Thanks to everyone that turned out for CEC- we will try to do more to pull everyone together more often- maybe we need a social event/connect/engage committee…😊

I was trying  to figure out what the SEL issues at the conference people were talking about since I have supported SEL and even framed several studies around it in the past- was surprised to hear that one…and was flipping through the internet headlines-

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/09/social-emotional-learning-under-fire

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/26/1124082878/how-social-emotional-learning-became-a-frontline-in-the-battle-against-crt

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/03/27/desantis-administrations-war-woke-targets-sel-florida/11414547002/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/28/social-emotional-learning-critical-race-theory/

All makes for interesting conversations- and you have other contrasts on it:

https://www.the74million.org/article/social-emotional-learning-racial-reckoning-yale-center-departure/

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/why-sel-alone-isnt-enough

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-02-17-citing-racism-and-years-of-bullying-dena-simmons-resigns-from-yale-center-for-emotional-intelligence

https://www.clasp.org/blog/unfounded-outrage-over-critical-race-theory-risks-social-emotional-learning/

https://nypost.com/2021/09/15/virginia-teacher-says-making-kids-behave-is-white-supremacy/

https://wisconsindailystar.com/news/national/virginia-teacher-says-positive-behavior-like-sitting-quietly-following-directions-is-white-supremacy/gastarnewsstaff/2021/09/18/

Just a small sampling really…and doesn’t include the academic literature- there is an internal conflict at Yale for some time where SEL mostly comes out of to indeed to tie SEL from being politically neutral and science based to jumping on the CRT bandwagon to avoid the withering criticism and shaming out of the activist wing- in doing so- it does politicize it- as CRT driven policies and practices is about forcing people often to take sides- that part of the ideology it comes out of is baked in- which is explicitly activist based and proponents often take anti-empirical positions. Which is much of my issue with it- we are having this same issue with PBIS. And the push back against it as a driver for public policy is not so nuanced- throws the baby out with the bathwater. It is a nuanced conversation in a time in education and public policy that doesn’t do nuance.

One of the empirical concerns I actually have now over SEL is that if done poorly- might lead to intragenic effects. Intragenic being defined as when the person providing care does harm...sometimes inadvertently or as an unintended consequence. Those that have been around a while remember it was a problem that surfaced with drug prevention programs like DARE- that introducing the ideas too young developmentally had the oppositive effect and increased drug use.

In this case- it is the promotion of emotional reasoning if the other parts like self-regulation aren’t taught well that is a problem- emotional reasoning is a cognitive error or distortion in cognitive behavioral therapy and can lead to attribution bias around interpretation of a triggering event and based on the attribution you give to it- in that the event is often misinterpreted in the least charitable way possible. In CBT- we focus on self-questioning- basically fact checking the event before acting. In EBD we talk about it in terms of social information processing problems- so think of the somewhat disagreeable student in the hall way that gets bumped and wants to start a fight thinking it was on purpose- when- well- it might have just been an accidental bump- see the same thing in bars and nightclubs by the way…my misspent 20s. Add another thing to the list for all of you to help us figure out and think clearly about…MDB