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Arts Education Policy Review

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Social emotional learning and the national corearts standards: a cross-disciplinary analysis ofpolicy and practices

Matt Omasta, Mark Graham, Stephanie L. Milling, Elizabeth Murray, AmyPetersen Jensen & Johanna J. Siebert

To cite this article: Matt Omasta, Mark Graham, Stephanie L. Milling, Elizabeth Murray, AmyPetersen Jensen & Johanna J. Siebert (2020): Social emotional learning and the national core artsstandards: a cross-disciplinary analysis of policy and practices, Arts Education Policy Review, DOI:10.1080/10632913.2020.1773366

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2020.1773366

Published online: 01 Jun 2020.

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Social emotional learning and the national core arts standards: a cross-disciplinary analysis of policy and practices

Matt Omastaa , Mark Grahamb, Stephanie L. Millingc, Elizabeth Murrayd, Amy Petersen Jensene, andJohanna J. Siebertf

aDepartment of Theatre Arts, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA; bDepartment of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah,USA; cDepartment of Theatre & Dance, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA; dDepartment of Theatre andDance, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; eDepartment of Theatre and Media Arts, BrighamYoung University, Provo, Utah, USA; fUniversity of the Arts in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

ABSTRACTArts education advocates sometimes point to extrinsic benefits of arts learning, includingSocial Emotional Learning (SEL). This study considers if and how the National Core ArtsStandards (NCAS) in dance, media arts, music, theater, and visual art may align with SELstandards adopted by the state of Illinois, upon which other SEL standards have beenmodeled. A team of arts education experts coded 15,500 intersections of arts standards &SEL goals. They found a great deal of indirect alignment between the NCAS and SEL objec-tives, but direct alignment was rare. As the types and degrees of alignment varied by discip-line, broad discussions of “arts education” that assume similar types of SEL happens insimilar ways in all arts disciplines are problematic. Given the generally indirect alignment ofthe NCAS and SEL goals, the authors recommend that educators who wish to pursue botharts learning and SEL goals engage in conscious planning to ensure both types of learningoccur. From a theoretical, standards-based perspective it seems unlikely that SEL will auto-matically take place in arts learning scenarios without deliberate planning. While recognizingthe potential for deliberately structured lessons to promote both arts learning and SEL, theauthors caution against advocating for arts education programs primarily on the basis ofpresumed extrinsic benefits such as SEL.

KEYWORDSArts Standards; SocialEmotional Learning;National CoreArts Standards

Background

Students who study the arts reap a variety of intrinsicbenefits, such as esthetic pleasure, captivation, andartistic competence (McCarthy et al., 2005). Over thepast several decades, however, some arts educationadvocates have also pointed to what appear to beextrinsic or instrumental benefits of engaging in artslearning such as academic performance in non-artscourses and inter/intrapersonal skills (Heath, Soep, &Roach, 1998). The title of Catterall’s (2009) report ona twelve-year study of visual and performing arts edu-cation, Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art,exemplifies the emphasis sometimes placed on non-arts outcomes such as academic achievement and per-sonal development. While the authors of this study donot advocate justifying arts education programs solelyon the basis of their extrinsic benefits, we do assertthat the reported links between arts learning and

inter-/intra-personal development deserve closerexamination. This current study considers if and howeducational standards in the arts disciplines and inSocial Emotional Learning (SEL) may align.

The National Commission for Social, Emotional,and Academic Development posits that “childrenlearn best when we treat them as human beings, withsocial and emotional as well as academic needs”(Aspen Institute, n.d., p. 1). Specifically,

They require skills such as paying attention, settinggoals, collaboration, and planning for the future. Theyrequire attitudes such as internal motivation,perseverance, and a sense of purpose. They requirevalues such as responsibility, honesty, and integrity.They require abilities to think critically, considerdiverse views, and problem solve. (Aspen Institute,n.d., p. 1)

Similarly, Farrington et al. (2019) note, “In a coun-try that is both rich in diversity and deeply divided

CONTACT Matt Omasta matt@mattomasta.com Department of Theatre Arts, Utah State University, 4025 Old Main Hill, Logan, Utah, 84322-4025, USA.� 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ARTS EDUCATION POLICY REVIEWhttps://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2020.1773366

socially and politically, with stark and widening eco-nomic inequality, many are calling upon schools toteach empathy, social responsibility, civic engagement,and the skills to communicate with another across dif-ferences” (p. 6).

The National Conference of State Legislatures(2018) defines this “wide range of skills, attitudes, andbehaviors that can affect a student’s success in schooland life” as SEL. At the state level, US political policy-makers have advocated for SEL in schools in increas-ingly formal ways; as of 2019 the fifty US states haveall adopted SEL competencies or standards for pre-school students, with some also developing K-12standards (Hanover Research, 2019). Some states anddistricts such as New Jersey and Fargo, ND, havedeveloped standards expressly combining arts learningand SEL.

The language that SEL advocates and researchersemploy often resembles the rhetoric used to discussarts education advocacy.1 Indeed, some posit that thedevelopment of social emotional skills is intrinsic tomany arts education practices. The Arts EducationPartnership (AEP) (2004) states,

Arts learning experiences engage a set ofcompetencies that define and can influence a child’srelationship with others, including peers, teachers,and family. [… ] When children work collaborativelyin an arts learning experience, they may learn torespect differing viewpoints, take alternativeperspectives, listen to others, compromise, andharness their collective skills in service of an overallartistic vision. (p. 13)

The AEP has called for further research into theintersections between arts learning and student self-identity, persistence, resilience, and social skills.Advocates and researchers often seem to operateunder the a priori assumption that SEL “happens”when students engage in arts education.

Indeed, research in the fields of dance, mediaarts, music, theater, and visual arts has long pointedto these disciplines’ ability to foster SEL, though notalways using and sometimes pre-dating its currentacronym. For example, students with learningdisabilities who participated in creative dramaclasses increased their social skills, including cour-tesy, self-control, focus, and social compliance,when compared to a control group (de la Cruz,1995). Students who collaboratively created operasincreased skills such as collaboration, turn-taking,and question-asking with the ability to build onwhat others offered (Wolf, 1999). A study in whichat-risk youth participated in guitar training andrepeated performances saw increases in music

self-efficacy and self-esteem (Kennedy, 1998). Whenincarcerated middle-school students participated inregular dance instruction they made gains in confi-dence, tolerance, and persistence (Ross, 2000).Deasy’s (2002) Critical Links is a compendium ofarts education research reports that includes manystudies demonstrating SEL learning in arts class-rooms and programs. These studies lend credenceto the notion that SEL sometimes happens duringarts learning, but each is specific to a particularpopulation and context; it is not clear that SELalways or often occurs in arts classrooms.

Research demonstrates that arts education some-times involves social, cognitive, and affective dimen-sions linked to SEL, but many questions remain as tohow these elements interact. “Current studies of theroles of the arts in cognitive and social developmentdo not unpack the learning processes in the arts thatcould account for transfer either in fine detail orwithin comprehensive cognitive models” (AEP, 2004,p. 7). While experimental and quasi-experimentalstudies have identified differences between studentsengaged in arts education interventions and controlgroups who were not, “such studies typically do notcontribute to an understanding of how variations inlearning in the arts relate to variation in the outcomesunder investigation” (AEP, 2004, p. 7). If arts learningand SEL sometimes correlate, there is a need tounderstand why this may be the case. It may be thatthese learning areas share similar goals, so weexplored this hypothesis by analyzing the policy docu-ments that outline what students should know and beable to do: state-adopted, nationally-created educa-tional standards.2

Soland et al. (2019) note that SEL can be assessedas a nonacademic indicator in states’ accountabilityprograms under the Every Student Succeeds Act of2015,3 but note that “despite the new-found emphasison SEL, there are often insufficient measures toassess student progress and evaluate programs onSEL-related constructs” (p. 466). While Soland et al.(2019) call for establishing empirical methodologiesfor assessing SEL, their work points to a need toestablish theoretically the ways in which arts educa-tion practices may sometimes align with SEL practi-ces. Farrington et al. (2019) posit a theory of actionthat arts education processes consist of small-scaleart practices, each of which include social emotionalcomponents. One way to identify these practices is toreview the educational standards that outline whatstudents learn in both the artistic and social emo-tional domains. This study does so by considering

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alignment between the National Core Arts Standards(NCAS) and SEL standards developed by theCollaborative for Academic, Social, and EmotionalLearning (CASEL)

The National Core Arts Standards

Historically, arts standards have functioned as policydocuments with varied audiences and purposes.Audiences include teachers and school administrators,who may turn to them as a resource for determiningwhat their students need to know and be able to do.Additionally, arts standards and SEL standards laypolicy foundations by defining what their authors andadopters deem important and providing a frameworkfor both arts and SEL advocacy (Sweeny, 2014).Standards in the arts and SEL also serve the politicalpurpose of legitimizing these learning areas in schoolsystems that may have given them little orno attention.

In 2014, the National Coalition for Core ArtsStandards (NCCAS) released revised national stand-ards in the disciplines of dance, media arts, music,theater, and visual arts. The standards were developedusing the Understanding by Design (Wiggins &McTighe, 2005) framework to “[help] educatorsthroughout the nation work toward common ends byrecommending worthy goals for students as they pro-gress—from grade to grade, instructor to instructor,school to school, or community to community”(National Coalition for Core Arts Standards(NCCAS), 2014, p. 8). As Figure 1 illustrates, thestandards are based on the principle that arts educa-tion involves four central processes: Creating;Performing, Presenting, or Producing; Responding;and Connecting. Under each of these processes falltwo or three anchor standards (eleven total) that applyto all disciplines, such as, “Refine and complete artis-tic work” and “Perceive and analyze artistic work.”

Under the anchor standards fall discipline and grade-level specific standards for all grades PreK-8 as well ashigh school standards at the “proficient,”“accomplished,” and “advanced” levels.

In music exclusively, there are several strands ofstandards; for the purposes of this analysis we com-bined them with one exception; we analyzed the“Traditional and Emerging Ensembles” music stand-ards separately given their nature which by designinherently implies associations to interpersonal skills.Also, some music strands differ in that rather thanincluding specific PreK-8 standards for each gradelevel they present “novice” and “intermediate” stand-ards prior to high school; we treated these as fifthgrade and eighth grade standards, respectively, inour analysis.

As of January 2019, these standards had beenadopted (in whole or part) by twenty-seven states andthe Department of Defense, while an additional tenstates were in the process of revising their arts stand-ards (National Coalition for Core Arts Standards(NCCAS), 2019). The standards are available online athttps://www.nationalartsstandards.org/, where readerscan also find a document (National Coalition for CoreArts Standards (NCCAS), 2019) that provides the webaddresses for the arts standards currently adopted byeach state.

Social Emotional Learning goals

The National Conference of State Legislatures (2018)notes that all fifty US states have developed preschoolSEL standards. However, only sixteen states haveadopted standards at both the preschool and earlyelementary levels, and only eight (IL, KS, ME, MI, NJ,NV, RI, WV) have adopted preschool and K-12 standards.

As the US currently lacks national SEL standards,we opted to analyze the NCAS’ alignment with the

Figure 1. NCAS Framework.

ARTS EDUCATION POLICY REVIEW 3

Illinois SEL Standards. These standards were devel-oped and validated by CASEL and have served as aframework that other states such as NJ and OH haveadapted when developing their own standards.

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) Socialand Emotional Learning Standards include three over-arching goals, indicated in the left-hand column ofFigure 2. We refer to these as “macro-level” SEL goalsin this article. Ten sub-goals, referred to in this articleas meso-level goals, fall under the three primary goalsand are indicated in the right-hand column of Figure2. The IL standards include an additional 602“performance descriptors” or micro-level goals orstandards. To keep the scope of the project manage-able we analyzed correlations between the NCAS andthe ten meso-level goals. Throughout the remainderof this article we refer to goals only by the goal indi-cators in Figure 2 (Goal 1 A, Goal 3B, etc.); readersmay wish to refer back to Figure 2 when specific goalsare mentioned.

Overall, the SEL goals progress along a self-to-world social continuum with early standards focusedon self-awareness and self-management, movingtoward applying self-regulation in ever-increasingsocial circles. The universal three macro-goal, tenmeso-goal version employed in this research suggestsa recursive, spiral (Bruner, 1960) approach rather thana linear progression. Thus, growth in social-emotional

capacities reads as a longitudinal conquest with fruit-ful repetition embedded.

Research questions

The questions this study investigated were:

� To what degree and in what ways are the NCASholistically aligned (or not) with the IL SEL goals?

� To what degree and in what ways are the NCASfor the specific disciplines of dance, media arts,music, theater, and visual arts aligned (or not)with the IL SEL goals?

� To what degree (if any) is the alignment of stand-ards correlated with student grade levels?

� To what degree (if any) is the alignment of stand-ards correlated with particular artistic processes?

Methodology

This study’s original purpose was to design an analyticprotocol using the principles of interpretive contentanalysis (Drisko & Maschi, 2016) to investigate thequestions above. The first author created a table con-sisting of the ten meso-level SEL goals in rows andthe 1,550 NCAS in columns, resulting in 15,500 stand-ard/goal intersections to be analyzed. The first authorestablished a tripartite coding scheme for the protocol;

Figure 2. The Illinois SEL Standards (ISBE 2019).

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each intersection of arts/SEL standards was to becoded as directly aligned, indirectly aligned, ornot aligned.

Intersections were coded as directly aligned if theyrepresented situations in which students completelyfulfilling the arts standard would always and necessar-ily achieve the paired SEL goal. Intersections repre-senting situations in which students completelyfulfilling the arts standard would likely achieve a partof the paired SEL goal were coded as indirectlyaligned. Intersections representing situations in whichthere appeared to be no clear relationship between thearts standard and the SEL goal were coded as notaligned.4 In the end, every arts standard was inter-preted and compared to every meso-level SEL goal,resulting in ratings of each pair’s degree of alignment.

Given the volume of data (15,500 intersections tocode) it was clear that coding needed to be a collab-orative effort. Furthermore, given the highly interpre-tivist nature of interpretive content analysis, codersneeded expertise in arts pedagogy generally and ineach discipline reviewed specifically. The editor of thisissue and the first author identified a team of scholarsfrom each field (the co-authors) who coded the inter-sections of SEL goals with the standards in the disci-plines in which they held expertise.

The study’s goal was to use the protocol to analyzethe data in a rigorous and systematic fashion thatwould allow for a detailed report indicating thedegrees to which the NCAS, and individual disci-plines’ standards, aligned with SEL goals. The researchteam carried out the coding as planned, but it becameclear in the analysis stage that interrater reliability wasa concern, thus limiting our ability to make compari-sons between data coded by different researchers. Thefollowing sections detail how this challenge may havecome about and how the reporting in this article dif-fers from what was originally intended in light ofthe situation.

Researcher subject positioning

As a research team comprised of artists and arts edu-cators, the authors recognize that we bring particularlenses to the study of the standards in our disciplines.We brought to this project a collective 77 years ofexperience teaching the arts to PreK-12 students,70 years working with pre-service educators, and95 years working as artists in our disciplines. Theseexperiences inform our understanding of arts educa-tion in general as well as arts standards and theirpotential alignment with SEL in particular.

Throughout the project we engaged in reflexivity,examining our own roles in the research project. It isnot uncommon for arts education research to beadvocacy-oriented, and our roles as arts educatorsinvolve advocating for our disciplines. As such, wemay have been more likely to notice connectionsbetween the NCAS (especially the standards in ourown disciplines) and SEL goals than disinterestedcoders may have been.

At the outset of the project, each author reflectedin the first part of the analytic protocol on whetherthey personally believed that it was important for theNCAS in their discipline to support SEL and, con-versely, if SEL goals should support their artistic disci-plines. All research team members believed that theartforms at large and/or their standards in particularshould and/or do support SEL. Researchers noted theimportance of developing inter-/intra-personal skillsin both the arts and SEL, and observed that it isimportant for future arts educators to understand thebreadth of the impact their work might have, includ-ing indirect impacts arts education may have in rela-tion to students’ SEL skills. While we generallyremarked on the importance of arts standards sup-porting SEL goals, our responses tended not to com-ment on the role SEL plays in supporting artisticdevelopment. It is possible that this imbalance influ-enced the coding process.

We also brought our demographics to the project.Four of the six research team members identify asfemale while two identify as male, and all six identifyas white or Caucasian. These traits, along with sharedexpertise in arts education and common experiencesworking in fields that are frequently required to re-justify their existence likely framed the way we codedand analyzed data. The way we interpreted standardsas well as what we noted and overlooked throughoutcoding and analysis grew from our subject positions.

Method

The research team analyzed the NCAS and SEL goalsusing content analysis, “a research technique for mak-ing replicable and valid inferences from texts … totheir contexts of use” (Krippendorff, 2019, 24).Specifically, we employed interpretive content analysis(Drisko & Maschi, 2016). Unlike basic content ana-lysis that simply involves counting the presence of keyterms in texts, interpretative content analysis recog-nizes that all texts exist within contexts and requiresresearchers to consider and analyze “both manifestand latent content” in texts (3). As such, we reviewed

ARTS EDUCATION POLICY REVIEW 5

the NCAS to identify both explicit references to SELas well as instances in which SEL goals seemed impli-cit or tacit. The latter task in particular was highlyinterpretivist, and as Salda~na and Omasta (2018) noteregarding interpretivism, “Researchers bring who theyare to the project, balancing their value-laden impres-sions and emotional responses with the evidentiarynecessities of what makes for rigorously investigatedwork” (p. 142). This, along with the fact that eachcoder was coding only within her or his disciplinemay have contributed to the lack of interrater reliabil-ity we found during analysis.

Different researchers coded different disciplines’standards, and an assessment of interrater reliabilityusing Krippendorff’s alpha indicated a low level ofreliability was achieved. As such, we advise readersreviewing the data below to make interdisciplinarycomparisons only with significant caution. Forexample, 51% of the standards in one discipline were

coded as directly or indirectly aligned with SEL Goal1, while only 48% of the standards in another discip-line were coded as such. Because the different stand-ards were coded by different researchers, it does notnecessarily follow that the first discipline is “morealigned” with Goal 1 than the second discipline. Othercoders may not have coded each of the 15,500 inter-sections exactly as we did; our findings may even havebeen different even if the same team of researcherscoded data in disciplines other than their own.Nevertheless, some trends in the data were so substan-tive and clear that we can draw warranted assertionsabout the standards as a whole. Further, comparisonscan be made intradisciplinarily (using relative terms),given that the coding within each discipline was com-pleted by the same coder. As such, when sharing databelow, we present ranges and means when discussingthe standards at large and use relative terms to discussvariation within disciplines.

Figure 3. Examples of standard/goal alignment.

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Coding examples

Drisko & Maschi (2016) note that when conductinginterpretative content analyses, researchers must “showtheir readers how the analysis was completed” (p. 6,emphasis in original). We “show our work” in Figure3 by giving examples of standard/goal intersectionscoded as directly aligned, indirectly aligned, and notaligned, along with rationales for attributingthose codes.

Data/findings

Overall alignment

Finding 1: Most of the NCAS were coded as aligned(either directly or indirectly) with at least one of thethree macro-level SEL goals. The percentage of stand-ards coded as aligned ranged from 50%-82% amongthe disciplines, with mean alignment of 65%.5

Collectively, the NCAS most aligned with macro SELGoal 1 (related to intrapersonal skills); alignment withthis goal ranged from 11%-51% among the disciplineswith a mean of 43%. Alignment with macro Goal 2(related to interpersonal skills) followed closely; withalignment ranging from 11-74% among the disciplineswith a mean of 35%. Collectively the NCAS were codedas least-aligned with Goal 3 (related to decision-makingand responsible behavior); with alignment rangingfrom 8%-61% with a mean of 19%. Few NCAS alignedwith all three SEL Goals; the percentage of standardsaligned with all goals ranged from 0-15% with a meanof 7%. Considering the standards from this perspectivesuggests strong alignment between the NCAS and SELgoals, but this view may be misleading.

A more modest picture of the standards’ alignmentemerges when comparing the NCAS individually tothe ten meso-level SEL goals (that is, when consider-ing how each of the 15,550 intersections of arts stand-ards and meso-level SEL goals were coded). The totalpercentage of standards aligned at this level rangedfrom 8-27% among the disciplines with a meanof 14%.

Finding 2: There is very little direct alignmentbetween the NCAS and the meso-level SEL Goals. Thetotal percentage of arts standards directly aligned withmeso-level SEL goals ranged from 0-3% among thedisciplines, with a mean of just 1%. Intersections weregreater than ten times more likely to be coded asindirectly aligned than directly aligned. Indirect align-ment ranged from 5%-26% among the disciplines withmean of 13%. As such, while the observation that 62%of arts standards are aligned with at least one SEL

Goal is a truthful advocacy talking point, miningmore detailed analyses presents a morenuanced picture.

Finding 3: When considering the NCAS collectively,there is a positive correlation between the grade level ofthe standards and the percentage of standards alignedwith at least one macro-level goal. That is, high schoolarts standards were generally coded as more alignedwith SEL goals than elementary arts standards, thoughthis is not the case within all disciplines when theyare considered individually, as detailed further below.The percentage of elementary (grades PreK-5) NCASaligned with at least one SEL Goal ranged from 41%-75% among the disciplines with a mean of 60%. Thepercentage of middle school (grades 6-8) NCASaligned ranged from 45-94% among the disciplineswith a mean of 70%. Finally, the percentage of highschool (grades 9-12) NCAS aligned ranged from 54-93% with a mean of 80%. Overall, the most alignedstandards are the high school “proficient” standards(the lowest level under “accomplished” and“advanced”); alignment of these standards rangesfrom 58-94% among the disciplines with a mean of76% alignment. Thus, it is in introductory-level highschool arts courses that students may most likely betaught using arts standards that align with SEL Goals.

Finding 4: Considering the NCAS (and thus, “thearts”) collectively does not necessarily reflect trendswithin specific disciplines; a more nuanced understand-ing of the ways in which “the arts” align with SELgoals emerges when the artforms are analyzed as dis-tinct disciplines. There is significant variation betweenthe types of SEL goals various disciplines align with,the grade levels at which they most align, and the art-istic processes most at play related to SEL. As such,the next section shares data from each discipline.Given concerns about interrater reliability, specificpercentages are not reported in these sections, as thiscould give the false impression that figures from onediscipline can be directly compared to another.Rather, all data is discussed in relative terms.

Discipline-specific alignment

DanceThe majority of dance standards coded as alignedwith SEL Goals aligned with SEL Goal 1 (intraper-sonal skills), while only a few were coded as alignedwith SEL Goal 3 (decision-making and responsiblebehavior). Dance standards were five times morelikely to be coded as aligned with Goal 1 than withGoal 3. Standards were also about twice as likely to be

ARTS EDUCATION POLICY REVIEW 7

coded as aligned with Goal 2 (interpersonal skills)than Goal 3.

As with the NCAS at large, very few dance stand-ards were directly aligned with the ten meso-levelgoals, though this discipline’s standards demonstratedthe smallest gap between the percentage of standardsdirectly and indirectly aligned. Standards were slightlyless than twice as likely to be coded as direct ratherthan indirect; this gap is far greater in all other disci-plines as discussed below.

In terms of artistic processes, the Connecting andPerforming standards were most aligned with SELGoals with relatively little alignment in the Creatingand Responding standards. The likelihood of dancestandards aligning with SEL Goals was strongly posi-tively correlated with grade level; there was no align-ment at the Pre-K level and nearly completealignment at the high school “advanced” level. Overalldance standards were more than twice as likely toalign with SEL Goals at the middle and high schoollevels than at the elementary level.

Media artsAligned standards in media arts were mostly alignedwith SEL Goal 2 (interpersonal), followed by Goal 3(decision-making and responsible behavior).Significantly fewer aligned with Goal 1 (intrapersonal),though there was still a great deal of alignment withthis goal. Media arts standards were about one and ahalf times more likely to align with Goal 2 than Goal1. Very few media arts standards directly aligned withmeso-level SEL goals. Alignment of media arts stand-ards with SEL goals was greater than 25 times morelikely to be indirect than direct.

In media arts, the Connecting process standardswere most likely to align with SEL goals. Connectingstandards were about four times more likely to alignwith SEL goals than Creating standards, which werethe least aligned. The producing standards were abouttwice as likely to align with SEL goals than theCreating standards, and the Responding standardswere about three times as likely to align.

In terms of grade level, the middle school mediaarts standards were most likely to align with SELgoals, with nearly all of them aligned. Slightly fewer,but still nearly all, high school standards were alignedwith SEL goals. Elementary media arts standards wereslightly less likely to align with SEL goals.

MusicRelatively few music standards (from both the generalmusic strand and the music ensembles strand) aligned

with SEL Goal 3 (decision-making and responsiblebehavior), and only slightly more aligned with Goal 2(interpersonal skills). In both strands the standardswere about five times more likely to align with Goal 1(intrapersonal skills) than with Goals 2 or 3. Almostno music standards (from either strand) were directlyaligned with SEL goals; standards were about tentimes more likely to align with SEL goals indirectly.

When considering the artistic processes of themusic standards, the Responding standards were mostlikely to align with SEL goals in both strands.However, there was some deviation between thestrands. Among the general music standards, thealignment of the Performing standards followedclosely behind the Responding standards, followed bya considerable drop to the Creating and Connectingstandards, which were least aligned. Among themusic-ensembles standards, the second most alignedstandards were those from the Connecting process,followed by the Performing Standards and finally theCreating standards, which were least aligned.

The percentage of music-ensembles standardsaligned with SEL goals at each grade level was posi-tively correlated with grade level, with a great majorityof high school standards aligned, followed by middleschool and then elementary-level standards. The gen-eral music standards were also most aligned at thehigh school level, with a significant drop moving tothe elementary school level, which was very closelyfollowed by the middle school level.

TheatrOf the theater standards aligned with SEL goals, thegreat majority were aligned with Goal 2 (interpersonalskills); theater standards were roughly five times morelikely to align with these goals than they were to alignwith Goal 1 (intrapersonal skills) or Goal 3 (decision-making and responsible behavior). Almost no theaterstandards were directly aligned with SEL goals; stand-ards were ten times more likely to align indirectly.

In terms of artistic processes, the Connecting the-ater standards were most aligned with SEL goals, fol-lowed by the Responding standards, then the Creatingstandards, and finally the Performing standards, whichwere least aligned. Theater is the only discipline inwhich elementary-level standards were most likely toalign with SEL goals, followed by high school stand-ards and middle school standards.

Visual artsMost of the visual arts standards that aligned withSEL goals aligned with Goal 2 (interpersonal skills)

8 M. OMASTA ET AL.

followed closely by those aligning with Goal 1 (intra-personal skills) and then a significant drop to Goal 3(decision-making and responsible behaviors) stand-ards. As in many disciplines, nearly none of the visualarts standards directly aligned with SEL goals; visualarts standards were nearly twenty time more likely tobe indirectly aligned.

Visual arts was the only discipline in which theCreating process standards were most aligned withSEL goals. The Presenting standards were leastaligned. The Responding standards were about twiceas likely to align with SEL goals than the PresentingStandards. The Connecting standards were aboutthree times more likely to align, with the Creatingstandards about four times more likely to align. Therewas a positive correlation between the percentage ofvisual arts standards aligned with SEL goals and thegrade level of those standards, with a considerablepercentage of elementary-level standards aligned, agreater percentage of middle school standards aligned,and most high school standards aligned.

Discussion

As a whole, most of the NCAS align indirectly with atleast one SEL goal, but very few standards align dir-ectly. As such, there is no standards-based theoreticalfoundation to support the idea that students takingarts classes will automatically develop SEL competen-cies simply by engaging in arts learning. Rather, edu-cators hoping to increase student learning in both thearts and SEL simultaneously must make consciousefforts to ensure explicitly address both of these learn-ing areas. The substantial amount of indirect NCAS/SEL alignment suggests that educators might readilycreate units that address both the arts and SEL, but inmost cases such lessons need to be deliberate andcarefully planned in order to be effective; our reviewof the standards suggests that without this consciouseffort educators are unlikely to create lessons that helpstudents achieve both arts and SEL goals.

Disciplinary heterogeneity

The type and degree of alignment between the artsstandards and SEL goals is not uniform across disci-plines. Rather, particular disciplines’ standards alignvariously with particular and differing SEL goals atparticular and differing grade levels through particularand differing artistic processes (Creating, Performing/Presenting/Producing, Responding, and Connecting).As such, educators interested in promoting both arts

learning and SEL should carefully consider the relativealignment of standards from the various arts disci-plines with SEL objectives. While we do not suggestthat particular disciplines are “more aligned” with SELthan others, we do note the relative alignment withindisciplines between different artforms and the variousSEL goals, standards for different grade levels, andvarious artistic processes in a way that allows for the-orizing what specific standards might be most effect-ive. Rather than considering the potential impact of“the arts” at large, a close examination of each indi-vidual artform is merited.

Practical implications

Following are three hypothetical scenarios educatorsmight face along with discussion of how this study’sfindings might guide their thinking.

Scenario A: A visual arts teacher seeks to design les-sons that incorporate art and SEL and needs to decidewhat type of lessons might be most suited to this task.The NCAS visual arts standards for the Creating pro-cess are greater than four times more likely to alignwith SEL goals than the Presenting process standards.As such, the teacher may wish to turn first to theCreating standards when choosing the standards toaddress in the lesson.

Scenario B: A district superintendent interested inpromoting student SEL is able diversify the arts offer-ings in her district by hiring two new teachers: one indance and one in theater. She must decide at whatlevel schools to place these teachers. The dance andtheater standards are inversely correlated in terms ofpercentage of alignment by grade level: the dancestandards align with SEL goals more than twice asoften at the middle school and high school levels thanthey do at the elementary level. Considering this, thesuperintendent may wish to place the dance teacher ata middle or high school. Theater, on the other hand,is the only discipline in which the standards are mostaligned with SEL objectives at the elementary level,suggesting that the superintendent may wish to placethe theater teacher at an elementary school. In thisway, both teachers would be working with the most-aligned grade levels in their disciplines. While theywould still need to consciously combine the arts andSEL, they have a greater number of directly and indir-ectly aligned standards to work with at these levels.While we do not recommend administrators placestrong emphasis on disciplines’ relative alignmentwith SEL goals, this is one factor among many thatcould be considered.

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Scenario C: An elementary school classroom teacherwants to create an arts lesson that also promotes hisstudents’ interpersonal skills and needs to decide whichartform to teach. This scenario is challenging, as thisstudy cannot compare the percentage of standardsfrom each discipline that align with SEL Goal 2,which considers interpersonal skills. It does,however, indicate the relative degree to which thestandards for each discipline align with the threemacro-level SEL Goals. The theater standards, forexample, are five times more likely to align withSEL Goal 2 than they are Goal 1 or 3, suggestingthat the teacher may wish to consider a theater unit.The general music standards, on the other hand, aremost aligned with SEL Goal 1 (intrapersonal skills);the standards in this discipline are five times lesslikely to align with Goal 2 than with Goal 1.Therefore, while the general music standards some-times align with Goal 2, a music unit may be muchmore suited to developing intrapersonal skills thaninterpersonal skills.

Tacit alignment

In some instances, arts instruction may align withSEL goals in ways not explicit in the NCAS. Forexample, SEL Goals 2 A and 2 C require students torecognize the feelings and perspectives of otherswhen working with others in collaborative situations.Also, students need to be able to communicate effect-ively with others in collaborative situations wherethey are either creating dances with other students orrunning rehearsals. For example, if students worktogether while creating writing, improvising, compos-ing, or choreographing, the students will need toconsider each other’s ideas and communicate effect-ively in providing direction. These are commonexpectations among arts teachers, but they are notalways explicitly stated in the NCAS as they are inthe SEL goals.

The NCAS also include many specific disciplinaryskills, such as compare and contrast, analyze, make,curate, identify and explain, evaluate, reflect, create,revise, elaborate, document, describe, design, select,and organize. Although none of these skills corres-pond directly to SEL goals, the development andrefinement of these skills can contribute to developinga student’s self-awareness and capability in the con-texts of school and life accomplishment. Althoughthese do not directly address issues of self-manage-ment and self-discipline, they provide many ways forstudents to develop SEL competencies through the

practices associated with creative work (Farringtonet al., 2019).

Terminological tensions

While the SEL goals maintain a consistent focus onthe always-identifiable individuals (i.e., students) in anever-growing world, the NCAS move between individ-ual, ensemble, and sometimes undefined agents ofaction. Additionally, while words like “cooperate” and“character” pivot easily between both SEL and artscontexts, words like “conflict” and “tension” do not.These terms represent things to be corrected andaddressed in the SEL goals, yet they are viewed asproductive artistic elements in some arts standards,particularly secondary school theater. For example,“conflict” is something to be “prevented” and“managed” in the SEL standards (Goal 2D), butdeveloping and exploring conflict in role as charactersis essential to most theater and drama work, whetherprocess or product oriented, at all grade levels. Insome cases the arts standards call for more nuancedinterpretation of vocabulary than the SEL standards.

Policy implications

Need for further investigation

The NCAS and IL SEL standards each value studentprogress and learning. Students would be better servedif educators and policy makers clearly saw the ways inwhich these two sets of policy can be compatible.Those invested in strengthening students’ social andemotional capacities along with their capacities asartists might invest in further research that considersthe development of a crosswalk between the SEL objec-tives and the arts standards. Organizations such asArtsEd New Jersey have begun undertakings of thisnature, as discussed in the concluding article tothis issue.

Recognizing individual artforms

Educational leaders seeking to promote SEL shouldconsider that the arts disciplines align variously withSEL goals and consult research to determine the mosteffective interventions. For example, based on thisanalysis the dance and music standards are mostaligned with intrapersonal SEL goals while media arts,theater, and visual arts standards are most alignedwith interpersonal SEL goals. The greatest degree ofalignment between NCAS and SEL goals occurs at theelementary school level in theater, the middle school

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level in media arts, and the high school level in dance,music, and visual arts. While our analysis does notsuggest that one artform is more effective thananother at promoting SEL, it does allow for ordinalranking within artforms. Education leaders shouldcarefully assess the alignment between various disci-plines in terms of types of SEL to be promoted andgrade level differences rather than assuming that allarts education experiences are equally valuable in termsof promoting SEL in varying contexts.

Standards as policy

Federal, state, and local mandates and recommenda-tions for various disciplines are upheld and carriedout uniformly by appropriate agencies (e.g., state edu-cation departments, local education agencies [LEAs],building administrators). When such agencies adoptcontent standards, as seen with the Common CoreState Standards in language arts and mathematics,expectations and supports for instruction, staffing, stu-dent learning, and assessment may be developed andimplemented to promote their teaching.

This has not often been the case with the adoptionand implementation of the NCAS. These standardswere designed to account for the recommended rangeand depth of student learning across multiple artisticdisciplines, sequential outcomes, and developmentallyappropriate practices. For the NCAS (or any stand-ards) to more broadly affect policy, they need tobecome state mandates so that their goals, content,instruction, and value are understood, monitored, pro-vided for, and upheld in areas of adequate staffing,professional development, student access, materials,and facilities. Further, as we have identified, each artsdiscipline makes unique contributions in terms ofSEL. As such, we recommend that states and LEAsadopt current and relevant standards in all five artsdisciplines and provide the instructional staffing andother supports necessary to ensure that all studentshave equitable access to comprehensive instruction inthe arts.

Explicating connections

Many arts practitioners may read the SEL Goals andthink that SEL is an unstated but prominent featureof all arts education endeavors. That is, there may bea sense that “we’re already doing that.” Yet this ana-lysis reveals that on paper the alignment is less clear,suggesting that future arts standards writing teamsmight wish to more explicitly evidence connections to

SEL, as has begun in some districts and states. At thesame time, some might argue that explicating SEL’srole detracts from the complex ways the arts operatewithin and among human beings. As such, standardswriting teams should carefully consider the degree towhich explicating SEL’s often assumed embeddedness inthe arts may benefit and detract from arts education,perhaps conducting research to determine how educa-tors respond to proposed standards, and make a con-scious choice to explicate (or not) connections betweenthe arts and SEL.

Disciplinary equity

Because standards demarcate expectations for studentsand teachers and help administrators assess studentand teacher performance in disciplines, they have tre-mendous policy power. Presently, however, the NCASare not constructed to support teacher development,spark administrative imagination, and share risktoward innovation. Arts standards came into being asan act of advocacy for curricular attention to the arts,to point to their legitimacy within the school system,particularly in the case of less-prevalent disciplinessuch as theater and dance.6 While there is promise inexploiting the fruitful synergy between SEL and artslearning, there is also risk of the arts taking onanother layer of compliance without being on equalfooting. Therefore, we recommend that educationalleaders recognize the intrinsic value of the arts disci-plines and adopt arts standards as mandates in waysthat ensure they are not included solely in service ofnon-arts goals such as promoting SEL.

Future research

Our study raises a number of questions for furtherresearch consideration. Future studies might describearts-based approaches to SEL in practice. How dovarious art forms operationalize identity and agency,emotion, social skills and ethical responsibility,empathy, communication in arts learning? How wouldthis look in a variety of settings? What might itafford students?

Descriptive studies—perhaps collaboratively exe-cuted by arts and SEL researchers—of how arts peda-gogical practices impact social and emotionalcompetencies and social contexts would help bothfields see one another’s work beyond written stand-ards. Such studies might consider teachers’ actualpractices, which may differ significantly from whatstandards suggest is taking place in classrooms. Such

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data would be informative in illuminating levels ofdeliberate practices and occasions for more inclusiveteaching and learning.

Teacher intention appears to be a critical elementin promoting social and emotional growth (Farringtonet al., 2019) as well as arts learning. As such, bothfields might benefit from pointed interview-basedand/or survey research regarding the intersection ofintention and action in the spaces between artsand SEL.

Additionally, historical investigation could provefruitful for future practice. How have arts standardsbeen composed in the past and how have they soughtto link SEL and the arts (or not)? How might they beconceived, used, and revised in conversation withpractice moving forward?

Notes

1. Contemporary movements to promote SEL in schoolsresemble efforts to promote arts education when thefirst national arts standards were drafted in the latetwentieth century. In both cases, national advocacyorganizations developed educational standards andurged policymakers at the state level to adopt them toensure a focus on these types of learning.

2. We do not presume that educational standards (in thearts, SEL, or any other area) are perfect documents;they are crafted by humans with biases and varyingagendas. Standards are not necessarily always positiveor useful. However, the US educational climate isincreasingly standards-based, driven by concerns aboutsupposedly mediocre student achievement suggested byreports such as the Reagan administration’s A Nation atRisk (NCEE 1983). Sleeter & Carmona (2017) amongothers have pointed to the many challenges associatedwith a standards-driven curriculum. Ultimately, givenstandards’ weight in contemporary education (deservedor otherwise) it is appropriate and important toexamine the expectations these policy documentsput forth.

3. See Kapalka Richerme’s article in this issue for moreinformation about ESSA, SEL, and the arts.

4. We note that effective teachers, assigned any artsstandard and any SEL goal, could create a lesson inwhich students fulfilled the arts standard (or anystandard) and the SEL goal. We did not codeintersections as aligned if they required caveats (e.g.,"these standards could both be addressed by a lesson ifsteps beyond fulfilling the standards themselves wereincluded), such as to create alignment.

5. As interrater reliability was low and interdisciplinarycomparison would not be appropriate as discussedearlier, ranges and means are reported in this instanceand hereafter. A range of 50-82% and mean of 65%indicates that the discipline that was coded as leastaligned found 50% alignment and the discipline thatwas coded as the most aligned found 82% alignment.

The average (mean) of all of five disciplines’ alignmentwas 65%. As such, the overall takeaway is that at least50% of the intersections were aligned in everydiscipline, with about 65% alignment when consideringthe disciplines together.

6. Even with such advocacy, theatre and dance are rarelytaught in K-12US elementary schools. Parsad et al.(2012) report that in 2012 music was taught in 94% ofschools and visual art was taught at 83%, however, only3% offered dance courses and only 4% offered drama/theatre. Similarly, while music was taught at 91% ofpublic US high schools and visual arts was taught at89%, only 12% of schools offered dance instruction and45% offered drama/theatre (p. 9).

ORCID

Matt Omasta http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8074-2025

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