The Problem With Replacing Classroom Management With Social and Emotional Learning Programs in Early Childhood Education

• In Event: The Impact of Racism and White Supremacy on Children's and Teachers' Agency in the Early Grades

Abstract

Purpose: In recent years, discourses of school readiness in early childhood education have framed young children of color and children of immigrants as lacking the social and emotional capacities to be successful in school (Hoffman, 2009; Stearns, 2016). Particularly in progressive schooling spaces, educators have adopted SEL programs to supplement or even replace traditional behavioralist models of classroom management (Bierman et al., 2008; Foster, 2020). But rather than center the social and emotional lives of young children, these SEL programs often emphasize self-control and emotional regulation in ways that still resemble traditional classroom management.

Theoretical Framework: Moje and Lewis (2007) situate the learner not only in a sociocultural context, but in “discourse communities” that “share ways of knowing, thinking, believing, acting, and communicating” (p. 16). As a social process, learning necessarily takes place within relationships where the learner takes up existing discourses or disrupts and transforms fixed discourses. The process is itself an expression of power with constantly developing influences on the learner’s identity and agency.

Method: The study used ethnographic observations to capture children’s classroom learning experiences in a first grade classroom serving Latinx children from immigrant families as well as qualitative interview methods informed by video-cued ethnography (Adair & Kurban, 2019; Tobin et al., 1989) to elicit children and teachers’ ideas, perspectives, and beliefs about learning as a process. I spent three full school days in the first grade classroom at Skeller Elementary School in an urban city in Northern California recording fieldnotes, photographs, and short videos of children’s daily learning experiences. After the ethnographic classroom observations, I conducted one-on-one interviews with the ten focal students and Mr. Walsh using a qualitative method informed by video-cued ethnography. I conducted a within classroom analysis of the data examining the relationship between the approach to classroom management, implementation of a social-emotional learning program, discourses of “readiness,” and children’s ideas about learning.

Findings: Findings showed that Mr. Walsh used a school-wide SEL program in his first grade classroom much in the same way other early childhood teachers use a classroom management system. When children were off task, talking too much, turned away from him, unfocused, or not following his directions, he employed the breathing strategy outlined in the SEL program and called the students name, told them to leave the room and take deep breaths, calm down, and reflect on their behavior. If that was not effective, Mr. Walsh would have them stay in from recess to continue breathing and write out a reflection. In practice, this strategy resembled a time out and loss of privilege punishment common in traditional behaviorist classroom management approaches. In connection with their classroom experiences, children shared ideas that students need to be calm, quiet, focused, and ready in order to learn.

Scholarly Significance: Findings emphasize the importance of pushing back on pervasive “readiness” discourses that justify the individualization, control, and assimilation of children of color and children of immigrants into white middle class ways of being.

Author

• Molly Ellen McManus, San Francisco State University