This study expands upon the extant prior meta-analytic literature by exploring previously theorised reasons for the failure of school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programmes to produce expected results. Eighty-nine studies reporting the effects of school-based, universal SEL programmes were examined for differential effects on the basis of: 1) stage of evaluation (efficacy or effectiveness); 2) involvement from the programme developer in the evaluation (led, involved, independent); and 3) whether the programme was implemented in its country of origin (home or away). A range of outcomes were assessed including: social-emotional competence, attitudes towards self, pro-social behaviour, conduct problems, emotional distress, academic achievement and emotional competence. Differential gains across all three factors were shown, although not always in the direction hypothesised. The findings from the current study demonstrate a revised and more complex relationship between identified factors and dictate major new directions for the field.

There is little doubt of the educational and social merits of developing children and young people's social and emotional capabilities. But there lacks consensus on what these capabilities are; what should be assessed or shown to have developed over time; and the most appropriate methods for doing this. Through the conceptual framework of ‘social and emotional dispositions and skills’ (SEDS), and based on research in Wales, we present the argument for an alternative assessment methodology designed to challenge dominant discourses in the field and present a ‘minoritarian’ perspective of children and young people's social and emotional learning. The intention of this paper is to present a rationale for the co‐construction of an understanding of the concept of SEDS and engage in critical debate with researchers and practitioners from a wide range of services for children and young people.

This paper reports on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the New Labour (1997-2010) discourse of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in schools, and how it was understood and enacted by policymakers in England and in Wales within the context of devolved government across the UK. By SEL I mean universal school-based programs, located in the concept of children’s emotional wellbeing and concerned with developing children’s ability to understand, express and manage their emotions. Through a series of in-depth interviews with national level SEL policy actors this investigation worked to understand and identify how the SEL policy discourse worked “to privilege certain ideas and topics and speakers and exclude others” (Ball, 2008, p. 5). Through shining a critical light on the discourse of New Labour SEL policy makers this work responds to the call of Gunter et al. (2014) for critical education researchers to develop and amplify voices which challenge the current hegemonic “common sense” discourse. The findings identify that the relationship between language and political ideology in England and Wales during the New Labour years powerfully shaped the SEL policy discourse.

Historically, many have seen the intelligibility of the physical universe as showing that it is somehow ultimately dependent upon conscious intelligent pre‐existing being – ‘God’. Today, however, many believe that modern advances in our scientific understanding of the origins and nature of the universe, and of the conscious intelligent beings it contains, render God, as Laplace said, an ‘unnecessary hypothesis’. This article considers whether the findings of modern science do indeed diminish the plausibility of belief in a creator God. Or, on the contrary, whether there are features of current scientific understanding which may reasonably be thought to support the belief that conscious intelligent being pre‐existed the physical universe and caused it to be. In short: can science reasonably be thought to support the view that consciousness created the physical universe rather than that the physical universe created consciousness?

No abstract