#2 - Emotional Literacy

This is the second of eight discussion starters covering aspects of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).

Emotional Literacy
Given that we are social and emotional beings it is somewhat paradoxical that Emotional Literacy is perhaps one of the least considered aspects of SEL.

Schools teach values, social skills, habits of mind and thinking skills in order to improve behaviour and learning. But all these are informed and shaped by the emotional literacy of those involved (staff, students, their families, their communities....)

Emotional Literacy and our most challenging students
Think of some of the most challenging students in your school
Q1.  How well do they understand the emotional experience of those around them?
Q2.  How well do they understand, manage and respond to their own emotions?

And what about low achievers who are depressed and/or give up too soon?

For more about emotional literacy go Emotional Literacy. 

#1 - Introducing SEL

 

In a recent role, I became acutely aware of how confusing the area of social and emotional learning (SEL) can be !! Is it social skills, or values, or a specific program ....

There are numerous programs and recommended approaches that imply they have the answer. If only it was that simple !!

Mapping SEL in your school

In response, I have tried to map and relate the various approaches being used in a range of schools. The result is an (interim) framework that may be useful, even if it is not simple!!

Over the next several weeks I will share my thinking in ways that might be useful for inschool professional learning, e.g., discussion groups.

Week 1 - Five basic Ideas underpinning the possible SEL Framework

1. We are all social and emotional beings
2. We promote social and emotional learning in all our interactions
3. There is a wide range of pedagogies available for teaching SEL
4. The outcomes of social and emotional learning are improved with

• Emotional literacy
• Social skills
• Habits of mind
• Thinking (and expectations)

5. These four dimensions of SEL overlap, support and complement each other

For more on this topic, see  Introducing SEL - this page may be useful as handout or discussion starter

Let me know what you think.

Restorative Practice and Peer Mediation

Numerous approaches to Peer Mediation

Obviously, there are numerous approaches to support student problem solving and associated peer mediation skills. Most rely on the school identifying, training and equipping, and deploying suitable students.

And there are numerous schools around the world that have been able to extend the use of Restorative Practices to include peer mediation. In building  their school as a community, they have worked to involve everyone in Restorative Practices: staff, students, their families and the wider community.

These schools have explicitly trained students in the use of small circles and  the restorative questions as part of establishing a restorative culture across the school and its community. They have then created some level of peer mediation by training and encouraging the students to use small circles and the RP questions in real everyday situations to make better responses to the situations that arise.

Peer mediation is not new 

But promoting Peer Mediation is not a new, separate, isolated endeavour. In almost all circles that work well , many students already do a great deal of 'peer mediation'  - probably more than they realise. So just pointing this out (making it explicit) can be useful. If we know about the good things we can do, then this generally increases our capacity and willingness to do more of them.

Peer mediation by everyone? 

Training does not need to begin with selected students. "Helping to resolve peer issues" might be a great topic for a class circle. The social and emotional learning that will result is likely to enable many students to take positive action when things go wrong.

For example, bullying rarely occurs without an extensive range of bystanders. To reduce bullying it makes sense to enable, support and encourage 

• bullies to better understand the implications of their actions
• bullies to repair the harm done, and
• all bystanders to make more constructive responses. 

Clearly this is the very kind of activity for which Restorative Practices has been developed.

It would be interesting to see what might emerge if, say playground/classroom mediators were elected by their peers. Worth a try?

Restorative Practices as a springboard from Peer Mediation

So if your school is developing a restorative culture there numerous possibilities just from Restorative Practices alone. And, of course, then there are other sources of ideas, processes and practices relating to Peer Mediation.

Solution Focus - an educational approach to school improvement

Are you exploring the possible contributions of adopting a Solution Focus (SF) approach to the life and work of your school? If so,  the following background thinking may be useful to you as the  proponent, facilitator and/or principal as you work with staff, students, their families and the school's leadership team, and community:

1. Education, especially remedial education, is often problem (deficit) focused 

2. Most quality teaching and learning is solution focused hence the value of
     - working on what's working (WOWW) and doing more of it
     - trying something different for those things that are not working
     - working with those involved (rather than on or for them)
     - ...

3. SF is a learning process - a very useful and practical pedagogy in its own right that can be used directly with a wide range of students in a wide range of situations.

4. A Solution focused workshop will model SF as a pedagogy - however this may be need to be made explicit to the participants
     - In what ways, has our workshop been a learning experience?
     - In what ways might you use similar steps with your students?
     - ...

5. Solutions are about achieving increased success and well-being now, and in the future - these are the two outcomes that count!!

6. Success and well-being are personal, social, emotional and cultural experiences (not just a matter of academic and behavioural compliance)

7.Thus, quality education is a complex multi-level social endeavour
     - involving the respectful collaboration of teachers and individual students, staff, classes, families and the community
     - attending to significant purposes,
     - using productive pedagogies,
     - building respectful relationships and a richer more supportive school community 

8. SF is relatively 'simple' strategy yet it addresses these dimensions and thus supports quality education

9. At the same time, problems in schools are real and often required prompt attention:
    - serious problems need to be contained and resolved asap
    - all problems need to be reduced and, if possible, prevented
    - those involved need to participate and contribute to these outcomes

10. It is likely that a Solution Focused workshop will reveal the need for on-going attention to be given to
    - improved pedagogies, including SF approaches
    - improved social and emotional learning
    - improved 'behaviour management' (see 9 above), for example, restorative practices (here)
    - increasing the school's focus on solutions, e.g., here

For some schools and some staff this last point represents a challenging paradigm shift* ("old habits die hard"). AS well as being challenged they may need some on-going support.. It will mean working WITH (rather than working ON or working FOR) students.

And that is exactly what will be modelled in a well-led workshop using an SF approach in the .

* Footnote: Years ago I was skilled  at dealing with the problems  in my school. When problems arose I usually dealt with most of them promptly and well.  But then I noticed that I was solving the same problems time and time again. I realised I was just carrying out effective counter measures - containing the situations that arose and resolving events as if they occurred in isolation. I wasn't really focusing on genuine improvements and lasting solutions.

Fortunately Solution Focus now offers a substantial body of knowledge to address this almost universal challenge.

Finding Tipping Points

Malcolm Gladwell has written the book The Tipping Point in which he proposes a framework to better understand some complex social changes. In particular he is interested in "How little things can make a big difference". He is keen to identify these little things - aren't we all !!!

Of course in giving examples of his ideas he has the benefit of hindsight which enables retrospective coherence possible. The rest of us are trying to predict the small things that will make a big difference in our present situations - but complex social phenomena are unpredictable in anything but the short term.

Does this mean that we should disregard Gladwell's ideas? Not at all !! I like the notion that we should

"Pick something small and try it. If it works, extend it. If it doesn't, learn from it."

But what to pick? The Tipping Point suggests that we might consider

(1) Enabling the contributions of  just a few people, but right ones - those who are

• Connectors - people (and characters*) whose ideas and practices readily influence what they are doing in our area of interest
• Mavens - people who have extensive knowledge in our area of interest and are keen to share it
• Salespersons - people who are influential especially in actively promoting and support new ideas and practices

Gladwell calls this part of his framework The Law of the Few - a small number of the right people can make a big difference.

(2) Introducing small things that will make the new ideas and practices "sticky"**, that is, those small things in the situation that will cause a much bigger and sustained uptake of the ideas and desired practices.

Gladwell calls this part of his framework The Stickiness Factor.

(3) Looking for small things in the context (environment, history, purposes...) that will make a big difference in the uptake of the ideas and practices. It could be as simple as making it easier for people to know what's happening, getting the timing right...

In fact Gladwell believes that the context is often largely responsible for what happens and for what we do. He goes so far to argue that we may be far less rational and even less 'ethical' than we might like to think.

He calls this part of his framework The Power of Context.

Finding these small things that can make a big difference is not always easy. Hence the value of the "Pick something small..." idea. Similarly, Dave Snowden advocates "safe-fail experiments" - initiatives that are safe to try on a small scale because they wont be too costly to implement and can be easily undone if they prove unsuccessful.

Three questions

This is a different approach but worth some consideration. So, when we are trying to improve the social and emotional learning in our schools, Gladwell would suggest that there are basically three questions we might ask

Who are the few people who can make a real difference (three types, and don't forget the students themselves!!!)?

What will make it stick?

What contextual changes should we focus on?

Notes

* Connectors may be some steps removed from those they influence, eg, pop stars, book or film charatcers

** Stories, myths and legends are often powerful in making ideas and practices "sticky"

Behaviour - does Pavlov work?

What do we really believe about how to improve problematic behaviour?

Finding out is easy - just observe our everyday selves in action, and and listen carefully to the way we talk about behaviour - our actual beliefs are revealed in how we talk and act.

So much of the day-to-day talk about student behaviour implies that many of us believe Pavlov was right - it is all a matter of stimulus and response. That is, if teachers (and parents and ...) get the stimulus right then the kids responses will improve.

    

  

In this sense there are supposedly two kinds of 'stimulus'

• the teacher's actions - a multitude of scripts are readily available for almost any situation
• the so-called consequences of the student's actions 

Students are assumed to have the capacity to make sense of, and respond to, their experiences and adjust their behaviour accordingly. And of course this is true for those students (70- 90%) who have achieved  the an adequate level of social and emotional learning.

The trap!!

But therein lies the trap for schools and their staff:

• What is logical to teachers may not make any sense at all to some students, hence
• What works well with many students (~80%) does not work for all, and 
• What is explicit (obvious) for the teacher may not even be tacit for student - a student may have little or no awareness of issues and expectations
• It is easy to confuse intelligence with maturity - two students of equal intelligence may have very different capacities to act appropriately in the same situation

In addition, the Pavlovian view often leads teachers to

• working ON students by trying to get the stimulus strong enough to make the students respond, or
• working FOR students by making the response for them, or
• simply NEGLECTING the student if the whole situation is too difficult

Thus, for many of our most problematic students, the Pavlovian approach is unlikely to change things much - it may offer little in the way of learning to those who make poor sense of their experience, and may further entrench problematic behaviour. "Logical consequences" imposed by the teacher may be experienced as simple "revenge" by the student

Is there an alternative to Pavlov?

The answer is yes. It still involves stimulus and response but the role of the teacher is quite different.  The teacher works WITH the student by mediating

• between the stimulus and the student helping the student make better sense of their experience
• the student's processing of the incoming stimulus - helps them think better
• between the student and their response - helps them make a better response

     

     

This alternative is known as a mediated learning experience (Feuerstein) involving

• emotional literacy for understanding self and others
• thinking making sense of one's experiences and the way to respond
• social skills for responding
• habits of mind for self regulation, better thinking and more successful ways of responding

The more problematic a student's behaviour, the greater their need for long term mediation in order to achieve the social and emotional learning required.

The choice

So the choice is yours  -

• How do you function in your role with respect to your students?  
• Are you generally  a conditioner or mediator? Under what circumstances? 
• And are your students experiencing greater well-being and becoming more successful in their endeavours?
• How might you adjust your practice in order to make a greater contribution?

The problem with incentives

Today's solution can be the basis of tomorrow’s problem. 

The Australian Prime Minister has proposed substantial incentive payments to up to 1000 schools which show improvements in student attendance and results (more...). It is generally a good thing to recognise and reward achievements and the intended outcomes of the proposal are highly desirable.

However this is not simply a system-wide recognition and reward arrangement. Offering incentives with a limited number of possible recipients turns it into a competition.  Competition can certainly promote improved performance, as in sport.

At the same time, there can be unintended side effects. In any competition there will be winners and losers. Incentives work best for those who are likely to be rewarded and they tend to become less effective over time unless the rewards are increased. Very few of us commit ourselves to winning Olympic medals despite the ever increasing value of doing so.

To be competitive we need to minimise the factors that reduce our likelihood of success while maximising the factors that increase the likelihood of our success.  Other than luck, our likelihood of success is associated with factors over which we have some control.

The Prime Minister has promised that national criteria will be developed through consultative processes and measurement of performance will be overseen by an independent body. Fairness is important in any incentive scheme. But is this actually possible?

Student attendance and results are closely associated with many factors well outside the school's control including the natural abilities of individual students; family well-being; levels of parental education; and the families’ access to social capital, community resources and so on. But will the selection processes be able to measure the school’s and teacher’s contributions separately from these non-school factors?

If not, it would make sense for schools and teachers to generally avoid students who have additional needs for support and whose families are in distress; whose parents have low levels of education; and who live in communities with limited services, facilities and social capital.

Conversely it would make sense for schools to attract and retain students who have minimal need for additional individual support; whose families are in great shape; whose parents have high levels education and  easy access to material and social resources and services.

The unintended side effect is that the most successful school response to the Prime Minister's proposal could well be to avoid the very students the proposal is intended to assist.