After a big boost during the pandemic, the emphasis on social-emotional learning in middle and high school is tapering off, according to a recent survey of educators by the EdWeek Research Center.
Even so, at the high school level where SEL has been traditionally less emphasized, there remains more focus on it now than in early 2020, when the EdWeek Research Center surveyed schools just before the pandemic disrupted K-12 education.
Social-emotional learning has typically been seen as more of a priority for elementary schools. But in recent years, researchers and SEL advocates have been trying to raise awareness of the benefits of SEL for middle and high school students.
Social-emotional learning is the teaching of nonacademic or “soft skills” that students need to be successful in school and later in their careers when they are adults. While most teenagers don’t necessarily need to learn how to articulate their feelings or control emotional outbursts at the level of a kindergartner, explicit instruction to develop social-emotional skills such as leadership, goal setting, and stress management is beneficial for them, say child-development experts.
In a December survey by the EdWeek Research Center of school district leaders, 37 percent said that “a lot” of focus was placed on SEL in high school. That’s an increase from March 2020, when 31 percent of district leaders said their high schools were placing a lot of focus on SEL. But that is a substantial decline from the pandemic high-water mark of 53 percent in fall 2021.
The numbers have fallen at a similar level for middle school, while remaining mostly stable in grades K-5.
For those looking for a silver lining, 85 percent of district leaders are reporting that their middle schools are focusing on SEL at least some of the time if not a lot, and 76 percent say the same for their high schools.
And in separate surveys by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, and the RAND Corp., the number of middle and high school principals reporting that their schools are using an SEL curriculum has doubled in the past five years or so, from 37 percent in the 2017-18 school year to 77 percent in 2023-24.
So, why have these numbers fallen in EdWeek Research Center polls to around pre-pandemic levels?
One reason might be because schools tend to invest in SEL to solve a specific problem, and then they move on once they believe the problem was addressed effectively, said David Adams, the chief executive officer of The Urban Assembly, a nonprofit school support organization that focuses on SEL.
“So it’s like, ‘We have a behavior problem, will SEL solve for it?’ Well, SEL promotes the kind of skills that mean you won’t have behavior problems in the first place,” he said.
Another reason could be that many educators see SEL as more of a standalone subject instead of something they should integrate into core academic subjects, said Gene Pinkard, the director of K-12 Leadership for the Education and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, a think tank.
“Asking systems to address SEL in isolation presents either/or choices with time and resources,” Pinkard said in an email.
Experts such as Adams and Pinkard and the EdWeek Research Center survey data explain in more detail the factors that could be causing these changes. They include:
- Educators may have viewed SEL as more important when many students were still rejoining physical classrooms after a year of remote or hybrid learning. For example, in fall 2021, the EdWeek Research Center polled educators, asking in which areas their district needed to ramp up resources and efforts to address learning loss. Fifty-four percent of teachers, principals, and district leaders selected social-emotional learning—and it was the second most-cited area, coming just after math.
- Educators report that they still believe the pandemic continues to affect students’ behavior and social skills. But those concerns may not be as much of a priority as explicit instruction in core academic subjects where students continue to lag behind.
- Many schools used federal COVID-relief dollars to support their new social-emotional learning programming, and those funding streams have now ended.
- Educators may not be seeing the impact they want from social-emotional learning. While many teachers, principals, and district leaders surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center say SEL has some kind of positive impact, around three-quarters give the concept middling to neutral reviews. It’s certainly not the ringing endorsement that some research and SEL advocates give the concept.
Why social-emotional learning is important for teens but often doesn’t work
But as with academic subjects, to move the needle on students’ skills requires, at a minimum, high-quality, age-appropriate curriculum or programming; robust professional development; and teacher buy-in. Without those elements, an SEL initiative will not have the results that research shows it can.
And that’s partly why implementing SEL at the high school level can be tricky and difficult. There are fewer SEL curricula designed specifically for the developmental needs of middle and high school students.
Also, much like reading or any other school subject, social-emotional learning needs to evolve as students age to help them deal with more complicated problems, such as developing agency and independence, building healthy identities, and finding their place in their communities and the broader world—all important developmental milestones for adolescence.
Many SEL experts say that schools and curriculum developers often try to apply elementary-level SEL programming to middle- and high-school-level learning, resulting in teens seeing the lessons as patronizing, lame, or irrelevant.
As students get older, SEL should focus less on explicitly teaching skills and more on giving students opportunities to exercise and master the skills that they have learned, recommends Stephanie Jones, a professor of child development and education at Harvard University. She led the development of a guide to teaching SEL to middle and high school students.
Beyond those priorities, social-emotional learning for tweens and teens should focus on honing real-world skills that students can use, University of Texas at Austin psychology professor David Yeager recently told Education Week for a story on how SEL can help students develop their agency and independence. Adolescents, he said, learn social-emotional skills in service of the goals that they have.
“Teaching in the abstract how to use self-control—there is no evidence that that works,” he pointed out.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
