Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial of RULER: Impact on Teacher and Classroom Outcomes

• In Event: Teaching with Heart and Skill: Exploring Social-Emotional Learning in Teacher Preparation and Practice

Abstract

Background: Successful implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions hinge on teachers’ well-being, teacher social-emotional competencies, and high-quality classroom interactions (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). RULER is an emotion-based SEL program designed to enhance teacher and student social and emotional (SE) competency. The RULER Theory of Change describes a two-phase process: the adults in school first learn and use RULER before bringing RULER to classrooms and students. (Brackett et al., 2019; Figure 2).
We conducted a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) examining the impact of RULER on teacher outcomes. We addressed two questions: 1) Does RULER enhance teachers’ psychological well-being, social-emotional competencies, and classroom interactions compared to teachers in a waitlist control condition? 2) Do school composition factors (i.e., students’ baseline SE skills, percent of students receiving Free/Reduced lunch [FRPL], English Learners [ELL]) moderate these relations?
Methods: Three cohorts of schools (N = 49) participated; schools were randomized into RULER (N = 25) and waitlist control (N = 24) conditions. Schools implemented the two-phase RULER adoption. Data collection occurred at baseline and completion of phase 1 and 2 (see Table 1) with 445 randomly selected K through 6th-grade teachers.
Teachers' outcomes were measured via online surveys. Teachers’ well-being was assessed through a Yale-developed SE well-being measure with 16 constructs (e.g., social acceptance, social isolation, anxiety). Three measures were used to assess teachers’ SE competencies: 1) the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), 2) the Fixed Mindset Scale of the Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale (Dweck, 2000), and 3) the Emotion Mindset Scale. Classroom interactions were observed systematically using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) K-3 (Pianta et al., 2008; 2012). Students’ baseline SE skills were measured through teacher reports on the Social Skills Improvement System (Gresham et al., 2011), with scores aggregated to the school-level. School composition factors (percentage FRPL, ELL) were collected via public school records.
Analyses: Analyses were preregistered. Two-level models examined treatment effects on teacher outcomes at phases 1 and 2. Models controlled for baseline scores. Moderation analyses incorporated the interaction between treatment condition and school-level: a) baseline student SE skills, and b) school composition factors. Analyses were conducted in Mplus (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017) using full information maximum likelihood to address missing data and the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to control for false discovery rate.
Results: RULER increased teachers’ views on the malleability of emotional intelligence (B = -0.313, p < .001), and increased teachers’ classroom organization (B = 0.167, p = 0.014) after both phases of RULER implementation. Results for the remaining 14 impact analyses were non-significant. School-level child baseline SE skills moderated a few links between RULER and teachers’ emotional well-being, teachers’ social-emotional competence, and teachers’ classroom interactions suggesting that RULER effects were more prominent in schools with lower initial SE skills.
Discussion: Results suggest that RULER holds some promise for promoting teacher SE capacities and enhancing classroom interactions, particularly in schools serving students with elevated SE needs. Impacts appear equivalent regardless of FRPL and ELL. Findings will be discussed in the context of pandemic-related disruptions.

Authors

• Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, University of Virginia

• Xavier Elzie, University of Virginia

• Jason Downer, University of Virginia

• Jamie DeCoster, University of Virginia

• Lee Leboeuf, University of Virginia