Instructional interactions and literacy: Supporting classroom instruction through teacher social-emotional skill development

Abstract

Teacher social emotional competence has been connected to literacy development as well as broader academic outcomes through the domains of Emotional Support and Classroom Organization of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Despite these findings, teacher development has yet to place an emphasis on social emotional skill development in line with such research. Drawing on diffusion of innovations literature, the authors offer a conceptual model that ties teacher social emotional skill development directly to the instructional support domain of the CLASS, thereby increasing the compatibility of social emotional learning to teaching and learning outcomes, including literacy. The analysis identified perspective-taking and social cue recognition as key opportunities for instructionally-aligned teacher social emotional skill development. The authors make recommendations for methods to increase these skills for teachers.