Making Space for Social and Emotional Learning in Science Education

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is known to improve student outcomes but rarely combined with STEM. In this paper we present an action research study examine the impact of a STEM + SEL curriculum intervention address real-world school conflict. One hundred sixth–eighth graders and four teachers participated in in-person facilitation Arthropod curriculum, DIFFERENT. After intervention, students completed open-ended couplet statements about arthropod behavior, tarantulas, humans designed measure sentiment change. Answers were manually coded using inductive coding on scale negative (1) positive (5). Statement sentiments significantly shifted from neutral for all three questions. Neutral shifts only significant behavior. This reports first confirmed instance successful use arthropods within that integrates students’ social-emotional skills science classroom.