Promoting Children’s and Adolescents’ Social and Emotional Development: District Adaptations of a Theory of Action

Abstract

This article contributes to the broader discussion of promotion, prevention, and intervention in child and adolescent mental health by describing implementation and early outcomes of an 8-school district demonstration project aimed at making the promotion of social and emotional learning a systemic part of school districts’ practice. Eight districts are 2–3 years in to their participation in the 6-year project. The districts are large, are predominantly urban, and serve many students who are at disadvantage. The evaluation involved collection of qualitative data to measure the degree to which the districts realized the goals established in the initiative’s theory of action, as well as school climate data, extant student records, and surveys of students’ social and emotional competence. To date, results show that districts have followed highly individual pathways toward integrating social and emotional learning systemically, and all have made progress over time. Although school-level implementation remains at moderate levels, 2 districts in which we could examine school climate showed gains from preinitiative years. Four of 6 measured districts showed improvement in social and emotional competence for students in Grade 3, and achievement and discipline showed overall improvements across all districts. Overall findings show that implementation of the initiative’s theory of action by school districts is feasible, even in times of budgetary stress and leadership turnover. This establishes the potential for school districts to serve as a lever of change in the promotion of students’ social and emotional development and mental wellness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We recognize and honor the significant intellectual contributions of our colleagues in the work including Larry Friedman (AIR) and staff from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning: Roger Weissberg, Libi Gil, Paul Goren, Celene Domitrovich, Amy Mart, and Maria Logli Allison. We thank the many committed educators in the eight districts that are part of the CDI for their participation in the evaluation.

David Osher has a consulting relationship with one of the districts involved in the initiative. He did not collect or interpret any data from that district.

FUNDING

We gratefully acknowledge the NoVo Foundation (Grant 20110233), whose funding has made the Collaborating Districts Initiative possible, and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, which supported completion of this article.

Notes

¹ The model presented here includes a single post-CDI effect to reduce the models’ complexity. The models fit include two or three follow-up year effects, depending on the district.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the NoVo Foundation (Grant 20110233), whose funding has made the Collaborating Districts Initiative possible, and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, which supported completion of this article.