Moral reasoning and theory of mind (ToM) are two distinct but related aspects of social cognition. While past research has clearly documented serious delays in ToM development for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both cross-sectionally (e.g. Happe, 1995) and longitudinally (Peterson & Wellman, 2020) much less is known about the…

Objective: To evaluate the benefits of the Fast Track Friendship Group program implemented as a stand-alone school-based intervention on the social cognitions, social behavior, peer and teacher relationships of peer-rejected students. Method: Over four successive years, 224 peer-rejected elementary students (57% White, 17% Black, 20% Latinx, 5%…

A growing number of school systems use self-report surveys to track students' social-emotional development as a tool to inform policy and practice. We use the first large-scale panel survey of social-emotional learning (SEL) to simulate how four constructs--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--develop from Grade 4…

The purpose of this article is to describe a school-based, integrated arts programme designed to facilitate social and emotional learning (SEL) in young children with social cognitive challenges, and to report on student outcomes. Students received weekly arts instruction over the course of one academic semester as part of their social studies…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is gaining prominence in education practice and policy. Research shows that SEL can be improved by short-term, targeted interventions and longer-term strategies to improve school contextual factors. However, little is known about how much of the variance in SEL constructs is stable over time versus specific to a…

First-order and advanced theory of mind (ToM and AToM), and their structures and relations were investigated in 229 children aged 5-8 years. ToM was assessed using 6 tasks from the first-order ToM scale, while AToM was measured using an 18-item battery (higher-order false-belief understanding; strange stories; faux pas test; eyes test;…

Prior work has shown that levels of self-reported student social-emotional learning (SEL) predict student achievement levels--as well as student achievement gains--but little has been done to understand if within-student changes in student reports of SEL are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use…

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive policymaking, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using surveys for data-based decision-making. To better understand…

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and…

There has been a growing interest among districts and schools to expand their definition of student success to focus on the whole child, yet many still lack the measures needed to prioritize and inform this work. The CORE Districts, a group of districts in California committed to measuring and supporting an expanded definition of student success,…

In Saudi Arabia, few researchers have examined teachers' perceptions and attitudes of the inclusion of students with all types of disabilities at the elementary school level. The purpose of this quantitative methods study was to explore the impact of the Inclusion Model on teachers' positive attitudes and expectations of students learning to…

Amid growing interest from educators and policymakers in supporting students' social and emotional learning (SEL), this brief describes the development of key social-emotional skills within the CORE districts, a network of urban California school districts that collectively serve more than one million students. Specifically, we use CORE's unique…

Few Spanish language tools are available for assessing important social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. The present study presents evidence of the psychometric properties of a Spanish-language version of SELweb (SELweb-S), a web-based system for assessing children's ability to recognize others' emotions and perspectives, solve social problems,…

Mounting evidence demonstrates that social-emotional skills are important for students' academic and life success, yet we have limited evidence on how these skills develop over time and how this development varies across student subgroups. In this study, we use the first large-scale panel survey of social-emotional learning (SEL) to describe how…

Adolescents become increasingly sensitive to social evaluation. Some previous studies have related this change to pubertal development. The present longitudinal study examined the role of sociocognitive development. We investigated whether or not the transition to recursive thinking, the ability to think about (others') thoughts, would be…