How Do Experienced Afterschool Educators Prioritize SE Skills?

All participants in this study mentioned at least one type of social and emotional learning skill during their interview. And, nearly all educators (18 out of 23) mentioned social and emotional learning without prompting from interviewers. Two themes emerged related to how educators talked about prioritizing SEL. First, as it pertains to their jobs working with children. Second, related to what educators noticed when watching video clips.

SEL as a Job Responsibility

When asked how they and others would describe their job, about half of educators explicitly stated their responsibilities related to supporting social and emotional learning (see Table 3.2). This was without prompting from interviewers. For example, one staff described that his job is to teach “basically everything they don't teach them in school” (Dave).

Table 3.2 Number of Participants that Mentioned SEL Skills Related to Job Description Unprompted

SEL in Job Description

Prompted

SEL Supports Total

Social 8 22 23

General Social Skills 3 0 3

Relationship/ Teamwork 5 18 19

Social Awareness/ empathy 0 18 18

Self & Emotional 2 15 17

Self-awareness 1 13 13 Self-management 2 5 6 Emotion-management 1 11 13 Cognitive 5 6 8 Problem solving 1 0 1 Responsibility 2 5 5 Initiative 4 2 5 Other SEL 10 14 17 Total 13 23 23

Educators mentioned socials skills most often when talking about their job responsibilities. In particular, educators talked about relationship and teamwork skills. This includes skills such as communication, listening, resolving conflict, sharing, collaboration, and relationship-building. One educator described her role as a “negotiator” and described how she helps children work through conflicts they have with one another. Next, educators talked about cognitive skills and especially initiative. This related to working through challenges to complete a goal (e.g., finishing a project). Only two educators mentioned self and emotional skills when describing their jobs

We also prompted interviewees to reflect on the type of SE skills they believe they support when working with children (see Table 3.2). Again, the most common competency educators mentioned were social skills and nearly all educators mentioned that they use strategies to support relationship and teamwork skills as well as social awareness and empathy skills. This was closely followed by supports they use to teach self- and emotional- skills. In both cases, educators described situations during which they gave support to children who were “fighting” or upset about something. Educators did not mention cognitive skills as often when talking about strategies they use to support SEL.

Educators also used other language related to SEL, not captured in the a priori codes (see Table 3.3). Ten participants talked about other SE skills when describing their jobs and 14 participants mentioned other skills when talking about how they support SEL. The three most common “other skills” were 21st _{century skills, character skills, and life skills. These three terms}

are often used as umbrella terms, similar to SEL, that incorporate a variety of skills related to social, emotional, and cognitive competencies.

Table 3.3 Other SEL Skills Educators Identified

Skill Educator _Count Description

21st _{Century Skills 9 STEM, critical thinking, “21}st _{Century Skills”} Character 9 Values, attitude, sportsmanship, anti-bullying Life Skills 7 Manners, “soft skills”

Career Readiness 6 Preparing for the workforce, looking for jobs

Developmental 6 “Whole child”, identity, interest, self-expression, resilience Community 5 Community service, citizenship, working with mixed ages Confidence 5 Confidence, getting outside of one’s comfort zone Educators’ SEL 2 Adults that work with children need SEL too

Noticing Opportunities to Support SEL

A second theme related to how educators noticed SE skills when watching clips. In the interview protocol, we asked two questions before prompting about SEL and then two questions afterwards. A greater number of educators talked about SE skills after prompting (see Table 3.4).

Table 3.4 Number of Participants that Mentioned SEL Skills in Response to Videos Video 1: Gardening Video 2: Hanging Out Unprompted

SEL Prompted SEL Unprompted SEL Prompted SEL Total

Social 14 17 9 10 23

General Social Skills 0 1 2 1 4

Relationship/ Teamwork 13 17 7 9 23

Social Awareness/ empathy 4 4 2 4 11

Self & Emotional 7 12 5 8 17

Self-awareness 4 10 4 7 16 Self-management 3 0 1 2 6 Emotion-management 3 6 1 2 8 Cognitive 1 2 4 2 8 Problem solving 1 1 0 0 2 Responsibility 0 1 3 2 6 Initiative 0 0 1 0 1 Other SEL 2 2 5 3 11 Total 17 20 14 15 23

The most common SEL skill educators noticed in both video clips was relationship skills and teamwork, before and after prompting about SEL. For example, after watching video one, an educator said:

“The opportunity was learning how to have clear communication about the disagreement… I think that I would have had Jacob come over-- because that I'm sorry, it just doesn't work. It doesn't cut it. And so, "Let's come over here. Let's talk about it together." That would have been the learning I think that I would've liked to have seen.” (Linda)

The second most endorsed skill educators noticed in both videos, before and after prompting, was self- and emotional- skills. Of these skills educators talked most about self- awareness, which relates to recognizing emotions, thoughts, values and strengths as well as having confidence. The number of educators that talked about these skills increased more than other skills after prompting. Eight more educators talked about self- and emotional-skills when prompted compared to only four more that talked about social skills and one fewer that talked about cognitive skills.

Cognitive skills came up the least in educators’ responses to video clips. More educators talked about these skills, and responsibility in particular, related to video two. This may be related to the scenario depicted in the clip (e.g., a conversation about finding a job).