Integrating Prosocial Learning with Education Standards

School Climate Reform Initiatives

Kristie Fink, Jonathan Cohen, Sean Slade

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317205043
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Integrating Prosocial Learning with Education Standards demonstrates how to meet educational standards that privilege cognitive aspects of learning while also advancing prosocial or Whole Child efforts (e.g., social emotional learning, character education, and mental health promotion). The book utilizes a growing body of research to reveal effective ways to implement a curriculum that integrates social, emotional, ethical, and civic aspects of learning with required state standards, and a wide range of "real world" examples describe how any school, anywhere, can lay a foundation for all young people to succeed.

Part I

Introduction and Overview

Jonathan Cohen, Kristie Fink, and Sean Slade

Integrating Prosocial Learning with Education Standards is based on the understandings that strong, caring relationships and a safe, supportive, engaging, and healthy climate for learning create the foundation for school—and life—success. Although current American public education measures and focuses on student cognitive learning, educators—such as parents and guardians—are always teaching social, emotional, ethical, and civic as well as cognitive lessons—intentionally, systematically, and helpfully or not!

The editors and authors of this volume are committed to integrating the academic standards and educational efforts that privilege the cognitive or academic aspects of learning on the one hand with prosocial (e.g., social emotional learning [SEL], character education, and mental health promotion efforts) or Whole Child efforts. The term prosocial education refers to the range of ways that educators can intentionally promote social, emotional, ethical, and civic as well as intellectual competencies that support school and life success. Prosocial educational efforts include character education, SEL, Whole Child, restorative practices, 21st-century learning skills, culturally responsive education, and school-based mental health promotion efforts.

Through a wide range of examples, this book describes how any school, anywhere, all day long can lay a foundation for success for all young people to succeed. The chapters in this volume describe how to integrate prosocial educational efforts with efforts that promote cognitive and academic learning.

This volume is written for a higher education/policy audience that includes researchers, graduate students, and policy analysts as well as educational consultants and others who learn and work with educators. We also hope that this volume supports practicing K–12 teachers and administrators, considering how they can intentionally be even more effective prosocial educators.

In this volume, we suggest that it is always helpful for educators to consider three overlapping processes to support K–12 schools as places that not only support school but also life success:

• Prosocial instruction: As we outline in Chapter 2 (“Prosocial Goals, Strategies, Resources, and Common Core Standards Alignment”) and illustrate throughout this volume, we do now have guidelines that support educators being helpful, prosocial teachers by being a living example, through our use of disciplinary strategies that focus on learning rather than punishment, through a range of pedagogical strategies, and through the curriculum we use.
• Schoolwide improvement efforts: A growing body of educational, risk prevention, and health/mental health promotion research underscores how important it is always to learn and work to create even safer, more supportive, and engaging climates for learning. As foundational as instruction is, the lessons we want to teach can and need to be echoed systemically or school climate–wise.
• Relational improvement efforts: In many ways, the first three R’s—relationships, relationships, and relationships—provide the foundation for learning and students’ healthy development. Students need to feel and be connected to adults who care and want to support their ability to learn.

In fact, The National School Climate Council (2015) and the editors of this volume (who are all members of the council) suggest that these three overlapping dimensions and potential improvement goals provide a holistic framework that recognizes and integrates the range of ways that we can intentionally work to further prosocial education that supports school and life success.

This set of understandings is aligned with and supports implementation science (Blase, van Dyke, & Fixsen, 2013; Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015; Fullan, 2011). A growing body of research has focused on and reveals effective implementation.

Although the Common Core Standards are a significantly richer and more helpful framework than No Child Left Behind (NCLB)’s almost exclusive focus on reading, math, and science test scores, they do not go far enough. They do not explicitly recognize, honor, measure, and support the prosocial—social, emotional, ethical, and civic—aspects of learning. Further, they do not explicitly recognize and measure the classroom and school-wide climate for learning. And, findings and guidelines from implementation science are not integrated into their standards.

With the 2017 Every Child Suceeds Act (ESSA), we suggest that a paradigm shift is in progress: moving away from a sole focus on student cognitive learning to a more Whole Child approach, and related sets of goals and strategies that we can use to actualize these goals. Building on character education–informed research and practice, SEL, and school climate reform are garnering growing attention at the federal, state, and district level. We hope that this volume supports and continues to grow awareness that we need intentionally to promote prosocial instruction as well as create a climate for learning and use implementation science to ensure that capacity building and sustainability–informed goals are focused on from the beginning.

Educators are sometimes confused about what is similar and different about various prosocial educational “camps.” On the one hand, character education, SEL, and school climate (to focus on three of a much larger number of “camps”) do have different traditions and primary focuses. The term character education refers to teaching children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, or socially acceptable beings. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. And, school climate refers to the character and quality of school life. School climate is based on patterns of students, parents/guardians, and school personnel’s norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures. But, effective SEL, character education, and school climate improvement efforts always include an array of schoolwide, instructional and relational improvement goals that school leaders delineate intentionally, strategically, and collaboratively in a continuous, data-driven process of goal setting, implementation, assessment and learning (Cohen, Espelage, Twemlow, Berkowitz, & Comer, 2015).

On the purpose of education, society wants K–12 schooling to be a process that supports learning in order to develop responsible citizens (Rose & Gallop, 2000) and this has been echoed by leading educators, child development experts, and organizations:

The purpose of education has been debated for centuries. Many educators and child development experts argue that the overarching goal of education is to promote the highest possible levels of cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and ethical development for each child. The whole-child movement is based on the proposition that education must move beyond preparing children to become “well educated” citizens who are productive participants in the economic system. Education must also cultivate in young people spirituality, reverence for the natural environment, and a sense of social justice. Education must inspire children’s creativity, imagination, compassion, self-knowledge, social skills, and emotional health. In this way, the term holistic education simply means cultivating the whole person and helping individuals live more consciously within their communities and natural ecosystems.

(Miller, 2005)

This idea is not new, however; it is a shift from our current focus on developing the cognitive only. It is an approach that seeks to put the child at the center and plan the processes, supports, and systems around that child (ASCD, 2007):

The purpose of education has always been to everyone, in essence, the same—to give the young, the things they need in order to develop if an orderly, sequential way into members of society.

(John Dewey, “Individual Psychology and Education,” The Philosopher, Volume XII, 1934)

[E]ducation has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

(Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Purpose of Education,” Maroon Tiger, January–February 1947)

About renewing the profession of teaching, John Goodlad, in an interview with ASCD in May 1999, said:

The question you are asking is really, What is the fundamental mission of schooling? This, of course, is the most difficult. In my book A Place Called School (1984) and in the late Ernie Boyer’s book High School (1983), we both came to the same conclusion; in fact, each of us has a chapter with the exact same title, even though we didn’t communicate with each other. The title of the chapter is “We Want It All.” When we really push parents to think about what they want out of schooling, they want academic development, social development, civic development, vocational development, character development: They want it all.

(John Goodlad, “Renewing the Profession of Teaching,” ASCD, May 1999)

And, this was an organizing idea for Adams, Jefferson, and our founding fathers: that American public education would enable citizens to partake in and further our democracy (Cohen, 2006, 2014; Jefferson, 1820). Today, American—and to a great extent, global K–12 educational efforts—are focused on student cognitive learning alone. Linguistic, mathematical, and scientific literacy are essential sets of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. But, there is a growing body of research that confirms what educators and parents have long known: social, emotional, civic, and ethical as well as intellectual or cognitive learning provide the essential foundation for school—and life—success (Brown, Corrigian, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2012; Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010; Cohen, Pickeral, & Levine, 2010).

Each chapter in this volume presents understandings and frameworks as well as a range of schoolwide and instructional efforts that support educators integrating prosocial education (character education, SEL, and mental health promotion) with cognitive teaching and learning.

Most states have committed to higher student learning through adoption of the Common Core State Standards (Common Core) in the past several years. The intent of the Common Core—adopted voluntarily by most U.S. states and the District of Columbia—is to outline “high standards that are consistent across states [to] provide teachers, parents, and students with a set of clear expectations that are aligned to the expectations in college and careers.” The Common Core is centered on applications of knowledge through the deeper learning skills necessary for students to compete with their peers around the world. However, like NCLB the Common Core mostly only recognizes students’ cognitive learning.

An important limitation of the Common Core is that it does not specifically or intentionally target the Whole Child or the range of essential competencies, like students’ prosocial (e.g., character education, SEL, civic education, and mental health–informed) learning as well as the essential importance of the whole school and whole community—students, parents/guardians, school personnel, and community members learning and working together to create an optimal climate for learning.

The Common Core does not dictate how teaching and learning is to take place. This deliberate vacuum allows each state, school, and classroom to implement the standards as they see fit. The Common Core stresses that the standards were developed to detail content and performance expectations—or the “what”—that dictate which teaching methods and learning strategies—or the “how”—teachers should employ for students to successfully meet Common Core expectations.

In addition, the notion that instructional efforts alone are enough to support student learning is flawed (Fullan, 2011). We need to pair effective instructional efforts with schoolwide improvement efforts (Bryk, et al., 2015; Cohen, 2006; Cohen, Espelage, Twemlow, Berko-witz, & Comer, 2015).

Prosocial educational, instructional, and school climate improvement practices are essential and complementary strategies that states, districts, schools, and teachers may use to help students gain a deeper understanding of core academic content and simultaneously build deeper learning skills through the integration of content knowledge with application. Students, parents/guardians, school personnel, and community members are learning and working together on a spectrum from “not at all” to a very high level of collaboration. A resounding and growing body of research underscores that intentional Whole Child or prosocial education and school-family-community efforts support school—and life—success (Brown, Corrigian, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2012; Cohen, 2006; Cohen, Espelage, Twemlow, Berkowitz, & Comer, 2015). This volume is designed to support classrooms and building leaders learning about the range of ways to do so.

This volume is not prescriptive: there is no one best way to further Whole Child improvement efforts.

We suggest that understandings shape our educational goals. Goals drive behavior. And, our goals suggest particular strategies (pedagogy, curriculum, and schoolwide improvement efforts) that we use to actualize given goals. And, hopefully we then struggle—in the best sense of the word—to measure “how have we done?” Sunsets may be perfect. But, professi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part I: Introduction and Overview
• Part II: Creating a Climate for Learning: School Climate Reform as a Strategy That Mobilizes the Whole Village to Support the Whole Child
• Part III: Instructional Efforts That Support the Whole Child and the Academic Standards
• Appendix A: The School Climate Improvement Process: Tasks and Challenges
• Appendix B: How Can We Translate Common Core Into a Curriculum Grounded in Values?
• Contributor Biographies
• Index