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Teachers are the primary implementers of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. Their beliefs about SEL likely influence program delivery, evaluation, and outcomes. A simple tool for measuring these beliefs could be used by school administrators to determine school readiness for SEL programming and by researchers to better understand teacher variables that impact implementation fidelity and program outcomes. In a two-phase study, we developed and then validated a parsimonious measure of teachers' beliefs about SEL. In Phase 1, survey items were administered to 935 teachers and subjected to both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, resulting in three reliable scales pertaining to teachers' "comfort" with teaching SEL, "commitment" to learning about SEL, and perceptions about whether their school "culture" supports SEL. Phase 2 provided evidence for the concurrent and predictive validity of the scales with a subsample of teachers implementing an SEL program as part of a randomized controlled trial. The discussion focuses on the value of measuring teachers' beliefs about SEL from both researcher and practitioner perspectives. (Contains 1 note, 3 tables, and 1 figure.)
This study examined how training, dosage, and implementation quality of a social and emotional learning program, The RULER Approach, were related to students' social and emotional competencies. There were no main effects for any of the variables on student outcomes, but students had more positive outcomes when their teachers (a) attended more trainings and taught more lessons, and (b) were classified as either moderate- or high-quality program implementers. Student outcomes were more negative when their teachers were classified as low-quality implementers who also attended more trainings and taught more lessons. Post hoc analyses revealed that low-quality implementers felt less efficacious about their overall teaching than high-quality implementers. The discussion focuses on the importance of assessing the interaction of training and implementation variables when examining the effect of social and emotional learning programs. (Contains 3 tables.)