Improving conditions of learning is a priority for schools, communities, states, and the federal government. Students are the stakeholders with the most to gain or lose and should be consulted about their classroom experiences as a basis for continuous school improvement planning. The population of 461 students from a rural public high school in…

Social and emotional learning competencies are included within physical education standards in the United States and abroad. Students should begin learning these important life skills in physical education at an early age, but most of the available teaching strategies target secondary environments. Physical educators can intentionally integrate…

The aim of this research was to critically examine methods for reducing incidences of aggression within adolescence. To achieve this aim, a proactive intervention programme was devised and implemented aimed at changing attitudes towards physical and relational aggression through social skills education within the College's tutorial programme. The…

In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of students with high functioning autism (HFA) enrolled in general education classes. Many of these students struggle with academic and social-behavioral expectations in school, and minimal research is available to educators related to meeting the needs of such students in secondary educational…

Peer-mediated intervention has become a primary education practice in programs for children and youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This article traces the emergence of peer-mediated interventions from early laboratory studies to the extensive applied research in the field that has documented the efficacy of the practice. Interventions to…

Depressive adolescents are a challenging and vulnerable group in schools. Specific developmental features such as irritability and comorbid behavioural disorders complicate the recognition of their emotional problems for peers, teachers and even parents. Our research shows that teachers tend to overlook depressive feelings in adolescents; however,…

This action guide provides school leadership teams with a resource for integrating the social, emotional and academic needs of young people into the daily student experience, from the time a bus driver greets a student until the end of the day. It supports the school leader and her/his team in mapping out an approach for integrating the social,…

The school-based elementary mentor program in this study paired community members with students in a one-hour, once weekly developmental program that focused on building relationships through conversation, crafts, games, and trips. This quantitative study with a purposeful sample (n = 30) examined the social, emotional, and academic impact of…

In order to further understand what educators can do - and are doing - to build strong relationships, Transforming Education (TransformEd) has produced a series of briefs or "stories from the field" that are intended to share student and educator perspectives about developing and sustaining strong relationships within the classroom and…

This paper, authored in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviews findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) at a partner school, focused on understanding the effects of a direct-to-student intervention on students' mindfulness…

Social emotional learning (SEL) is broadly understood to be a process through which people build awareness and skills in managing emotions, setting goals, establishing relationships, and making responsible decisions. Research highlighted in this report demonstrates that the effective integration of SEL in school systems creates a foundation for…

This study explores the experiences of primarily Latina/o children with learning music in a Music and Arts-Based Program (MABP) the context of a low-income neighborhood on the U.S- Mexico border. This year-long ethnographic study was conducted in an after-school art program in the Rio Grande Elementary School, in a low-income neighborhood located…

New advances in neurobiology are revealing that brain development and the learning it enables are directly dependent on social-emotional experience. Growing bodies of research reveal the importance of socially-triggered epigenetic contributions to brain development and brain network configuration, with implications for social-emotional…

Executive function (EF) has been linked to many important aspects of child and adolescent functioning, such as academic achievement, self-regulated learning, social-emotional development, physical well-being, and behavioral problems. Planning and organization, two key executive functions, are found to be the most important predictors of school…

Optimal talent development can only occur when high ability students are willing to take opportunities for growth in a domain and are able to persist when presented with challenges that accompany performance or production at the highest levels. This paper proposes the use of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development to provide a framework…