Education Next – Stephanie Jones, Rebecca Bailey, Jennifer Kahn and Sophie Barnes
“In the summer 2019 issue of Education Next, Grover Whitehurst expresses concern about current approaches to social-emotional learning, or SEL, and the state of the evidence supporting such “whole-learner” practices in schools. His principle points are: (1) that work in SEL is misfocused, meaning it is directed to the wrong things (e.g., personality traits, dispositions), and (2) that practice and policymaking have gotten ahead of the evidence. In reality, traditional approaches to social-emotional learning do not focus on “personality constructs such as conscientiousness and broad dispositions such as grit.” Rather, as we describe below, effective SEL programming focuses on concrete, teachable skills and has been shown in many studies to lead to gains in important outcomes.” (more)