Resource List - Research & Reports

A CDC study examined mental health symptoms in four different U.S. school districts during 2014–2018. Based on teacher and parent reports, about 1 in 6 students had enough behavioral or emotional symptoms and impairment to be diagnosed with a childhood mental disorder ; rates varied among the different sites. Schools, communities, and healthcare providers can use this information to plan for the healthcare and school service needs of children and adolescents with mental disorders. Screening,...

In the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics , last year there were 56.6 million students attending K–12 schools, of whom 5.8 million are enrolled in private schools and 50.8 million attend public schools. The nation’s 50.8 million public school students are a portrait of an emerging majority people-of-color America: 23.7 million (46.6 percent) are white, 13.9 million (27.4 percent) are Latinx, 7.7 million (15.2 percent) are Black, 2.9 million (5.7 percent)...

Find research-based practices for kinder, happier schools on our new Greater Good in Education website. The fields of social-emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness, ethical development, and other prosocially oriented forms of education have emerged to help support and guide teachers’ efforts to transform education. We here at the Greater Good Science Center’s Education Program would like to offer our support as well with the launch of our new website, Greater Good in Education (GGIE). GGIE...

Many experienced teachers know that making meaningful connections with students is one of the most effective ways to prevent disruptions in the first place, and a new study set out to assess this approach . In classrooms where teachers used a series of techniques centered around establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships, academic engagement increased by 33 percent and disruptive behavior decreased by 75 percent—making the time students spent in the classroom more worthwhile and...

A new study suggests that mindfulness education — lessons on techniques to calm the mind and body — can reduce the negative effects of stress and increase students’ ability to stay engaged, helping them stay on track academically and avoid behavior problems. After finding that students who self-reported mindful habits performed better on tests and had higher grades, researchers with the Boston Charter Research Collaborative — a partnership between the Center for Education Policy Research at...

Teachers, like parents, have always understood that children’s learning and growth do not occur in a vacuum, but instead at the messy intersection of academic, social, and emotional development. And they know that students’ learning is helped (or hindered) by the quality of students’ relationships and the contexts in which they live and learn. Working to weave those threads, skilled teachers often have yearned for schools—and policy approaches—that understand this complex reality. Such...

This is a good article that identifies key reasons why educators need to be trauma-informed.

ESSA requires that states incorporate at least one non-academic factor—such as school climate and safety, student engagement, or others—into their accountability systems. This research brief seeks to bring educators’ voices to the table as issues related to school climate & culture and student social and emotional well-being are increasingly discussed and debated across America. The brief seeks to display the findings of the research in an objective fashion, while wrapping up with a...

School suspension rates have risen in recent years. And since the punishment is linked to more severe problems later in life, such as dropping out of school or ending up in prison, researchers at Stanford University have been looking for ways to prevent it. Researchers asked one group of math teachers to complete a 45-minute online activity about how important it is to respect and humanize students. Meanwhile, another group of math teachers read about how to use technology in the classroom.

Reports and research about how ACEs affect schoolchildren, or about how schools become trauma-informed, or the outcomes of integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in schools. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment with a link and/or information.

In the U.S., K-12 schoolteachers who are "not engaged" or are "actively disengaged" at work miss an estimated 2.3 million more workdays than teachers who are "engaged" in their jobs. Gallup research has uncovered both individual and business outcomes consistently associated with employee engagement, including: well-being, absenteeism, turnover, workers' compensation claims, productivity, customer engagement, workplace safety and profit. Moreover, these findings have been demonstrated across...