Social-Emotional Learning Across Adolescence: A Narrative Review of Cognitive and Human Development Outcomes

Abstract

Background: The leadership focus on inclusive classroom practice is linked to belonging, which impacts participation, achievement, well-being and persistence. Aim: This is a practical secondary analysis of studies on various kinds of learning communities in the form of school-improvement reports, institutional evaluations, practitioner evidence, and qualitative studies. Methodology: Structured extraction, comparison coding, pattern matching and cross-case synthesis were employed to analyze the evidence. Results: Six leadership themes were created: moral purpose and direction from equity; inclusive instructional design; family-community partnership; responsive use of evidence; and distributed professional capacity, relational trust and student voice. The analysis showed that as the leaders of these schools provided a focus on participation in addition to placement, belonging increased. Fragmented supports were less effective if classroom operations, discipline and/or adult expectations were exclusionary. Good leaders safeguarded co-planning, lived riskily with cautionary evidence, built teachers’ skills and had quick rescue routes in addressing marginalization. Conclusion: The paper introduced a framework of applied inclusive leadership from strategic coherence to classroom enactment to relational conditions to continuous improvement as a way of thinking about relating the aspects of inclusive education across different schools.