The purpose of the current outcome study was to determine the effects of the Ready for Success (RFS) classroom guidance program (Brigman & Webb, 2012) on the social-emotional skills and competence, reading proficiency, and promotion between third-grade students who received the RFS intervention (treatment group; n = 104), and third-grade…

Analyses presented in this report suggest that elementary school students' personal development skill ratings were fairly stable over time at the student, teacher, and grade levels. Students' personal development skill ratings also were positively related to students' achievement.

Purpose: Based on a need to utilize strategies and develop social-emotional competency skills of school administrators, the purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE), a mindfulness-based professional development program, on the leadership and well-being of 13 school…

Evidence confirms that student skills other than academic achievement and ability predict a broad range of academic and life outcomes. This evidence, along with a new federal requirement that state accountability systems include an indicator of school quality or student success not based on test scores, has sparked interest in incorporating such…

This is one of two papers developed for an Ministry of Education funded project, Competencies in New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZC). This paper draws on archived policy discussion papers to document the provenance of the key competencies included in the "New Zealand Curriculum" ("NZC"). The second paper analyses…

Project-based learning (PjBL) as a PK-12 instructional model is growing nationwide. PjBL is seen as a mechanism to deliver academic content in a more engaging way for students and in a way that stresses the development of skills critical to success in the 21st-century workforce. Because of its increasing popularity and the disparate breadth of…

One of the most respected and widely used autism interventions, Pivotal Response Treatment uses natural learning opportunities to modify key behaviors in children--leading to widespread positive effects on communication, behavior, and social skills. Now the pioneering experts behind PRT have created a comprehensive modern guide to this…

Poverty and trauma impact student brain development, health, and behavior. The stressors of poverty (lack of nutritious food, unstable housing, etc.) and traumatic events can put students in a "fight" or "flight" mode. Operating from such places prevents students from accessing higher-order thinking and negatively impacts…

This is one of two papers developed for a Ministry of Education (MOE)-funded project, Competencies in New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZC). The first paper draws on archived policy discussion papers to document the provenance of the NZC key competencies. This second paper analyses a series of research projects to describe how…

Students in middle and high school as well as elementary school students from model SEL schools (online participants only) were asked 20 questions that assessed their SEL skills. These skills relate to the following SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.

Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools for assessing the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures use standardized tests as the outcome of interest, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL). In this article, we present results from using the first…

Growing interest in understanding the role of students' social-emotional competence for school success necessitates valid measures for large-scale use. We provide validity evidence for the 40-item Washoe County School District Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (WCSD-SECA), a student self-report measure that came from a researcher-practitioner…

Although previous research has examined how generic skills and disciplinary contexts are related, such investigation has not been conducted from students' perspectives. Implications of disciplinary differences for the design of a generic skills curriculum have also remained unexplored. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 502…

A majority of social skills research in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and interventions target school age males and no published studies target adolescent females with ASD or related disabilities. Females with ASD are at risk for internalizing symptoms, and experience greater challenges in socialization and communication as social demands become…

In this paper we focus on individual coaching carried out by an external coach as a new pedagogical element that can impact doctoral students' sense of progress in doctoral education. The study used a mixed-methods approach in that we draw on quantitative and qualitative data from the evaluation of a project on coaching doctoral students. We…