Social-emotional learning in higher education: Examining the relationship between social-
emotional skills and students’ academic success
A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Isabel Lopez Hurtado IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Dr. Geoffrey Maruyama July 2020
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©2020 Isabel Lopez Hurtado
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Acknowledgement
I relied on a community of colleagues, mentors, friends, and family to write this thesis. First, I would like to thank Geoffrey Murayama, who for the past six years has provided me with constant guidance and support as my advisor. Thank you Geoff for the excellent mentorship that you have given me. I have also been fortunate enough to work with many fantastic researchers, in particular Andrew Furco and Keisha Varma. Thank you both for your faith, encouragement, and feedback. I would also like to thank Bob delMas who always has his door open for students. You have all been an important part in my development as a researcher, thank you for being in my committee. The true heroes for me are all my colleagues and friends who have helped me through this dissertation. Thank you Vimal Rao and Jonathan Brown for the feedback and edits you provided; they were critical in making my dissertation what it is. I would also like to thank Yu-Chi Wang and Tai Do for being my qualitative reviewers, you two are amazing! Thank you to RMCC, particularly Rik Lamm, our in-house student expert on longitudinal models. Finally, I would like to thank my friends in the program for all those hours we spent working together in our virtual writing group and the social support that they have provided during the years. Together we built a wonderful community which will persevere beyond our stay in this program. Thank you to my mom and dad who have always pushed me to try harder and to not be afraid of failing. Thank you to my brother who I have looked up to and admired since I was two. You showed me that studying in another country was tough but achievable. Los quiero a todos, muchas gracias por su apoyo. Finishing this dissertation would not have been possible without my patient, loving partner Mauricio. Thank you honey for all the cooking, cleaning, editing, reading, and comforting you have given me throughout this process (te amo). ¡Viva Mexico! Finally, I would like to thank all the students who participated in my study. Thank you for allowing me to read your thoughts, look at your data, and communicate your experiences.
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Abstract
Social-emotional learning (SEL) has shown positive effects on well-being and academic achievement for students in K-12 settings, but the SEL framework has yet to be applied to higher education to any substantial degree. SEL are programs designed to teach children and adults skills to recognize and manage emotions, solve problems effectively and establish positive relations with others. They are particularly relevant in college where students are confronted with a unique set of challenges and intrapersonal competencies that
have been identified as crucial for college students’ success. SEL
requires institutional buy-in, time and resources, highlighting the need of proper justification for higher institutions that involves an accumulation of evidence that supports the impact of social-emotional skills on college student success. However, there are still several issues regarding the development of this evidence, such as: 1) the lack of conceptual coherence behind social-emotional skills; 2) contradictory evidence examining these skills and difficulty to identify which skills are the most important; 3) questions related to the validity of social-emotional skill measures; and 4) possible limitations in the outcomes analyzed by these skills. This thesis presents two analyses that explore the impact of social-emotional skills in college student success. The first analysis uses quantitative survey and achievement data to model students GPA growth trajectory and year-to-year enrollment using social-emotional and background variables. The second analysis presents a
qualitative assessment of students’ written reflections to describe how students defined
growth mindset, intelligence and then applied these constructs to their lives. Each analysis is detailed with their respective methods, limitations, and discussion section. In general, these two analyses found that: 1) the relationship between social-emotional skills is complex and not necessarily reflected in traditional measures of student achievement; and 2) the conceptual distinction between different social-emotional skills is not clear in practice, and the overlap between different skills suggests a broader framework is required to understand how these skills impact behavior. Implications for research and practice are provided.