SSEL is a program designed to facilitate the development of social emotional competence and self-regulation, in order to improve school readiness.
SSEL uniquely integrates activities and instruction in emotion recognition, empathy, and social problem solving with self-regulation techniques such as self-talk and learning to calm down. SSEL also contains daily ‘Brain Builder’ games that require starting and stopping activities based on various oral or visual cues. The program schedule is a combination of weekly theme curriculum topics, ongoing teacher reinforcement, the Brain Builder games, and information for parents for reinforcement at home.
The objectives of the SSEL program for children are to:
Achievement of SSEL objectives is anticipated to contribute to distal/long-term outcomes including improved school readiness, academic success, and engagement in learning. SSEL is not designed as a substitute for literacy, maths or science activities. Rather, it addresses the underlying social and cognitive processes necessary for successful learning, and overall behavioural and academic success.
The program targets children aged 4 to 5 years. It can also be used in mixed age classrooms with children aged 3 to 5 years.
A classroom randomised control efficacy trial of the SSEL curriculum was conducted in the USA, in preschools with low-income children (Upshur et al. 2019). The study investigated the primary impact of the program on executive functioning skill development, social-emotional skill development, and potential secondary impact on pre-academic skills and classroom quality.
A total of 770 children participated. The children’s average age was 53.0 months, and they were evenly divided by sex. The sample was diverse, with about one quarter of the children with African American heritage, about two-fifths Anglo American, and two-fifths Hispanic American. A total of 187 teachers in both the intervention and control conditions participated in the study over 4 years. They were mostly female (only three were male); 78% were Anglo American, 14% Hispanic American, and 6% African American. Teachers’ average age was 37 years, mean preschool experience was 13 years, and the majority of teachers (55%) had a college degree or higher, with another 32% having an associate degree, and 13% having only a high school diploma.
The study randomly assigned 67 classrooms across 13 sites into the SSEL intervention group or the control usual curricula group. Six sites had HeadStart programs and seven had community preschool programs that enrolled a large proportion of low-income and at-risk children. Both types of preschools participated in each cohort. The study took place over two years.
The review did not identify any evidence that the program has been evaluated in Australia or with First Nations communities.
SSEL promotes self-regulatory processes in the classroom that will support both individual and group learning. Activities are directed at developing specific academic skills that will improve preschool education and school readiness.
Executive functioning skill development: There was a significant increase on the head-toes-knees-shoulders and the backward digit span tasks in the intervention group. SSEL successfully impacted attention, working memory, inhibition, and on-task behaviour that promote academic learning consistent with the SSEL logic model.
Social-emotional skill development: There were no differences between the intervention and control groups on the emotion matching task (EMT) or the challenging situation task (CST).
Pre-numeracy skills, Pre-literacy skills, Language development: There were no significant differences between the intervention and control groups on preacademic maths, reading or oral language skills, as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement scales.
None
Overall, the program had a mixed effect on client outcomes.
Mixed research evidence (with no adverse effects):
SSEL has scripted, five day-a-week, brief large and small group lessons with 28 weekly themes, along with suggested extension and generalisation activities.
The SSEL kit contains the following:
There are five units within the program:
Strategies for reinforcing Executive Functioning (EF) skills are given:
Additionally, teachers were encouraged to reinforce specific skills throughout the day by asking children to think ahead about using the skills taught in upcoming activities, and to think back and recall when they or someone else demonstrated a skill; providing ongoing reinforcement when children demonstrate the skills; and offering art, literacy, math, and STEM extension activities that incorporate the learning strategies of the curriculum.
Information not provided
The study did not collect data on family participation. This is an important area for future study, since the curriculum kits provide extensive materials to engage families.
SSEL curriculum has potential for further dissemination due to the reasonable cost of materials, ease of implementation, and modest teacher training and supervision burden to achieve adequate fidelity, which in turn seem to produce meaningful changes in children’s EF skills.
It is important to go beyond overall group outcomes and interrogate the suitability of the curriculum for cohorts with specific needs.
One RCT conducted in the USA with a sample of 770 children in 67 preschool classrooms (Upshur et al. 2019).
17 Feb 2023
We acknowledge Aboriginal people as the First Nations Peoples of NSW and pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future.
Informed by lessons of the past, Department of Communities and Justice is improving how we work with Aboriginal people and communities. We listen and learn from the knowledge, strength and resilience of Stolen Generations Survivors, Aboriginal Elders and Aboriginal communities.
You can access our apology to the Stolen Generations.