An Analysis of Preservice STEM Teachers’ Beliefs about SEL

• In Event: The Promise and Practice of Social-Emotional Learning in Schools

Abstract

Introduction: In the United States, there is a well-documented shortage of women and racial/ethnic minority students in Science Technology Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (National Science Foundation, 2011). A growing body of research demonstrates the potential of social and emotional learning (SEL) to address educational equity concerns (Jagers et al., 2019), and the positive effects of SEL on students’ academic performance (Oberle et al., 2014). Social-emotional learning (SEL) refers to "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions" (CASEL, 2020, p. 1).

There is growing recognition that teachers make a crucial contribution to the social and emotional development of their students by how they teach and model social and emotional constructs, and how they relate to their students and manage their classrooms (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Although it’s clear that teachers play a pivotal role in student SEL, many teacher preparation programs currently have no established curricula, guidelines, or ‘best practices for their instructors to disseminate knowledge of SEL to pre-service teachers, either to implement SEL at schools or to develop their skills in promoting SEL for their own well-being (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2017). Furthermore, there is limited research on how novice STEM teachers make sense of connections between SEL and equity. As a result, this study aims to address the following main research questions: (1) What are preservice STEM teachers’ beliefs about SEL? (2) How are preservice teachers’ equity beliefs associated with their SEL instructional practices?

Methods: Participants were recruited from an undergraduate teaching credential program at a public university in the Western United States. All 15 student teachers were invited to participate in this study, and eight teachers agreed to participate. The second author, who was not directly affiliated with the credential program, conducted all interviews through zoom. Interviews lasted 45-60 minutes and included questions that focused on understanding each participant’s journey into teaching, beliefs about SEL, and connections between SEL and equity. All interviews were video recorded and transcribed.

Findings: After all interview data were transcribed the data were analyzed by members of the research team. We generated deductive codes based on the CASEL framework for social-emotional learning. Then, we employed a process of open coding, in which we extracted codes from the interview data (Strauss & Corbin 1990). After generating initial codes, we engaged in a process of axial coding to identify connections between codes. We then grouped the 15 codes we generated into three themes that captured student teachers’ beliefs about SEL in this study: (1) SEL promoted student teachers’ own self-awareness; (2) SEL created a positive environment for STEM learning; and (3) Students’ emotional awareness is key in social justice instruction. Preliminary findings highlight the importance of integrating SEL instruction into teacher preparation programs and in-service professional development programs.

Authors

• Sarah Kiran Manchanda, UC Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Aukeem Ballard, UC Berkeley

• Maedeh Golshirazi, University of California - Berkeley