ICF International's white paper explores how implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) has the potential to prepare students for workforce success and positively influence student engagement and academic performance while reducing dropout rates. Self-improvement and leadership development sections of bookstores are replete with texts…

To answer the question of whether teaching social and emotional skills to foster social-emotional development can help schools extend their role beyond the transfer of knowledge, the authors conducted a meta-analytical review of 75 recently published studies that reported the effects of universal, school-based social, emotional, and/or behavioral…

The study developed multiple independent scales of early childhood teacher experiences (ECTES). ECTES was co-constructed with preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teachers in a large urban school district. Demographic, ECTES, and teaching practices data were collected from 584 teachers. Factor analyses documented three teacher experience…

The purpose of this study was to describe reflections of nine American parents on the strengths, challenges, and strategies in parenting young children newly adopted from another country. Eight mothers and one father with an adopted child aged less than 3 years and home for less than 3 months completed standardized assessments measuring the…

Children's participation in cultural activities within the community, and the particular cognitive and socioemotional skills that they gain as a result of their participation, have been thoroughly studied (Cole, 1990; Gallimore & Tharp, 1990; Moll et al., 2005; Scribner & Cole, 1981). However, the connection of these skills to school learning or…

Child care settings may provide an optimal setting for identification of early childhood mental health problems. However, little is known about child care providers' attitudes or knowledge about screening for children's mental health problems. Both attitudes and perceived knowledge could affect the successful implementation of mental health…

In this working paper, Wendy Russell and Stuart Lester of the UK's University of Gloucestershire discuss why play is fundamental to the health and well-being of children. They argue that both state signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 31 of which enshrines the right to play) and adults generally should…

Approximately 214,000 licensed child care homes operate in the United States servicing over 3 million children, while 5,300 homes are in Washington State servicing 175,000 children. Research suggests that children who acquire social-emotional skills between birth and age 5 are equipped for greater success in school and later adulthood. However,…

In the past 20 years, many advances (e.g., maternal steroids and surfactant) have changed the course of neonatal medicine. As a result, extremely preterm infants survive medical complications that were previously fatal. Once they are discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit, preterm infants may continue to experience a spectrum of medical…

This study examined the social-emotional content and the quality of social interactions depicted in a sample of 58 DVDs marketed towards infants and toddlers. Infant-directed videos rarely used social interactions between caregiver and child or between peers to present content. Even when videos explicitly targeted social-emotional content,…

The current study examines associations between emotional competence (i.e., awareness, regulation, comfort with expression) and adolescent risky behavior. Children from a longitudinal study participated at age 9 and 16 (N = 88). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with children about their emotional experiences and coded for areas of…

Pre-term birth has a significant impact on infants' social and emotional competence, however, little is known about regulatory processes in pre-term mother-infant dyads during normal or stressful interactions. The primary goals of this study were to investigate the differences in infant and caregiver interactive behaviour and dyadic coordination…

Research Findings: The purpose of this article is to describe current education policies as they relate to the promotion of social, emotional, and academic (SEA) development and competence for young children. Academic and social-emotional competencies are described and conceptualized as developmentally linked, reciprocal processes that should be…

The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Clinical Form (DECA-C) is the first instrument to measure the social-emotional resilience of young children from ages 2 to 5 years. This study is an important step toward gathering validity evidence for the teacher-rated DECA-C. This is the first study to investigate the DECA-C factor structure and the first…

The objective of this investigation was to examine whether children's responses to peer victimization predict subsequent changes in their social and emotional well-being. Also investigated was whether these associations vary as a function of children's sex and level of victimization. Participants included 420 4th- and 5th-grade students (197…