Teachers' Social-Emotional Learning: Benefits for Black Children?

• In Event: Does Racism Color Black Youths' Social-Emotional Learning? The Roles of Teachers, Identity, and Measurement

Abstract

Racial discrimination negatively impacts Black children’s relationships with teachers and their classroom behaviors (Dotterer, McHale, & Crouter, 2009; Hooks & Miskovic, 2011). Teachers’ implementation of social-emotional learning (SEL) is suggested to mitigate students’ racial-related school experiences (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Borowski, 2018). However, teachers’ social-emotional training (SET) impacts students’ SEL. Given SET excludes training on racism (Coll, Akerman, & Cicchetti, 2000; Mahatmya, Lohman, Brown, & Conway-Turner, 2016), teachers’ SET might actually have no or negative consequences for Black youth. Thus, it is important to examine whether teachers’ SET mitigates or exacerbates the racial discrimination experiences Black children encounter. We assessed whether teachers’ SET moderated the association between students’ experiences of racial discrimination and their relationships with teachers as well as classroom engagement.

Participants were 43 teachers and 148 Black 4th and 5th grade students (70 girls) from seven elementary schools in the Southeast. Teachers reported their participation in SET training (yes, no) and provided open-ended responses about their training. Students reported on their own experiences of racism in school (Wong, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2003), quality of relationship with their teacher (closeness, conflict, and negative expectations; (Blankemeyer, Flannery, & Vazsonyi, 2002; Koomen & Jellesma, 2015), and emotional and behavioral engagement in the classroom (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, Friedel, & Paris, 2005; Hart, Stewart, & Jimerson, 2011). Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling with Student at Level 1 and Teacher at Level 2.

As predicted, perceived racial discrimination experiences were negatively associated with students’ emotional (p < .01) and behavioral (p < .01) classroom engagement; however, teachers’ SET did not significantly moderate these effects (p > .05). Similarly, perceived racial discrimination experiences were positively associated with students’ belief that the teacher had negative expectations for them (p < .01) and conflict with their teacher (p < .01), and negatively associated with closeness with their teacher (p < .05). Furthermore, SET significantly moderated the relation between racial discrimination and students’ perceptions of negative expectations (p <.01) and conflict (p < .01). Surprisingly, the findings were not in the direction as one would expect. Youths’ perceptions of racial discrimination from their teachers was associated with more negative expectations and conflict, but only for those teachers who had SET training. Thus, teachers’ SET seems to have exacerbated black youths’ race-based discrimination in the classroom setting. Furthermore, open-ended responses from teachers about their SET indicated a lack of racism awareness in their training. Because SET and SEL frameworks are based on a ‘colorblind’ perspective that ignores the significant implications race has for Black students’ social-emotional development, the present findings suggest the importance of a SET framework that incorporates practices and strategies to respond to the racism that Black students experience.

Authors

• Kamilah B. Legette, University of Denver

• Amy Halberstadt, North Carolina State University

• Elan Hope, North Carolina State University

• Johari Harris, University of Virginia