| Public schools throughout the United States are not meeting policy goals for creating positive learning environments. Suspensions and office referrals are frequent disciplinary actions, but many studies have called their effectiveness into question. Currently there is a gap in teacher education in classroom management and social emotional learning (SEL). For example, many teachers still practice behaviorist techniques, and may not have access to current SEL best practices. This gap in teacher education could be associated with the high numbers of student suspensions. This qualitative participatory action study was guided by social cognitive theory, which challenges behaviorism as it claims that behaviors are a result of not only environmental influences, but of personal and emotional factors as well. Semistructured interviews were employed to investigate 10 K-5 teachers' perspectives of their classroom management training and their understanding of social emotional learning. Participant interviews were coded and analyzed to reveal emergent themes including the need for teachers to have a set of clear expectations related to their role in students' social emotional learning, and that school districts require an empirically-supported training for their teachers to lean and practice social emotional learning. These results were used to craft a school-wide SEL framework to decrease student suspensions and increase positive student outcomes in this elementary school. This framework was designed to improve school climate and culture, reduce student office referrals and suspensions, and improve teacher practice. |
