Social-Emotional Needs Entwined with Students' Learning, Security
Research and schoolroom practice show a supportive environment can promote achievement—and stress can be a hinderance
Students' ability to learn depends not just on the quality of their textbooks and teachers, but also on the comfort and safety they feel at school and the strength of their relationships with adults and peers there.
Most of education policymakers' focus remains on ensuring schools are physically safe and disciplined: Forty-five states have anti-bullying policies, compared with only 24 states that have more comprehensive
policies on school climate
.
Mounting evidence from fields like neuroscience and cognitive psychology, as well as studies on such topics as school turnaround implementation, shows that an
academically challenging yet supportive environment
boosts both children's learning and coping abilities. By contrast, high-stress environments in which
students feel chronically unsafe
and uncared for make it physically and emotionally harder for them to learn and more likely for them to act...
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