Fostering Positive Student Outcomes in Elementary Schools with a Universal SEL Program and a School-Level Support Intervention

Educators increasingly emphasize social and emotional learning (SEL) as a way to graduate students who are knowledgeable, responsible, caring, and socially competent. A growing number of universal SEL interventions include classroom and school-wide strategies to promote student SEL competence and to create positive learning environments that support SEL. High quality implementation has been found essential for the success of these efforts but this is not always easy to achieve in community settings.

This paper will present the findings from an effectiveness trial that tested CASEL School Guide, a school-wide approach, to maximize the effectiveness of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) Curriculum. Implementing a school-wide system of support was expected to improve PATHS implementation and create coordinated, school-wide SEL programming more effective at improving student outcomes than the primarily classroom-focused standard support model.

Based on a matched-pair design, 28 low performing schools in the Chicago Public Schools implemented PATHS for two years; 14 were randomly assigned to additionally receive the School Guide intervention. In Year 1, K-2 teachers were trained to deliver the PATHS curriculum. In Year 2, 3rd grade teachers were also trained. In Year 1, teachers of the Grades 1 and 2 students were asked to rate the SEL competence, learning engagement, and aggression of their students. In each classroom up to 8 children were randomly selected for assessment. A total of 1,108 students in 156 classrooms were rated at the baseline, 834 were rated in spring of Year 1. In the spring of Year 2, 843 students in 178 classrooms were rated when they were in Grades 2 and 3.

Students from schools in the combined condition were expected to be rated more positively by their teachers in terms of SEL competence and engagement and as less aggressive than students from the standard PATHS schools post intervention. We also expected that teachers’ attitudes toward PATHS and implementation quality moderated the impacts of School Guide on student outcomes. Three-level HLM models with students nested within classrooms in which they enrolled at baseline then within schools were used to test differences across the two conditions in student outcomes. Interaction terms between teacher attitudes or implementation quality and treatment will be added to test moderator effects. Preliminary results suggested that students from combined condition schools were not significantly different from students from the PATHS only schools on any of the studied outcomes. Additional models will test teacher moderator effects.