Social & Emotional Learning & Well-Being Flashcards
What have reports shown about children’s mental health?
Nearly one in four young women has some form of mental illness. Say that this can be tracked back to emerging in primary school. Large statistics – large number of young people experiencing this. NHS report show gender issue – boys due to exhibit higher number of difficulties in primary school years, 11-16 it evens off (even rate of prevalence), then huge shift at 17-19 years where girls show a much higher prevalence. Some school perceived as more health promoting than others – why is this?
What are things to recognise about health and well-being?
Health and well-being very involved with social relationships. Tend to treat mental health problems as if it is a property of the child (residing inside their head), while of course there is a genetic contribution, relationships matter. When thinking about aetiology and treatment, need to think outside what is happening in the child’s head, and instead what is happening in their relationships. Something that comes out clearly in research is emotional well-being and social relationships is connected with academic engagement and academic outcomes. Mental health is a crucial foundation for being prepared for academic progression. The school environment is a very social space – all a very important part of the school community
Research has found that the majority of children across their school life can occupy this rejected category.
What did Crick and Dodge (1994) find?
Key idea is that when we are interacting in a social situation, there is an ongoing system of how we process what is going on around us. E.g. if have a negative encoding bias, going to miss out on the positive connotations of those experiences. Hostile attribution bias – responding in a hostile way (as if someone did it on purpose) when they could be misinterpreting it. Can account for various differences in social adjustment. For example, some people may choose to react by getting in a fight to make sure they are not a victim, whereas other would weigh up the negative consequences of this decision and choose another way to react. This makes a difference in how children get on with their social life.
Can families exacerbate cognitive biases?
These things do not come out of nowhere – even these patterns of thinking are understood best in the context of relationships
Barrett et al., 1996:
Percentage of anxious children selecting avoidant solutions
- 30% before family discussion (17.3% in non-clinic comparison)
- 68% after family discussion (5.7% in non-clinic comparison)
Percentage of ODD children selecting aggressive solutions
- 35% before family discussion (5.7% in non-clinic comparison)
- 80% after family discussion (0.0% in non-clinic comparison)
What are CASEL’s 5 SEL competencies?
- Self-management
- Self-awareness
- Social awareness
- Relationship skills
- Responsible decision-making
What are intersecting domains?
- Underneath behaviour is emotion, cognitive, motivation, and relationships.
- There is not a single measurement approach that takes all of this into communication – if you investigate one, you’ll only get one perspective, not the whole picture.
What did Mathieson and Banerjee (2010) find?
Emotional recognition at a young age could predict their behaviour at a later age. Found already at 2-3 years old they varied in their understanding of emotional recognition, which was connected with how the day care workers rated them on a peer play scale (e.g. sharing toys, comforting others, showing positive emotions, helping other children).
What did Caputi et al. (2012) find?
Following children over a period of time in primary school into the first two years of secondary school. Looked at their reasoning of mental states (theory of mind). At 6 had teachers rate prosocial behaviour – those with greater theory of mind showed more prosocial behaviours. Found that this influenced more poor acceptance and less peer rejection at age 7 (although this is correlational, so cannot state cause and effect). This was all after controlling for general verbal ability.
What did Lecce et al. (2017) find?
Tested children’s academic ability. After controlling for general academic ability and testing theory of mind at age 5, this lead to less peer rejection at age 7 and better academic achievement at age 8.
What did Banerjee et al. (2011) find?
These patterns are probably bi-directional. The quality of relationships has an ongoing impact on emotional and cognitive skills. Early peer rejection leads to difficulty with social understanding, which in turn leads to more peer rejection.
What did Lecce et al. (2014) and Bianco et al. (2016) find about intervention?
If/how we can build theory of mind skills. Conversations about hypothetical situations (e.g. misunderstandings, sarcasm, unintentional insults, deception). Randomly allocated to these conversations or a control group (discussions that didn’t pull on conversations about mental states). At pre-test no difference in theory of mind, but after intervention theory of mind improved for the theory of mind group, and it was maintained after a 2 month follow-up.
What did Durlak et al. (2011) find about intervention?
Meta-analysis of school-based SEL (social emotional learning) programmes. Showed significant improvements in social and emotional skills, attitudes about self, others, and school, classroom behaviour, conduct problems, emotional distress, and achievement test scores. They emphasises’ the importance of the programmes and how they are being implemented, in particular the SAFE acronym – Sequenced, Active, Focused, and Explicit (how intervention should be implemented).
What is the ecological model of the school environment?
Have the child, which is within the peer group, which with within the class, which is within the whole school, which is part of the community – this needs to come together in some way to make a whole.
What did Banerjee et al. 2016 find about promoting well-being at school?
Report for Welsh government. Looking at mental health intervention and prevention programmes. Showed important points about mental health work at school:
- A lot of attention on mental health area is focused on targeted work – specific difficulties. It shouldn’t detract from universal provisions – what is the environment like for everyone
- Even when you have a good evidence base for an intervention programme (SEL), being able to deliver reliable and sustained positive outcomes is really hard – implementation matters (not just what is involved in the programme, but how people apply it)
- Implementation matters – what is the science of good implementation?
What did McLoughin (2015) find about promoting well-being at school?
Idea of a ‘connected school’: in school, it is often there are systems that are disconnected, sometimes even contradicted, by other things going on in the school. Have to make specialist staff and services integrated into the school environment, and the overall curriculum, how teachers teach, etc.
