Supporting SEL in Context: Classroom and Home Partnerships

Introduction

• Sponsor
  Strengthening Future Families
  $70,000
  

• Principal investigator
  Stacey Neuharth-Pritchett
  Senior associate dean for academic programs and professor
  Department of Educational Psychology

• Co-principal investigators
  Kristen Bub
  Professor and director of graduate studies
  Department of Educational Psychology
  

  Erin Hamel
  Assistant professor
  Department of Educational Psychology
  

• Active since
  December 2025

Abstract

Social-emotional learning (SEL) prepares children with foundations for lifelong academic success, emotion regulation, and well-being. Children’s development of these skills in home and early care and education environments, with assistance from both parents and teachers, helps facilitate children’s motivation, development of positive attitudes, and active engagement in schooling.

Through intervention, we will draw on cross-contextual strengths to support teen parents and early childhood teachers in using SEL strategies with preschoolers at home, in the early childhood classroom, and in the broader schooling context. By equipping teachers and young parents with SEL strategies, we will create spaces where children receive consistent messages and support across the two environments where they spend their waking hours.

Guided by family centeredness theory (Dunst et al., 1988), which is driven by the notion that families should be empowered to identify their needs and mobilize supports, we propose to teach young parents and preschool teachers kernels of practice (Jones et al., 2017), which are evidenced-based, low-cost, low-burden, and customizable strategies that foster development of children’s social and behavioral responses to other children, adults, and social situations.