Few conversations with Roger Weissberg get very far without him referring to his aspiration to be a good son, brother, husband and father. Family and an appetite for collaboration are two of the driving forces in his life – alongside a determination to bring good science to the world of education.

Since 1994 the professional aspects of that gentle ambition have been channeled into development of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the brainchild of Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman and philanthropist Eileen Rockefeller Growald.

Weissberg is CASEL's President, having been one of 19 leaders in the field whose collaboration brought it to life. But to hear his own account of their joint achievement one might be forgiven for thinking it was the offspring of a group of 18 smart people who recruited him post partum to keep it ticking over.

The reality is different: Weissberg is the synapse that connects the neurons that make CASEL’s brain fire. His rare ability to make points of connection in policy, practice and research helps to explain why so much more progress has been made in the field of social and emotional learning than in other areas of prevention.

Just as typical of his modesty, ask him about his own career and he will tell you about his encounters with other remarkable people. For example, he reflects on pivotal moments, such as the opportunity in the early 1990s to co-chair the William T. Grant Foundation Consortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence, which brings together leading thinkers to advance science and its application to policy and practice.

Another key encounter was with Emory Cowen, Weissberg’s dissertation adviser at Rochester. “He framed education in such a way that I came to understand that too many kids had problems and there were too few resources to respond. So the only way forward was prevention – stopping problems occurring in the first place.”

After getting his PhD in 1980, he stayed on as the director of research at the University of Rochester Center for Community Study. Two years later he moved to Yale where he was a professor until 1992.

"They helped me to think more broadly, to look beyond schools."

He pays similar tribute to Yale colleagues Edward Zigler and Seymour Sarason. “Ed Zigler knows more about social and emotional competencies than anyone. But more than that he helped me think more broadly, to look beyond schools. He got me to reflect on the relationship between schools and the communities in which they are situated, and families.”

“But most of all he got me interested in influencing state and federal policy as a mechanism for changing practice.”

Sarason was instrumental in connecting the young professor with the New Haven Public School system. From 1987 to 1992 Weissberg and his team collaborated with New Haven staff to design, implement and evaluate the Social Development Project, a preschool to high school prevention model.

The evaluations used randomized controlled trials as well as quasi-experimental designs. But the delivery of the interventions depended on collaboration. He learned the benefits of community action research working across an entire school district.

In his Bennett Lecture at the 10th Anniversary of the Prevention Research Center in early November, he referred to the article he was most proud of having written – on the need to connect community empowerment and prevention science. Needless to say, it was another collaboration, on that occasion with Mark Greenberg.

The New Haven project was seminal to Weissberg’s career development. “I know there are some things I probably won’t get an opportunity to do now I’m faced with so many new challenges. I’d have liked to give a good account of what happened and what could have happened with the Social Development Project in New Haven. A lot of learning from that early work is relevant to improving the social and emotional development of kids. I can say with confidence that working in New Haven was the most important early career training I received.”

In recent years, CASEL’s progress has been marked by an ability to get policy makers to see the benefits of large scale implementation of programs, as evidenced by the SEL standards applied across the state of Illinois, and the significant investments being made in Singapore and Spain reported in Tuesday’s edition of Prevention Action. [See: Backing for the basics of self-reliance?]

The commitment to practice is evident in the quality standards used to select the 22 SEL programs supported by CASEL. Evidence of effectiveness based on experimental methods is fundamental. So too is the provision of outstanding SEL instruction and excellent support for professional development.

For most academics, the focus on policy and practice would mean sacrifices on the research side. Weissberg is a notable exception. His systematic review with Joe Durlak and colleagues is by far the most thorough and rigorous estimate of the impact of SEL programs on child outcomes. [See: Benefits of SEL: Meta-analysis]

And there is more to come. Weissberg ended that work by noting ten questions about social and emotional learning initiatives that could not be answered from existing evidence and emphasized the need for better understanding of what works in implementing SEL and other prevention programs. And his current preoccupation is to learn how to make an efficient assessment of the social and emotional competencies of preschoolers and elementary students.

Few people have done more to advance prevention in schools than Roger Weissberg. He exudes the same strong SEL skills he would cultivate in the world by reflecting, learning from others, collaborating, collectively solving problems and making strong decisions.

References:
Roger Weissberg and Mark Greenberg (1998), “School and community competence-enhancement and prevention programs” in Handbook of child psychology: Vol 4. Child psychology in practice, John Wiley & Sons.

Roger Weissberg and Mark Greenberg (1998). “Prevention science and collaborative community action research: Combining the best from both perspectives” in Journal of Mental Health, 7(5), 477-490.