SEL Doesn't Need a Rebrand

This week’s article summary is SEL Doesn't Need a Rebrand.

Articles like this one always make me happy that I work at the elementary level in a private, independent school: elementary — different from middle and high school — focuses on core habits and skills that aren’t controversial or polarizing. (You must be a real contrarian to argue against elementary schools developing kids' responsibility, compassion, and honesty.) Being non-public, we don’t rely on federal or state funding; those dollars typically come with strings attached.

SEL, or Social-Emotional Learning, has been part of our educational lexicon and curriculum for the past 25-30 years. Replacing the more general Character Development (I taught a Values Clarification elective to 6th graders in the 1990s), SEL has provided more specificity of the inter/intrapersonal skills and habits teachers have always helped develop in their students: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, executive function. 

At admissions open houses, I explain to prospective parents that Trinity shapes and develops our students’ academic and character foundation. Specifically, under character development, I tell parents that we strive to form in children a strong, confident sense of self (intrapersonal skills) and sincere care and concern for others (interpersonal skills) as well as study and organizational skills. I explain that at Trinity character development is integrated in everything we do, not a stand-alone activity. We want our children not only to be successful in academics but, as our mission states, 'responsible, productive, and compassionate member(s) of Trinity and the greater community.' 

From as macro standpoint, it’s frustrating to me that in these polarized political times, SEL in schools has become so controversial. Who would have thought it’s being ‘woke’ to teach kids to think with multiple perspectives, to assume good intentions of others, and to learn that throughout history humans have perpetrated horrible things to others. 

Regardless of the external noise, Trinity continues to stay true to its mission of whole child development and has always made a student character development an integral part of how we teach.

Joe

-----

The rebranding of social-emotional learning to avoid controversy for being branded as “woke” ideology highlights a real challenge in education today: Political pushback at the local, state, and federal levels has made some educators feel they must camouflage their work, including renaming SEL programs or softening the language.

Despite these challenges, SEL is not a passing fad or a political football. It’s about advancing the science, practice, and policy that help schools and students thrive. SEL has been a fundamental component of a high-quality education that is as essential as reading, writing, math, social studies, and science. The question is not whether we should teach students SEL but whether we have the resolve to define it with clarity, strengthen its evidence base, and defend its value.

SEL equips students with the knowledge and skills to understand and manage emotions, make responsible decisions, build healthy relationships, and navigate challenges. These outcomes are the foundation of academic achievement, a positive school climate, and lifelong success.

Decades of evidence show that the strength of our relationships is a powerful predictor of children’s well-being and lifelong success. Unfortunately, technology, social media, and cultural pressures often pull students toward shallow interactions and endless social comparisons.

At the same time, children (and adults) are sent messages to suppress, deny, or ignore their feelings from every corner of society—families, schools, workplaces, news and entertainment media—that equate emotional expression with weakness or instability. From “toughen up” at home to “be professional” at work. The result? Increased conflict with others, higher stress levels, weaker relationships, disengagement in learning, and too often, hopelessness.

SEL works, but positive impact requires thoughtful design; alignment with students cognitive, social, and emotional development; and sustained, high-quality implementation.

Imagine walking into a school where students can name and manage their emotions, teachers model calm under pressure, conflicts are addressed constructively, and learning feels rigorous and civilized. This isn’t fantasy; it’s what schools look like when SEL is woven into the fabric of teaching and learning.

So why the backlash? Much of it stems from SEL having been mischaracterized by political advocacy groups and certain policymakers as ideology or indoctrination—whether in the form of critical race theory, gender and sexuality politics, or values training—rather than a science-backed approach to child development. Even some educators struggle to define it clearly. Without precise definitions about what it is and its value, SEL remains vulnerable to distortion.

The ability to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate emotions—in short, emotional intelligence—provides both the science and structure for this essential work. But emotion regulation is often one of the most misunderstood constructs. Too often, people think it means suppressing or denying your and others’ emotions or striving for constant positivity. In reality, it is the capacity to draw on strategies like seeing a difficult situation from a different or more helpful perspective, calming the body, or seeking support to manage emotions wisely to improve relationships, well-being, and goal attainment. Without this clear, science-based definition, schools risk confusing emotion regulation with compliance or equating it with suppression. With clarity, we give students and educators alike a powerful, humane skill set for navigating life inside and beyond the school building.

Common Misperceptions About Student Engagement

This week’s article summary is The Three Big Misconceptions About Student Engagement.

When I worked in a progressive school, the pedagogical mantra was ‘make school fun.’ I always felt the logical addition to this should have be ‘and make sure your students are learning.’ Too often some schools can get so caught up in the fun that they neglect the principal purpose of education: learning.

The article below focuses on the trend in schools to make sure students are ‘engaged’ and ‘motivated’. 

But the problem is many of the popular teaching strategies like active, moving classrooms; classroom discussions, especially student-to-student; peer editing; and student-led, problem-based learning do not necessarily result in enhanced student learning.

As the article points out, learning is a cognitive process that requires varied and spaced practice.  

While students being bored in class (like the iconic classroom scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ) does not lead to much learning, we educators need to avoid assuming learning is occurring just because kids are engaged in the assignment.

Joe

------

Across my years as a district-level coach, one word has become the mantra for effective learning: engagement. We gamify lessons, add technology, and design ever more creative activities, all in the name of engagement. To educators, it’s the holy grail. But this shimmering ideal—and its cousin, motivation—often keeps teachers spinning their wheels.

The crux of all this effort is this: Engagement and motivation are surface-level indicators of learning, and they can be misleading. Activity doesn’t always mean understanding. The Hidden Lives of Learners explains that some of the most “engaged” classrooms are simply exploring material that most students have already mastered. Motivation, likewise, is more closely tied to a student’s sense of success than to including Minecraft in a lesson.

This misunderstanding of engagement often leads school leaders to adopt what they believe are “visible” measures of learning—walk-through tools that focus primarily on student behaviors. But rarely do these tools capture cognitive engagement: the mental effort, challenge, and persistence that leads to durable learning.

Misconception #1: Active Classrooms are Learning Classrooms: It’s easy to mistake activity for learning—a belief inherited from early progressive education, which equated “learning by doing” with true understanding. When administrators walk into a classroom, they often hope to see this: students who are up, out of their desks, talking, collaborating, or working in small groups, with minimal teacher direction. It can be hard to convince them that these behaviors aren’t reliable signs of learning. Cognitive psychologists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork have identified how we often confuse short-term performance—like recall right after instruction—with genuine learning. Durable learning depends on effortful, spaced, and varied practice. Sometimes, students learn most in quiet moments of concentration, which is hard to capture in a quick classroom observation.

Misconception #2: Discourse is a Great Indicator of Learning: Just as visibly active classrooms are an unreliable indicator of true learning, those filled with lively discussion can also mask shallow processing. Classroom walk-throughs, which capture only a snapshot in time, reveal little about what students will retain. Verbal participation alone does not ensure that students are retaining the content. Discourse can play a valuable role in learning, but only when it’s intentionally structured. Adaptive teacher-student discussions—where teachers asked probing questions and guided reasoning—can lead to measurable gains in student learning. An earlier metanalysis found that discussion-based tasks produced vastly different outcomes depending on scaffolding, task design, and prior knowledge. In other words, talk can support achievement, but it isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of learning.

Misconception #3: Student-Led Learning Environments Produce Better Learning Outcomes than Those That are Teacher-Led: Many educators assume that giving students more control over their learning will automatically boost both engagement and achievement. However, cognitive load theorists have found that students lacking sufficient background knowledge often struggle in minimally guided settings. This can impact learners at any grade level when the material is unfamiliar. Many educators also believe that students won’t engage unless lessons are “fun” or relevant. Yet true motivation comes from success, not novelty. Self-Determination theory focuses on the psychological drivers of motivation: students are motivated the most when they feel competent and autonomous.

Rather than chasing the latest collaborative ed-tech tool, instruction should be deliberately designed to help students grapple with ideas, recognize growth, and build cognitive stamina. Neuroscience research shows that moments of success activate reward pathways in the brain, reinforcing effort and persistence. Engagement, then, is not engineered through novelty but emerges when learning produces visible growth.

This isn’t meant to be a pessimistic take on engagement—of course it matters. We want our students to be attentive, curious, and invested. But what many educators picture as engagement is often a skewed view of what leads to durable learning. Rather than spending energy trying to match every lesson to students’ interests, focus on ensuring they understand the content, experience success, and feel a strong rapport with their teachers. These research-backed strategies build confidence and competence—the true foundations of authentic engagement. Instead of relying on quick fixes or elaborate engagement tactics, double down on what works: explicit modeling, deliberate practice, and timely, targeted feedback. If we spent more time creating classrooms like that, we wouldn’t need to ask whether our students were engaged. They simply would be.

10 Top Educational Studies of 2025

This week’s article summary is "The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025."

Every year, Edutopia publishes an annual roundup of the most significant education research from the prior year.

As in past years, many of the findings reinforce long-standing best practices. This year’s research again highlighted the value of outdoor recess, in-class brain breaks, writing by hand with pencils and pens, allowing students to wrestle with problems before stepping in, and building strong, trusting relationships within schools.

Not surprisingly, students today struggle with math word problems much as previous generations did.

Several studies also examined the impact of artificial intelligence on teaching and learning. For educators, AI can be a helpful tool that reduces administrative workload; for students, however, over-reliance on AI often limits deep understanding and meaningful learning.

Finally, research shows that phone-free classrooms—introduced over the past two years in many middle and high schools—result in improved student behavior and stronger learning outcomes.

Joe

----

IT’S OVER FOR CELL PHONES: Researchers embarked on a massive project to determine the impact of cell phone bans on academic performance. Phone-free classrooms produced better academic outcomes, especially among new and struggling students. The will to ban phones in U.S. schools has been slow to coalesce but has recently gained momentum. This year 22 states passed new laws restricting phone use in schools. Beyond improved grades, the researchers reported “fewer instances of disruptive behavior” in classrooms, “less peer-to-peer conversation unrelated to course material,” and better student-teacher relationships. Kids who attended class without phones, meanwhile, became converts: As a group, they were “significantly more supportive of phone-use restrictions” going forward—signaling a “convergence of academic performance” and “increased student receptivity” that highlights the potential of phone bans to transform school cultures, the researchers say.

CRACKING THE CODE OF MATH WORD PROBLEMS: Researchers found that students often stumbled when trying to translate narrative text in math word problems into manageable, computable steps. What may seem like a straightforward scenario—calculating the gas, food, and lodging costs for a family road trip, for example—can exert “high demands on working memory” as information outstrips cognitive bandwidth. In the study, the most common technique—highlighting key elements of a word problem—was only marginally helpful. But when used as the first step in a broader “organizational and elaborative” approach that included sketching diagrams, categorizing information, and annotating the problems with arrows or labels, students were better able to see how the pieces fit together. What’s the secret behind the strategies? Math word problems often present more information than students can hold in working memory. “Capable problem solvers” offload information to sketch pads and margin notes and reintegrate it later, allowing savvy students to refocus their attention on a smaller set of factors as they work to translate a story into solvable math.

BENEFITS OF MICROBREAKS:  Sustained student attention is the horse that never wins. Researchers detected the first signs of wobbly student focus a mere five minutes into a lecture. Attention then steadily declined for the rest of the lesson. Microbreaks are very effective, consisting of activities like “closing your eyes, quietly speaking with fellow classmates, stretching, or drinking water.” The attempt to master challenging material always leads to mind-wandering—there are no cures. Historical studies of attention spans place the limits at various thresholds, from eight to 10 to 25 minutes. Instead of trying to “overcome these constraints,” the researchers say, educators should “acknowledge the theoretical impossibility of perfect sustained attention” and choose strategies that are compatible with “inherent neural, biological, and cognitive limitations.”

HANDWRITING LEADS TO (MUCH) BETTER READING: In the debate over screens versus paper, new research tips the scale dramatically, revealing that writing by hand—but not typing—helps build the cognitive framework young students rely on to decode letters and recognize words. Across nearly every measure, the children who wrote letters by hand demonstrated superior alphabetic and orthographic skills. A study of seventh graders revealed telltale traces of deeper learning when kids wrote words instead of typing them, confirming that handwriting is an “important tool for learning and memory retention” that benefits students across all ages, including middle and high school. As screens increasingly claim space in children’s daily routines, the studies argue for a return to older technologies. For the youngest readers and writers, the need for a steady diet of pencil and paper work is inarguable. Meanwhile, middle and high school students can move between tools like Google Docs and old-fashioned paper notebooks, gaining crucial experience with modern technologies while periodically slowing down to engage in methodical, embodied thinking.

WHEN TO RESIST THE URGE TO HELP STUDENTS: Feeling competent is crucial to well-being, but for young learners it tends to come at a price: a dose of (healthy) frustration. When adults spot a struggling student and intervene too quickly, it can signal that solutions are beyond the child’s ability—and dampen their confidence and willingness to take intellectual risks when new challenges arise. As early as age 5, children across a range of studies reviewed by the researchers became “less motivated to persist on a difficult task” after an adult stepped in to help solve a puzzle. The impulse to rescue students from confusion and frustration is hard to ignore, but real learning often happens in the difficult moments just before we do. When tempted to step in, educators might consider other scaffolds like “providing hints or asking questions,” pointing kids in the right direction without doing the thinking for them. Offering a few useful stepping stones in lieu of answers can preserve independence and foster self-

AI TAKES A BIG BITE OUT OF SPECIAL ED PAPERWORK: Special education teachers often face an overwhelming volume of paperwork, from drafting IEPs to logging weekly data on student progress and tracking learning accommodations. That’s precious time that could be reallocated to working directly with kids. A team of researchers asked experienced K–12 special education teachers to write an IEP goal based on a brief description of a student’s disability, past performance, and areas of need. The same teachers then used ChatGPT to generate an IEP goal by providing basic information about a student’s learning differences. After analyzing both sets of goals on six dimensions including clarity, measurability, and timeliness, the researchers found “no statistically significant difference in quality” between the AI-generated versions and those written entirely by teachers. The teachers, however, had a more favorable impression: Most said that the ChatGPT goals were “either of the same or better quality than they think a special education teacher… would have written,” and viewed AI as a tool they could use to improve efficiency.

BLISSED-OUT KIDS: Decades ago, the U.S. had a “simple philosophy” on school recess that recognized outdoor play as “essential for healthy and happy children” and honored the principle by setting aside 60 minutes for daily recess. In the ensuing years, a creeping tide of academic expectations led to more seat time and testing, undermining the quality and quantity of free play in schools. The researchers say that recess should be frequent, unstructured, and outdoors. More independent play yields happier, more socially competent children, according to an ever-expanding body of research. One study that combed through 50 years of historical records concluded that kids in the past spent more time outdoors and derived long-term benefits from opportunities to “play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

THE VALUE OF RELATIONSHIPS: From kindergarten through high school, students spend roughly 15,000 hours with teachers, making the quality of those relationships a crucial factor in learning. Supportive student-teacher relationships were linked to a wide range of benefits across grade levels: higher academic achievement, improved behavior, better executive function and self-control, and greater feelings of belonging, motivation, and well-being. “Students who feel a sense of belonging within the school community are more successful academically,” the researchers note, pointing to the crucial role that teachers play in creating a culture that helps students reach their full potential. Relationships before rigor holds true, then.

TEACHING MIGHT BE ONE OF THE MOST COMPLICATED JOBS IN THE WORLD: Thrust into the chaos of real classrooms, teachers may look back at their training and wonder if too much time was spent learning about conceptual models—and not enough time practicing everyday teacher moves. Researchers compared “traditional” teacher prep programs, which emphasize reading and discussion of theoretical frameworks, with “practice-based” approaches that focus on expert observation and role-playing in simulated classroom environments. Watching videos of master teachers and then “rehearsing” in the presence of coaches might be especially beneficial for young teachers, because the approach allows for “feedback in the moment” along with quick hints on “how to elevate instruction.” In the end, practice trumped theory. Teaching dozens, or even hundreds, of students is mind-numblingly complicated: Kids process information at different speeds, possess wildly disparate skills in reading and math, and sometimes come to school grumpy, fidgety, or even desperately hungry. To get learning off the ground under those circumstances, as so many teachers do every day, theory is insufficient. Regular practice, access to inspiring mentors, time for planning, and plenty of encouragement and patience from administrators and peers is the path to improving one of the most challenging jobs in the world.

WRITERS USING CHATGPT ARE STRANGERS TO THEIR OWN THINKING: Given free rein with ChatGPT, ninth, 10th, and 11th graders engage in only superficial conversations with the software; among the most frequent student queries were “can u solve this question?” and “what is the answer?” The results were unsurprising: AI users performed well in practice sessions, but then quickly forgot most of what they’d learned and bombed a closed-book test on the material. It’s not as cut-and-dried as it sounds; the how and when of AI usage seems to matter a great deal. Several studies conclude that AI tutors designed to withhold answers and ask probing questions, for example, make excellent study partners.