Abstract
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is known to improve student outcomes but is rarely combined with STEM. In this paper we present an action research study to examine the impact of a STEM + SEL curriculum intervention to address a real-world school conflict. One hundred sixth–eighth graders and four teachers participated in an in-person facilitation of a SEL Arthropod curriculum, DIFFERENT. After the intervention, students completed open-ended couplet statements about arthropod behavior, tarantulas, and humans designed to measure sentiment change. Answers were manually coded using inductive coding on a scale of negative (1) to positive (5). Statement sentiments significantly shifted from negative to neutral and negative to positive for all three questions. Neutral to positive shifts were only significant for the couplet statements about arthropod behavior. This study reports the first confirmed instance of successful use of arthropods for SEL within a curriculum that integrates students’ social-emotional skills within a science classroom.
Highlights
In the Pacific Northwest, a suburban options-based middle school program (OBMP) focuses on environmental science through integration with other subjects
We were invited by the OBMP to lead their students through a science and social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum called DIFFERENT, where students challenge their perception of themselves, others, and the natural world by learning about arthropods
The highest number of negative student responses (N 70) were recorded in response to how they remembered feeling about the tarantula before the curriculum; after the intervention there was a clear increase in positive sentiment
Summary
In the Pacific Northwest, a suburban options-based middle school program (OBMP) focuses on environmental science through integration with other subjects. These students arrive very early in the day, and their school day ends earlier than normal. This program is housed inside a traditional middle school (TMS) whose hours begin and end later each day. The TMS students see this as a fun weekly “field trip,” and due to the segregated nature of the student populations between the two schools, misunderstandings about the nature of the OBMP program led to increased tensions, bullying, and emotional strife.
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