Research
Project supports social-emotional learning for students of color
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By Stephanie Koons
ocial-Emotional Learning (SEL) has been widely accepted by educators and researchers as a methodology that helps students of all ages to better comprehend their emotions, to feel those emotions fully and demonstrate empathy for others. However, in an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse school population, a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective in environments where students of color are impacted by circumstances that do not support a traditional SEL framework. Aaron Campbell, assistant professor of education (special education) in the Penn State College of Education, has established a partnership with two institutions in which she is evaluating the efficacy of an intervention program she designed to address the needs of African American students at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders.
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Elementary students in the McKeesport Area School District are participating in a socialemotional learning program designed by Aaron Campbell.
“I would like to see African American students, especially males, have a more positive outlook when it comes to education,” said Campbell. “If we can teach them how to regulate emotions in elementary school, as they matriculate into middle and high school, they’ll have fewer instances where they’re being written up, fewer negative interactions with administrators, fewer interactions with school resource officers.” Assisted by Meghan Allen, a second-year doctoral candidate in special education, Campbell has established partnerships with two participating research sites: an urban primary school in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and a rural Head Start program in northwestern Pennsylvania. She and Allen are working with the McKeesport elementary school, in which 89% of the students are African American and many are struggling with behavioral difficulties. In the fall, Campbell will start a project at Head Start working with younger children of color. Campbell and Allen are implementing a package of two interventions that normally work independent of each other — the Strong Start SEL curriculum, a program designed for promoting social and emotional learning of young children; and Check-In/Check-Out (CICO), a behavioral intervention in which a student and a mentor work together to improve behavior. Campbell said recent research shows that SEL curricula alone are not sufficient for students of color in urban schools. “They need extra constraints when it comes to building relationships with authority figures,” she said. 14 Penn State Education
By pairing with Strong Start, Campbell said, the CICO program has been altered to align with SEL competencies. Traditionally, the “teacher would just ask the student a bunch of questions about daily goals.” In Campbell’s SEL-centered CICO, the teacher will consider the larger context of the student’s situation. For instance, when asking a student about what they did the previous night, they might learn that the student didn’t have dinner or slept in a car. Accessing that kind of information, Campbell said, can enable the teacher to address the issue so that the students are on the same footing as their classmates. In addition to revising the CICO program, Campbell’s project involves tweaking the Strong Start curriculum so it is more culturally responsive to African American students. Campbell has selected readaloud books, based on the students’ grade level, that contain characters that “look like the students they are catering to” while other books have animal characters. The stories touch on culturally relevant issues such as how style choices impact public perceptions, and lessons on self-esteem and self-love for young Black girls. Allen, a second-year doctoral student, said she is interested in the effect of SEL curricula on students that are disproportionately represented in special education. “I don’t think any of the students are operating from a malicious point of view,” said Allen. “Knowing they have teachers that want to work with Dr. Campbell and provide that support in the classroom is really encouraging and hopefully that’s a pattern we can see spread across districts as we move forward.”
