Adopt and Implement Evidence-based Programs and Practices

Below you’ll find an overview of: WHAT high-quality implementation looks like, WHY it’s important, WHEN to engage in this key activity, and WHO to involve. Also see the PROCESS page for step-by-step guidance on how to engage in the work, and the RESOURCES page for additional tools to support your efforts.

High-quality adoption and implementation of evidence-based programs and practices:

Use the Rubric to assess your current level of implementation of evidence-based programs and practices.

Several approaches to promoting SEL can be implemented using evidence-based programs:

• Teaching practices: These programs typically focus on specific instructional practices, pedagogies, and/or classroom management techniques that create a positive classroom climate. These teaching practices are designed to engage students actively in learning while also supporting students’ social and emotional development.
• Infusion of SEL into academic curriculum: These programs embed the teaching of social and emotional skills into a particular academic area.
• Organizational strategies: These programs approach social and emotional development through the significant reordering of policies and organizational structures throughout the school. Examples of organizational structures that could be reordered include leadership teams, advisories, and schedules. Organizational approaches are equivalent to school reform models and often require strong commitment and a high-level of initial and ongoing professional learning to be implemented with quality.
• Free-standing SEL lessons: These programs directly teach SEL skills through free-standing lessons. Lessons often focus on skills that can be broadly applied to a variety of situations, such as making friends, working cooperatively with others, coping with stress, making decisions about potentially risky behaviors, and resolving interpersonal conflicts.

Specific examples of programs that take these four approaches can be found in the brief titled What Does Evidence-Based Instruction in Social and Emotional Learning Actually Look Like in Practice?

CASEL offers the SEL Program Guide, which provides a framework for evaluating the quality of social and emotional programs as well as best-practice guidelines for selecting and implementing SEL programs. The programs included in the guide:

• Are well-designed and systematically promote students’ social and emotional competence.
• Provide opportunities for practice, with many offering multiyear programming.
• Deliver high-quality training and other implementation supports.
• Have at least one carefully conducted evaluation that documents positive impacts on student behavior and/or academic performance.

In addition, according to The Economic Value of Social and Emotional Learning, published in February 2015 by the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, schools see an 11-to-1 return on investment among six evidence-based SEL interventions that were studied. This means that on average for every $1 invested in SEL programming, there is a return of $11.