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Leveraging Technology for Social and Emotional Learning at Scale

Tue, March 25, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, Dearborn 3

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Decades of research indicate that children with stronger social and emotional skills have better outcomes at school and later in life across learning, health, and behavior (Jones, McGarrah & Kahn, 2019; Jones et al., 2015; Moffitt et al, 2011). School-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs improve students’ social and emotional skills, mental health, attitudes toward school, and academic performance as well as teachers’ social and emotional competence, and reduce teacher stress and burnout (Durlak et al, 2011; Jones & Kahn, 2017; Oliveira et al., 2021; Cipriano et al., 2023).
While the evidence base for SEL draws largely from the U.S. and other high-income countries, demand for SEL and related programming has continued to grow around the world, including in low- and middle-income countries (Deitz et al., 2021). The high demand for SEL also brings a desire to reach a larger audience at a fast rate. However, many of the challenges of traditional SEL programming undermine the possibility of effective scaling, such as lack of local buy in or cultural fit, resource-intensive materials, and additional time requirements for already burdened teachers (Jones et al., 2017). Unlike more traditional approaches to SEL, a “kernelized” approach to SEL can allow for greater uptake and scalability. SEL Kernels of Practice, developed through an analysis of the “active ingredients” in over 25 of the leading evidence-based SEL programs, are short, skill-targeted, dynamic and flexible strategies that can be used flexibly and adapted to meet the needs of different classrooms and settings (Jones et al., 2017).
Technology also offers an array of solutions to consider when scaling social and emotional learning. Technology allows materials to be accessible by audiences who may be otherwise unreached by the intervention and can allow materials to be designed to support the access needs of people with disabilities. Hosting materials on websites designed for inclusivity allows people to access supports such as screen readers, speech recognition, and color contrast. Further, recent advances in AI-generated translation can allow materials to be accessed in multiple languages. Beyond accessibility, technology can be used to develop communities of practice across space and time which can enhance members’ ability to interact with one another, share ideas relevant to their work, and sustain a community atmosphere (Wenger et al., 2005 ). Further, technology can be used to support continuous quality improvement (Elias, 2019) . Practitioners can share artifacts and engage in cycles of feedback to understand and improve implementation.
This panel brings together a series of papers that each propose an effective example of scaling social and emotional learning leveraging technology. The first paper presents KERNELSFOLIO which uses an inclusive mobile-first technological platform to offer bi-directional communication between educators and learnings to deliver SEL Kernels. In addition to supporting implementation, uptake, and ongoing use, KERNELSFOLIO also serves as an important tool for data collection—allowing for a much broader view into the classroom than would otherwise be possible via more traditional survey methods. The second paper presents the development of an online self-paced module based professional development course for early childhood educators in Brazil on social and emotional learning and psychosocial support. In an effort to fill important gaps in teachers’ knowledge of child development and psychosocial support and wellbeing, including recent national policies that affect teachers and school communities, while celebrating the dedication of teachers to their students, this course uses multi-media instruction to reach early childhood educators across Brazil. The third paper presents a path toward reaching all primary and lower middle school teachers in Ukraine amidst the full-scale invasion to provide culturally relevant social and emotional learning strategies with a rollout approach anchored in a network-based cascade training module alongside the use of a publicly available website and private Facebook group. The fourth paper proposes a solution to scaling SEL using a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot built to address the barriers to SEL implementation in low-resource settings. Together, the examples presented in this panel provide an array of possibilities for how technology can be leveraged to meet the needs of education systems and offer high quality, culturally relevant strategies for social and emotional learning.

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