Efficacy Trial of Early Childhood RULER

Funding Source: Institute of Education Sciences (R305A180293)

Team Members: Craig Bailey, Marc Brackett, Nikki Elbertson, Andy Mashburn (Portland State University), Stella Jackman-Ryan, Irem Korucu, Olivia Martinez, Daphnee Nicolas, Meghan Tuttle, Tessa McNaboe, Abi Eveleigh, Gina Schnur, Lauren Costello, Colleen Cassidy, Terrance Lane, Ashlin Ondrusek, Shauna Tominey (Oregon State University)

RULER is the evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER provides children in early childhood settings with opportunities to safely explore their own feelings and the feelings of others and to enhance their emotional intelligence for academic and social success.

This multi-year study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences will test whether RULER has an impact on:

• children’s school readiness
• educator skills and well-being
• school and classroom climate

The project uses a multi-site cluster randomized controlled trial design with one group of schools receiving access to RULER and the other serving as a waitlisted business-as-usual control. Project staff work with 70 preschools, 300 educators, 200 classrooms, and 2,000 young children. We will also collect Kindergarten follow-up data.

Registry of Efficacy and Effectiveness Studies ID: 1708

• Mazhar, A., & Bailey, C. S. (2024). Emotion-specific recognition biases and how they relate to emotion-specific recognition accuracy, family and child demographic factors, and social behaviour. Cognition & Emotion, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2408652
• Knox-Lane, T., Ponnock, A., Bailey, C. S., & Denham, S. A. (2023). Teacher-child racial congruence and young children’s preschool adjustment. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 63, 249–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2022.12.013
• Bailey, C. S., Ondrusek, A. R., Curby, T. W., & Denham, S. A. (2022). Teachers’ consistency of emotional support moderates the association between young children’s regulation capacities and their preschool adjustment. Psychology in the Schools, 59(6), 1051-1074. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22659
• Korucu, I., Ayturk, E., Finders, J. K., Schnur, G., Bailey, C. S., Tominey, S. L., & Schmitt, S. A. (2022). Self-regulation in preschool: Examining its factor structure and associations with pre-academic skills and social-emotional competence. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717317

• Bailey, C. S., Ghosh, E., Banerjee, R., Antenucci, N., & Elliott, K. (2024, September). Readiness to implement SEL within and across preschools and communities [Poster presentation]. Division for Early Childhood 40th Annual International Conference on Young Children with Disabilities and Their Families, New Orleans, LA.
• Bailey, C. S. (2023, April). Reliability and validity of the Emotionally Intelligent Teaching Checklist across preschool and educator characteristics. In H. Runke (Chair) & R. Gosavi (Discussant), Measurement and early childhood education: Challenges and opportunities [Symposium]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
• Mazhar, A. & Bailey, C. S. (2023, March). Understanding children’s emotion-specific biases: How they relate to child-level factors, emotion recognition accuracy, and social behaviour. In C. S. Bailey (Chair), New directions in studying adult and children’s emotion knowledge [Symposium]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Kaur, N. & Bailey, C. S. (2023, March). The multidimensional factor structure of preschooler’s emotional knowledge and measurement equivalence across gender, race, and ethnicity. In C. S. Bailey (Chair), New directions in studying adult and children’s emotion knowledge [Symposium]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Cassidy, C., Bailey, C. S., Schnur, G., & Korucu, I. (2021, May). Associations of school-level racial and ethnic homogeneity on young children’s emotional competence [Poster presentation]. Association for Psychological Science Virtual Convention.
• Schnur, G., Korucu, I., Cassidy, C., & Bailey, C. S. (2021, May). Associations between classroom quality and school readiness in early childhood [Poster presentation]. Association for Psychological Science Virtual Convention.
• Costello, L., Korucu, I., & Bailey, C. S. (2021, April). Associations of autism spectrum disorder traits on emotion recognition accuracy in early childhood [Poster presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting (virtual).
• Eveleigh, A., Bailey, C. S., & Korucu, I. (2021, April). The relationship between emotional intelligence, executive function, and children exhibiting autistic behaviours in early childhood [Poster presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting (virtual).
• Lane, T., Ponnock, A., & Bailey, C. S., (2021, April). Racial mismatch: Exploring the impact of teacher diversity on school readiness. In C. Cipriano (Chair), Race-conscious practice and representation in contemporary social and emotional learning [Symposium]. American Education Research Association Annual Meeting (virtual).
• McNaboe, T., Korucu, I., & Bailey, C. S. (2021, April). Investigating teachers' attitudes about SEL and implementation infrastructure through an exploratory factor analysis [Poster presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting (virtual).
• Tuttle, M., Bailey, C. S., & Korucu, I. (2021, April). Preschool teachers’ beliefs about emotion and their perceived and observed emotion socialization practices [Poster presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting (virtual).
• Ondrusek A. R. & Bailey C. S., (2020, November). Consistent emotional support predicts school readiness [Abstract]. CASEL Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Exchange Virtual Summit. Retrieved from https://casel.org/2020-sel-exchange-research-abstracts/

• Bailey, C. S., Korucu, İ., Eveleigh, A., Schnur, G., Costello, L., Tuttle, M., Knox-Lane, T., Cassidy, C., Ondrusek, A., McNaboe, T., Mazhar, A., & Xie, F. (2023). Preschool Social and Emotional Development Study—Connecticut Dataset. LDbase. https://doi.org/10.33009/ldbase.1680213217.8ed0

Connection to Research Agenda: Intervention Evaluation