"The Upstart Great Plains TASK Force: Taking All to Success in Kindergarten" was a five-year Education, Innovation and Research (EIR) expansion grant (U411A180001) funded through the US Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Four research studies were conducted during the grant period of 2018 to 2023: a…

Interest in school-based strategies to support student social and emotional learning (SEL) is strong. Although SEL policies and programs designed to support the development of student competencies have advanced significantly, less work has been done to develop methods of assessing student social and emotional competence. This article briefly…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is inherently relational, shaped by the interactions children have within their homes, schools, and communities. Grounded in ecological systems theory, this chapter explores how family-school-community partnerships can serve as a powerful mechanism for promoting SEL and fostering positive developmental outcomes.…

Teachers are often called upon to identify behavioral and emotional risk within their students by completing a variety of assessment tools. However, many teachers may lack the requisite skills to reliably identify students at-risk or use data derived from assessment tools to inform intervention. A series of trainings were developed to improve…

Early language skills and prosocial behavior contribute to positive outcomes across the lifespan. Screening has improved the identification and early intervention (EI) for children with hearing loss, autism spectrum disorders, and genetically based disabilities. However, many children with significant functional impairments in language and…

This paper shares ideas with teachers about the integration of students' social and emotional skills with science instruction to fully implement the Next Generation Science Standards. In this article, we share a sequence of lessons that teachers thought were especially useful to produce effective science discourse and promote student…

This study evaluates how teacher report measures align with different conceptualizations of children's social-emotional development. Leveraging seven teacher report measures of social competence and behavioral regulation in a predominantly low-income, population-based rural sample of four-year-old children (n = 828), model fit and validity were…

Previous research has suggested that multiple factors beyond acceptability alone (e.g., feasibility, external supports) may interact to determine whether consumers will use an intervention or assessment in practice. The Usage Rating Profile for Supporting Students' Behavioral Needs (URP-NEEDS) was developed in order to provide a simultaneous…

The current study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of the Getting Ready parent engagement intervention on young children's social-emotional competencies and the quality of the student-teacher and parent-teacher relationships. Participants were 267 preschool-aged children and their parents, as well as 97…

The importance of social-emotional competence, executive functioning, and behavioural recognition of patterns by young children is receiving increased attention from researchers, schools, parents, and teachers due to the beneficial outcomes of children who have skills in each. This paper presents studies of the correlations between these variables…

There has been little research connecting underlying emotion processes (e.g., emotion regulation) to frequent behavior problems in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined the stability of emotion regulation and its relationship with other aspects of child functioning. Participants included 108 children with ASD,…

Social-cognitive and emotional factors as well as behavior problems contribute to the social difficulties experienced by many students with or at high risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The way that teachers and peers treat and respond to these students can either mitigate or exacerbate their challenges in establishing and…

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) programs are school-based preventive interventions that aim to improve children's social-emotional skills and behavioral development. Although meta-analytic research has shown that SEL programs can improve academic and behavioral outcomes in the short term, few studies have examined program effects on receipt of…

This investigation considered the short-term benefits of early childhood education participation at age 3 for 1,213 children from low-income families living in a large and linguistically diverse county. Although no benefits emerged for executive functioning, children who participated in formal early childhood programs at the age of 3 entered pre-K…

There has been little research connecting underlying emotion processes (e.g., emotion regulation) to frequent behavior problems in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined the stability of emotion regulation and its relationship with other aspects of child functioning. Participants included 108 children with ASD,…