Supporting Educators: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Training Strategies to Enhance Social and Emotional Learning During COVID-19

• In Event: Shifting Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Toward Equity: Integrating Systemic SEL, Transformative SEL, and Implementation Science

Abstract

Background: Covid-19’s impacts highlighted the need and opportunity for education systems to promote youth well-being (Cipriano et al., 2020). Educational leaders have turned to social and emotional learning (SEL), whether via school-level programs, classroom interventions, or educator professional development, to help students cultivate inter- and intra-personal skills, recognize their own strengths and abilities, and constructively respond to challenges (Durlak et al., 2011). This presentation shares lessons learned from a systematic effort to support educators in improving SEL practice through the provision of nested supports. Supports, in this use, include financial investments, tools, technical assistance, and feedback loops that improve SEL implementation; in education, support via training is a common and critical lever In this effort, a state team provided key supports to regional offices, who in turn adapted these supports for local relevance and provided supports to their local educators. The present study aims to explore how regional leaders envisioned providing their local supports as expressed in submitted planning documents.

Method: Regional offices (N = 56) submitted implementation plans in Spring 2021 articulating how they will support the implementation of SEL in their region’s districts and schools. Guided by the Evidence-Based System for Innovation Support (EBSIS; Wandersman et al., 2012) and recent refinements by Leeman and colleagues (2015), plans were deductively coded to explore SEL implementation support strategies. Among the four EBSIS categories (i.e., training, tools, technical assistance, quality assurance/improvement), the present analysis focuses on training to provide a detailed understanding of the most commonly used strategy for providing SEL implementation support.

Findings: Findings revealed that all 56 plans mentioned training as a support strategy, and regional training activities took the format of directed learning or peer learning. Directed learning activities (mentioned in 79% of the plans) were didactic, marked by the planned sharing of information, skills, and best practices by experts in a top-down format, which is common to professional development in the education sector. Peer learning activities (mentioned in 54% of the plans) invited the lateral and organic sharing of information via less formal discussions or networking, such as through book clubs and listening circles. These bottom-up approaches allowed for more innovative and less prescribed knowledge exchanges and broadened the definition of who is an expert. As a result, these peer learning opportunities revealed efforts to “understand the community”, reflect both the needs and strengths of the region, and fostered “ongoing networking” and continued connection beyond the meetings.

Significance: In the extant literature, variation within training has not been systematically studied (Leeman et al., 2015). Our results reveal that training supporting the implementation of SEL can manifest in a variety of different forms to respond to differing regional contexts, needs, or preferences. This presentation will explore examples of the naturally occurring variation in training strategies used across many regional offices in ways that can inform future studies, practice, and policy for the sake of creating and testing best practices to support youth, educators, and community in the continuous improvement of their social and emotional well-being.

Authors

• Sophia Hwang, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Alagia Cirolia, University of California - Berkeley

• Esmeralda M. Michel, University of California - Berkeley

• CalHOPE Research Committee, University of California - Berkeley

• Valerie Shapiro, University of California - Berkeley