Helping children develop these capacities is a formidable set of tasks for educators and families, and to nurture these capacities schools should be healthy, caring spaces that support equitable pathways for children to reach these goals. Because of the complex, diverse, and rapidly changing world in which we live, all of these broad capacities require the development of children’s social and emotional competencies.
The diverse set of briefs presented in this series attest to the breadth and depth of, and advances in, research on SEL. There is now rigorous research demonstrating the potential of SEL programming and practices that was not available one or two decades ago.