3. Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning: Research and Practice
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: 3. Handbook of Social and Emotional learning: Research and Practice Editors: J. A. Durlak, C.E. Domitrovich, R. P. Weissberg & T. P. Gullotta Publisher: The Guilford Press, New York, London Year of Publication: 2015 ISBN: 978-1-4625-2015-2The Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning offers a significant consolidation and development of issues pertaining to this vital theme, drawing on the work on many international leaders in this area. It operates over a broad canvas covering social and emotional learning (SEL) from preschool through to higher education, afterschool and juvenile justice settings, as well as preservice and inservice teacher education. It embraces, at least to some degree, family and community contexts, as well as school climate dimensions, with a particular emphasis on assessment aspects that frame section III. Part I examines Foundations, Part II Evidence-Based Programming, with Part IV Toward Widespread Practice and Policy.From many vantage points, this book represents a landmark account of the state of the art of social and emotional learning, especially in a US context. Interrogation is made in a consistent fashion across thematic areas of programs that work (based on at least three experimental studies), as well as promising approaches. Chapters go far beyond the merely descriptive to engage in critical, nuanced applications of the overarching framework for interrogating SEL studies and programs.Against this backdrop, it is worth considering where the whole area of SEL needs to go from here, especially in an international context, while recognising that the primary focus of this Handbook was on a US one. Two interrelated issues are that of the debate between top-down programs and bottom-up processes, as well as that of student voices. Weare and Nind (2011) highlight a distinction that is perhaps too sharply drawn, though nevertheless highly relevant, in its contrast between two styles of approaches:The European and Australian style and the type of whole-school approaches it generates tend to promote 'bottom up' principles such as empowerment, autonomy, democracy and local adaptability and ownership (WHO, 1997). All the agency-led whole-school programs named...have produced a wealth of well-planned materials, guidelines and advice, but are also deliberatively non-prescriptive and principles based (pp.66).They suggest that this flexible and non-prescriptive style is echoed in wider approaches to mental health across Europe and Australia, which emphasise the need for end-user involvement and the lay voice:This approach contrasts with the US style of more top-down, manualised approaches, with scripts, prescriptive training and a strict requirement for programme fidelity. There are strong reasons to retain the democratic European and Australian approach for large-scale programs for mental health [as it leads to positive climates, empowered communities for sustainable, wellrooted long lasting changes] (Weare & Nind, 2011, pp. 66).The key issue for current purposes is less on contrasts between Europe and the US but rather on how to engage in this balancing process between top-down and bottom-up approaches to SEL, mental health and wellbeing development. This is less a contrast between a priori principles of process and empirical effectiveness in terms of outcomes, as school and student ownership of the SEL communicative process impacts directly upon effectiveness; good process principles affect sustainability and long-term change. These contrasting directions need to be reconciled rather than opposed. Joseph Durlak's own chapter 26 on implementation issues is one helpful starting point for this debate. The question also arises for this whole paradigm of SEL concerning the different recognition to students' voices in cultural contexts beyond the US; the US is an exception internationally, as it has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which gives children a right to be consulted on matters affecting their own welfare, giving due recognition to their age. …
Author: Paul Downes
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2599030673