, 1998) and focused engagement allotted to academic work (Richman, Rosenfeld, & Bowen, 1998). Students identified teachers’ instrumental support in terms of how well teachers helped them engaged with and understand academic content. They regarded teachers as supportive when they were thoughtful and responsive to their needs, valued their thinking and encouraged them, made accommodations (e.g., giving extra time) for additional support to improve grades, and created a safe classroom environment (Suldo et al., 2009).
Appraisal support refers to communicating expectations and feedback from both formative and summative evaluation (Malecki & Demaray, 2003), enhancement of self-worth (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985), and esteem support (Lam, 2019). Students who receive consistent and clear classroom expectations are more likely to develop prosocial behavior and maintain positive relationships with their teachers and peers (Reinke & Herman, 2002; Witt, VanDerHeyden, & Gilbertson, 2004). Successful approaches to enacting this kind of support incorporate: making expectations clear (Sugai & Horner, 2002), reinforcing these expectations consistently by offering positive and corrective feedback (Witt et al., 2004), providing consistent, clear and critical feedback (Noell et al., 2014), and providing opportunities to improve their work (Suldo et al., 2009; Yeager et al., 2014).
Informational support involves advice or guidance for problem solving—aligned more closely with students’ cognitive needs. It conveys content that is useful for learning disciplinary knowledge, namely, instructional support (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985; Malecki & Demaray, 2003; Richman et al., 1998). To provide strong informational support, teachers must have strong disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), often referred to as “[subject] knowledge for teaching” (Baumert et al., 2010; Gess-Newsome et al., 2019; Hill et al., 2008; Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005; Voss, Kunter, & Baumert, 2011).
Note: Discipline-Specific Knowledge for Teaching
Building on Shulman’s (1986) PCK, some fields have made strides in defining and articulating what teacher knowledge entails (e.g., mathematics educators have articulated this as mathematical knowledge for teaching [MKT] (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008), but at a minimum, it comprises disciplinary knowledge, specialized knowledge of the content that informs instructional decision-making, knowledge of students’ thinking, instructional strategies, and pedagogical tools that support effective instruction. Teachers who have strong disciplinary knowledge for teaching (e.g., mathematical knowledge for teaching) tend to demonstrate higher quality teaching than those who do not (Baumert et al., 2010; Hill et al., 2008). As such, many teacher PD and teacher education programs are designed specifically to develop or enhance this knowledge. However, despite the success of these programs to improve teaching quality, often these improvements in teaching do not translate to similar increases in student learning (Kraft, 2019; Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2018). In fact, improvements in student achievement require large improvements in instructional quality. For example, moving achievement from 50th to 54th percentile would require a change in instructional practices from the 50th percentile to the 84th percentile (Garet, Heppen, Walters, Smith, & Yang, 2016). Thus, although PD programs develop disciplinary knowledge for teaching can improve teaching quality, in most cases, this type of support was insufficient to influence student outcomes. In this regard, integrating SEL, given its role in the holistic development of the child, may yield more notable student outcomes (e.g., Greenberg et al., 2003).
Students’ SEL
Students’ SEL involve five interrelated competencies including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning [CASEL], 2013). A metanalysis of 213 school-based, SEL programs (270,034 students from grades K-12) show that SEL programs yielded significant positive effects on SEC and students’ attitudes about self, others, and school. The programs also yielded increased prosocial behavior and improved performance on achievement tests (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). In addition, emotional support is the most commonly and widely addressed form of social support—perhaps the most influential on well-being (Malecki & Demaray, 2003; Suldo et al., 2009). Emotional support attends to students’ emotional needs, such as building trust, showing love, empathy, and care (House, 1981; Suldo et al., 2009). Teachers’ emotional support best predicted students’ social, academic, and emotional competencies (Malecki & Demaray, 2003; Richman et al., 1998), as well as subjective well-being, compared to other types of support received from other sources (e.g., emotional support from parents or informational support from teachers), especially for underachieving students (Walker & Graham, 2019). In addition, students’ positive emotions can facilitate their cognitive functioning (LeDoux, 2000). Overall, social support has positive effects, through incorporating SEL.
Teachers’ SEC
Teachers’ SEC influence their ability to organize the learning context and enact SEL strategies. Teachers’ SEC shape the nature of teacher–student relationships, which in turn influences classroom behavior, quality of learning, and students’ resilience and persistence (Durlak et al., 2011; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). As such, in addition to content knowledge and PCK, teachers must be able to develop students’ social and emotional skills, and have the disposition to create engaging, positive learning environments (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). In this regard, in addition to the knowledge and skills needed to support SEL, teachers’ personal SEC are critical (Jones & Bouffard, 2012). Teachers with strong SEC tend to successfully organize their classrooms to attend to their students’ individual academic and socioemotional needs, develop strong teacher–student relationships, and create an overall healthy classroom climate (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). In sum, to engage students meaningfully and effectively in academic content requires teachers to have strong content knowledge integrated with PCK and skills (Shulman, 1986), as well as SEC and overall well-being (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jones, Bouffard, & Weissbourd, 2013).
Models of Teacher Education and PD Programs
Teacher Education Programs
Given the importance of SEL for students’ development and teachers’ SEC and well-being to support SEL, along with content knowledge and PCK, it begs the question, how well are practicing and prospective teachers being prepared to create healthy classroom environments? To ensure quality preparation, colleges and universities have organized their programs in multiple formats—bachelor’s (4 years of study), master’s (1-2 years), post-baccalaureate (1-2 years), and bachelor’s degree plus 1 year of dedicated teacher preparation (5 years). The typical teacher training program in the United States includes courses on education theory, pedagogy, and student teaching experience apart from the subject course. In addition, some programs included courses on special education, health and nutrition, and computer science. Typical training for teachers also involves classroom experiences and student teaching experience for a semester or year—varies by state (Worrell et al., 2014). Field experiences and student teaching involve either observing others teach or getting involved by actually teaching (National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education & Certification, 2003; Wang, Coleman, Coley, & Phelps, 2003)
A majority of the traditional education programs in the United States require teacher candidates to take at least one child and adolescent development course to get a better understanding of their learners and their learning conditions (Leibbrand & Watson, 2010). However, these courses tend to vary in composition and the intensity of preparation (Schwille, Ingvarson, & Holdgreve-Resendez, 2013). Drawing on the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) survey (2005), Leibbrand and Watson (2010) remarked that 80% of programs offer a course in child or adolescent development in their schools of education, whereas the rest rely on the courses offered by the psychology departments, which does not necessarily integrate theories with the classroom context.
Despite findings that friendly, empathetic, and personal teacher–student interactions are key to student achievement (Monahan, 2017; Stronge, 2002; Weger, 2018), many teachers leave their teacher education programs ill-prepared to develop relationships in these ways, or enact SEL (Elias, 2003; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jones et al., 2013; Patterson & Purkey, 1993). Most new teachers admit to struggling and feeling incompetent in the “real world” of teaching students (American Federation of Teachers, 2012). As Borman, Mueninghoff, Cotner, and Frederick (2009) asserted, teacher education programs “must go beyond cognitive learning and foster interpersonal relationships facilitating student affective learning” (p. 137). In this regard, teacher preparation programs should support development of “knowledge, dispositions, and skills for creating a safe, caring, supportive, and responsive school and classroom community” (Schonert-Reichl, 2017, p. 142).
Investigating whether existing teacher education programs were supporting SEL, a study involved 304 colleges of education offering teacher preparation programs in United States (Schonert-Reichl, Kitil, & Hanson-Peterson, 2017). Only a few covered the five SEL competencies: 17 states addressed only one dimension, whereas 16 and 14 states addressed two and three dimensions, respectively. The dimensions of social awareness (44 states) and responsible decision-making (34 states) were the most commonly included dimensions in their training programs. A few states incorporated SEL into their curriculum standards “either as free-standing standards (e.g., Illinois, Kansas, Pennsylvania) or with a focus on SEL skills within their current standards (e.g., Washington, Vermont)” (Yoder, 2014, p. 8). Although many teacher education programs are including aspects of SEL in the program structure, this set of knowledge and skills are not considered essential components in ways that disciplinary knowledge and PCK are.
Teacher PD for Practicing Teachers
Teacher PD generally refers to the process of teacher learning for practicing teachers (Avalos, 2011). Different kinds of PD programs aim to study and support teacher learning and growth. The first kind focuses on improving teachers’ PCK and skills to improve the quality of their instruction. The second kind focuses more on the affective side of teaching and supports teachers in attending to the psychological hardships they encounter in teaching and improving their SEC and SEL skills. Although many would agree teachers need support in improving their knowledge and skills as well as their well-being, no PD study, yet, focuses on both simultaneously (Cross Francis, 2019).
Note: Effective PD
The nature of PD programs varies depending on the specific needs of teachers. However, effective PD shares some common features (e.g., Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, & Hewson, 1996). The first is a focus on improving teachers’ content knowledge by having them participate in content-focused interventions, such as workshops or problem-solving sessions. The second feature incorporates active learning—the PD uses an interactive environment such as teachers’ classrooms and enables teachers to put their skills into practice within the program. The third promotes collaboration among teachers, thereby building a community of teachers who understand them, support them, and work with them to get better at their profession (Wenger, Trayner, & de Laat, 2011). Another core feature is to use models of effective practice (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Hiebert & Grouws, 2007): examples of lesson plans, student work, video clips of others’ practices, and observations of classroom practices. The more teachers can explore examples of good teaching practice, the more they become motivated to apply them to their teaching. Next, coaching and expert support also relate to models of effective practice and are critical to improving teachers’ practices (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Gibbons & Cobb, 2016). They offer feedback for teachers to see where they need an improvement and how to get there. The next feature of effective PD—feedback and reflection—recognizes that teachers need time not only to get feedback from the experts, but also to provide feedback to each other and time to reflect on their learning and practice (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007).
If teachers are to adopt a constructivist learning approach, they need to engage in the same approach; teachers are active learners who construct their own knowledge, and PD organizers should engage teachers as learners in similar ways to how teachers will treat their own students (Putnam & Borko, 1997). That requires using productive teaching and learning practices such as collaboration, modeling effective practices, feedback, and reflection, which are also among core features of effective PD. Treating teachers as learners also requires attending to their psychological needs and well-being as we expect them to do in their classrooms. What teachers bring to PD, both personally and professionally, impacts their PD experience and outcomes (Ball, 1996).
The effectiveness of PD programs is determined by examining changes in teachers’ practices and student outcomes from participating teachers’ classrooms (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2007). For example, students whose teachers participated in Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) workshops that examined students’ mathematics learning through problem solving and incorporated that knowledge into practice, showed considerably more success in solving different kinds of problems by using various strategies (Fennema et al., 1996). Also, effective PD contributes to teacher learning as well as student learning and achievement (e.g., QUASAR [Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning] project; Stein, Smith, & Silver, 1999; STAAR—Supporting the Transition from Arithmetic to Algebraic Reasoning; Borko, 2004).
PD programs designed only to support teachers’ disciplinary knowledge and skills tend to disconnect their personal well-being from their professional life. Some PD programs do focus on the affective aspect of teachers’ development. One such example is the CARE (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education) program (Jennings, Snowberg, Coccia, & Greenberg, 2011) at Garrison Institute. The goal of this specific PD is to help teachers and educators to deal with stress, prevent burnout, and rediscover the positive feelings and beliefs embedded in their job. The participating teachers improved in their well-being, mindfulness, and efficacy as well as in their time management skills. Another example is CASEL program developed to promote SEL via different professional learning communities such as Equity Work Group (EWG) and Professional Learning Series. Their goal is to support educators and administrators from P-12 in making evidence-based SEL an integral part of their education (Elias et al., 1997). In doing so, they have found SEL can impact student outcomes in a positive way (Durlak et al., 2011).
Policy Implications: Transforming Teacher Development Programs to Optimize Student Outcomes, SEL Training as Core Aspect of Teacher Education and PD
Learning environments that are emotionally safe and allow opportunities for deep learning best enable students to thrive (Durlak et al., 2011; Hiebert et al., 1997). To organize classrooms in these ways, teachers should have strong content knowledge and pedagogical skills (Hill et al., 2008; Shulman, 1986) and the ability to support students in developing SEC (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). For years, teacher development programs for practicing and prospective teachers have leaned toward supporting teachers in the discipline-oriented ways (enhancing content knowledge and PCK and less so with respect to SEL skills; Schonert-Reichl, 2017). Robust SEL training (e.g., CASEL) tends not to be the core focus of most teacher education projects; rather, teachers experience this kind of support as part of PD programs provided by an external organization (e.g., university) through their district or for research purposes. This lack of standardization across PD programs means that only a select set of teachers are adequately equipped to meet students’ needs. In light of the importance of SEC for students’ development, SEL courses should be a core aspect of teacher education programs and district policies for re-certification, licensure and/or professional enhancement.
For SEL to be effective in supporting personal and academic development, the teacher must know the student as a person and a learner. As such, SEL training should be designed to support a healthy classroom climate in general but also in discipline-specific ways. For example, the act of mathematical caring involves meaningful ways of interacting with students as they build mathematical ideas (Hackenberg, 2010). This type of caring incorporates general care but extends it to support students in managing the emotional fluctuations as they engage in productive struggle during mathematical activity, which supports them in persisting. Conceptualizing SEL more broadly bodes well for improved academic, emotional, and psychological well-being.
Supporting Teachers’ Emotional Well-Being and Self-Care
Although SEL has been more common in schools in the last decade, programs that focus on supporting teachers in exploring their own emotional and psychological well-being are relatively few. Given the stressful nature of the teaching profession, being able to emotionally regulate and engage in self-care is essential. In addition to learning how to effectively attend to the emotional aspects of teaching, schools should be organized to nest teachers within supportive communities that facilitate self-care. For beginning teachers, induction programs can be a good launching pad for organizing these networks, as teachers learn how to navigate the classroom with the support of trained educators. Within this structure, they will have opportunities to develop a strong professional support system prior to becoming a fully independent teacher, and authentically enact emotional and self-regulatory strategies to develop a suitable self-care regimen.
Mandating Human Development Courses in Teacher Education
Only about half of the accredited institutions surveyed had teacher education programs that required at least one child or adolescent development course in their program (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). This does not include data on alternative programs or PD requirements for practicing teachers. Given the importance of this knowledge, designing teacher education programs to ensure that candidates know the typical developmental milestones of the students they teach as a core aspect of the curriculum seems prudent. Most school districts require teachers to complete a certain number of PD hours to remain certified. However, these hours are rarely regulated, so teachers can engage in PD on a broad range of topics and experiences as long as it fits under the broad umbrella of education. This structure could include some regulation encouraging teachers to take courses or participate in workshops to fill gaps in, or expand, their knowledge around content supportive of their own, or students’ development of SEC.
Ensuring Teachers Get High-Quality Teaching
Teachers need specialized knowledge to teach effectively. Logically, it would follow that the teachers of these teachers (namely, higher education faculty) would at a minimum have expertise in this specialized knowledge for teaching. However, this is not the general case. Human development courses often are taught in psychology departments (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). Similarly, content courses are often taught in the respective departments; for example, science courses for elementary teachers are often taught in the respective biology, chemistry, or physics departments. In these cases, while prospective teachers may have opportunities to explore disciplinary content deeply, there is minimal opportunity to see and experience effective models of teaching as learners and explore ideas within the context of education—as they intersect with students’ learning and approaches to teaching. In this regard, it would bode well for teaching quality if teacher education courses and PD sessions or workshops be taught by individuals with the knowledge, skills, and expertise to explore human development and disciplinary content within the context of education. As the field continues to grow and better understand the specific knowledge teachers need to support students and how those needs change depending on students’ developmental stages and the teaching context (e.g., urban, suburban, rural), it behooves ensuring that the content of these programs continually develop and be the responsibility of those with the appropriate expertise (Chard & Cibulka, 2013).
Conclusion
Student success is broadly defined as having strong academic achievement along with the skills and competence to identify and effectively pursue personal life goals. To organize learning environments to promote these positive outcomes, teachers’ disciplinary knowledge for teaching must be robust. They should also be able to support SEL and have the disposition to develop warm, trusting teacher–student relationships. Most teacher education and PD programs are not designed to support teachers in building this set of knowledge and skills comprehensively, leaving teachers ill-prepared to deal with the realities of the classroom, thus minimizing students’ opportunities for success.
Realizing these changes require shifts in policy. There is strong evidence that supporting SEL contributes to students’ overall development, yet, few teacher education programs include training for these skills. In addition, knowing children’s cognitive developmental milestones and how to utilize this knowledge in planning instruction will improve teaching effectiveness. Institutes/Commissions of Higher Education across states would have to make SEL and child development courses mandatory requirements for teacher education programs for them to become commonplace in university and college programs. Increasing the number of courses in these programs may only marginally increase program costs, however, expanding the pool of teachers with this essential training increases teachers’ confidence and competence, leading to immediate and long-term positive impact on students’ academic achievement and overall development.
Mandating SEL and child development courses would only yield anticipated benefits if qualified faculty were in charge of developing and teaching them, thereby ensuring that prospective teachers learn content within the context of teaching and learning. This may require greater collaboration between departments within higher education to ensure that teacher educators have this diversity of knowledge and skills, and partnerships between faculty in teacher education, educational psychology and counseling psychology to contemporize existing courses. Irrespective of the quality of education prospective teachers receive in their programs, they will require support throughout their careers, especially during the induction years. Beyond induction programs in which teachers can participate during the first few years of teaching, to promote teacher well-being long-term, schools and school district administration should create outlets to support teacher self-care. Akin to professional learning communities designed to sustain teacher learning, which operate at low to no cost, professional care communities can be established to strengthen teachers’ abilities to effectively navigate the social, emotional, and psychological dimensions of teaching. Reconsidering approaches to teacher preparation and development, along with reorganizing schools to enhance teacher care, may provide the infrastructural changes essential for optimizing student outcomes.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
