Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Kristine Donnelly

Abstract

Teaching social-emotional learning skills has been found to yield various behavioral and academic benefits for students, yet there has been limited research into effective instructional practices for teaching these skills. This qualitative study examined the extent to which specific explicit instruction elements are present in kindergarten lessons from three evidence-based SEL curricula: Kindness in the Classroom, Leader in Me, and Second Step. Each of these lessons was rated on a 0-2 scale regarding the presence of clearly established learning goals, lesson opening, modeling, guided practice, independent practice, opportunities for feedback, lesson closure, and skill sequencing. Results of this study indicated that the lessons from Kindness in the Classroom, Leader in Me, and Second Step all demonstrated a high level of alignment with explicit instruction. These findings suggest that explicit instruction may be an effective approach for teaching social-emotional learning skills. The limitations of this study included the small sample of lessons rated and the use of a single rater. Future research should be conducted to investigate the relationship between explicit instruction elements and social-emotional learning outcomes to further inform best practices for teaching this content in elementary schools.

Year of Submission

2025

Department

Department of Special Education

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2025

Object Description

1 PDF file (31 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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