Social-Emotional Learning: States Work Together to Develop Standards and Policies

social emotional learningEight states will work together to create and implement plans to encourage social-emotional learning in their schools, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) announced this month.

The participating states are California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington. And an 11 additional states that originally applied to join the collaborative will have access to the materials it develops.

Each participating state has a unique plan, and many of those plans include creating developmentally sensitive standards that show how social and emotional skills are demonstrated at each grade level, developing materials to infuse traditional classroom concepts with social-emotional learning concepts, building strategies for state-level support, and implementing professional-development plans for schools about the subject.

CASEL emphasizes five “competencies” in its approach:

  • self-awareness
  • self-management
  • social awareness,
  • relationship skills,
  • responsible decisionmaking

Standards show developmentally sensitive ways of explaining those concepts to students from pre-K to high school graduation and how those lessons can blend with traditional curricular instruction. The organization’s researchers previously worked with Illinois to create the first such state social-emotional learning standards in the country.

Read the full article in the online edition of Education Week.

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