Crossing Partisan Lines: Social-Emotional Learning Diffusion Across U.S. States in an Era of Polarization

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Troubled Organizational Waters: Racial Equity/Inequity, Politics, and Change

Abstract

Recent research on polarization’s impact on U.S. public policy challenges diffusion theories, which posit that the more common a policy becomes, the more legitimate and likely it is to spread widely. In a polarized environment, however, adopting a policy linked to the opposing party may threaten the adopter’s legitimacy. This study addresses this theoretical gap by analyzing the diffusion mechanisms of social-emotional learning (SEL) policies, a new field in education policy that expanded across U.S. States amid polarization. Preliminary findings from an event-history analysis using novel nation-wide data (1990-2024) show that partisan dynamics combined with geographic institutional mimicry facilitated the diffusion of SEL from one party’s domain to the entire country.

Author

• Tom Nachtigal, Stanford University