Efficacy Trial of High School RULER

Funding Source: Institute of Education Sciences (R305A230395)

Team Members: Jessica Hoffmann, Kimberly Kendziora (American Institute for Research), Julie McGarry, Sophia Selino, Yibing Li (AIR), Juliette Berg (AIR), Fei Tan (AIR), Lucy Nonas-Barnes (AIR)

In this project, researchers will test the initial efficacy of High School RULER (HS RULER), a systemic, whole-school approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) for adolescents in grades 9 to 12. HS RULER provides schools with concrete tools and lesson plans to integrate into existing programming to help create safe, supportive school climates, and provide classroom instruction to build students' emotion skills. HS RULER was developed as an extension of the well-established K–8 RULER approach but is especially designed for the specific SEL needs of high school students, such as successful transition into grade 9, college and career readiness, identity development, and managing intimate relationships. The researchers propose to evaluate the efficacy of HS RULER using a blocked cluster randomized controlled trial with typical implementation supports and under routine conditions to U.S. public high schools. The researchers' specific aims are to examine the impact of having access to HS RULER on students' performance and well-being (namely students' emotional intelligence skills, academic performance, school engagement, emotional health and sense of belonging), educator outcomes (namely educators' emotional intelligence skills, engagement, and well-being), and school-level shifts in climate. They also plan to explore differential effects of HS RULER based on student gender, race/ethnicity, grade, socio-economic status, and English learner (EL) status. Through this trial, the researchers hope to increase evidence for the benefits of social-emotional learning for U.S. secondary education more broadly.

Connection to Research Agenda: Intervention Evaluation