Social Emotional Learning in School Settings

In this 2015 interview, Mark Garibaldi of the American Institutes for Research explains how school climate and social emotional learning work together and how school building design may affect relationships. An updated section below the interview adds national data on school connectedness and research on what social emotional learning programs achieve.

Mark Garibaldi, Researcher with American Institutes for Research’s Health and Social Development Program, discusses his research in this growing and vital field in education.

edCircuit: What areas of social emotional learning are you currently focused on and what areas of research might surprise the general public?

Mark Garibaldi:  My research focuses on educational programs, systems, and spaces that support learning, performance, and social and emotional outcomes. Within that broad scope, my recent work on social and emotional learning (SEL) that may surprise the public has focused on the influence of built school environments on socialization processes associated with relationships between teachers and students and peers. The built environment is considered one aspect of the requisite conditions for learning but the design of these spaces are rarely based on design standards that ensure optimal student outcomes (beyond academic performance). That being said, through this work we hope to eventually produce design standards that can be applied to architectural designs of school environments.

RB: How has the research, in this area, changed during your career?

MG: I have been doing research on social and emotional learning for only about five years so I’m considered somewhat new to this work compared to other experts who have been forging this area since the 1990’s. However, based on recent evaluations of school- and community-based initiatives focused on SEL, I would say one notable shift has been the focus on understanding how school districts can plan and implement systemwide SEL. I have been fortunate to be a part of this exciting work through AIR.

RB: We hear more and more about “school climate” in the greater discussion of social and emotional learning. What changes in school climate have been taking place that indicate schools and districts are making a concerted effort in this area?

MG: This is a good question. To answer the question, I should preface a few things about the relationship between social climate and social and emotional learning. First, school climate is multidimensional and typically refers to a few things. First, climate refers to the quality and character of school life and involves many aspects of a students’ educational experience. Climate also refers to the norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching practices, learning styles, and organizational structures.

This being said, if school climate and academic standards were the rails of a ladder, we see social and emotional competencies as the rungs of a ladder that hold them together. We think this because school climate focuses on the overarching structures and conditions necessary for successful teaching and learning, whereas SEL focuses on the process for skill development.

We also believe this because you can add value when there is a joint focus on the conditions necessary for learning and student skill development given that school climate and SEL promote and enhance one another. The results of this relationship can also be seen when districts and schools integrate school climate and SEL efforts, which in turn, supports other, ongoing initiatives including bullying prevention, school safety, positive behavior supports, and mental health.

In answer to your question, district and schools are increasingly adopting measures to collect data to determine the impact of their efforts to improve school climate. AIR’s SEL Solutions has been at the forefront with districts to help them through the process of supporting SEL and school climate initiatives.

School climate and social emotional learning: what the research shows in 2026

School climate describes the quality and character of school life: the norms, goals, values, relationships, teaching practices and organizational structures that students and staff experience every day. In the interview above, Mark Garibaldi of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) explains how school climate and social emotional learning (SEL) support one another, using the picture of a ladder in which climate and academic standards are the rails and SEL skills are the rungs. Since that 2015 conversation, national survey data and research reviews have made the link between school climate and student wellbeing easier to measure. This section covers what is known and what a district can decide.

What researchers include in school climate

Garibaldi calls climate multidimensional, and the research literature agrees. A 2013 review in Review of Educational Research by Thapa, Cohen, Guffey and Higgins-D’Alessandro examined 206 citations, including experimental, correlational and descriptive studies, and organized the field around five dimensions: safety, relationships, teaching and learning, the institutional environment, and the school improvement process. The review also notes that government agencies, state education departments and UNICEF have promoted school climate reform. These five dimensions give a district a practical checklist, because each one can be asked about in a survey of students, staff and families.

School connectedness: what national data show

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studies a closely related idea called school connectedness, meaning students believe that adults and peers at school care about them as individuals and about their learning. In an April 2023 report using the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 17,232 high school students, about 61.5 percent said they felt connected to others at school. Students who felt connected had lower rates of every risk behavior and experience the report examined. For example, 22.0 percent of connected students reported poor mental health, compared with 40.1 percent of students who felt less connected, and 5.9 percent of connected students had skipped school because they felt unsafe, compared with 11.0 percent.

The report also found differences between groups. Black students and American Indian or Alaska Native students (53.9 percent each) and students with questioning or other sexual identities (48.3 percent) reported lower connectedness than the overall figure. The data are cross-sectional, so they show an association and cannot prove that connectedness causes better outcomes. The CDC’s school connectedness page (November 2024) lists strategies for schools, including restorative practices, inclusive practices, and chances for cooperation and conflict resolution through activities such as recess and physical education.

Does social emotional learning help?

The best-known summary is a meta-analysis by Joseph Durlak, Roger Weissberg and colleagues, announced in a 2010 update from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning and published in Child Development in 2011. It combined 213 studies of school-based SEL programs involving 270,034 students from kindergarten through high school. Compared with students who did not take part, participants improved in social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior and test scores, including an 11-percentile-point gain in academic achievement, and they showed less emotional distress and fewer conduct problems. The result describes the average of the programs studied, which were evaluated programs, so it shows what well-run programs can do and not what every SEL effort achieves. Garibaldi’s attention to how a whole district plans and carries out SEL speaks to that difference.

What a district or school can decide

1. Measure climate before changing it. Garibaldi notes that districts are increasingly collecting data to find out whether their efforts work. Student, staff and family surveys can follow the five dimensions above.
2. Put related efforts in one plan. Garibaldi says that joining climate and SEL work supports bullying prevention, school safety, positive behavior supports and mental health, so a district can avoid running these as separate programs with separate meetings.
3. Look at which students feel less connected. The CDC data show gaps by group, so an overall average can hide students who need more attention.
4. Start with relationships between adults and students. Both the CDC strategies and Garibaldi’s description of climate put relationships at the center.
5. Treat the building as part of the picture. Garibaldi’s research on how school design affects relationships was early work in 2015, and this section does not report later findings on it.

Readers who want the full picture of SEL skills, research and policy can start with edCircuit’s Social-Emotional Learning Guide and the related article on how districts support social-emotional learning.

Related reading

• Where does Social Emotional Learning (SEL) fit in?
• How Districts Support Social-Emotional Learning
• The Social Emotional Way of Being

More on Social-Emotional Learning