Steady as she goes: Starting to sift through the articles for the scoping review

This week, I’ve been working on beginning to analyze the articles for the SEL in Action Scoping Review (Phase 1). It’s been a slow process. I’ve frequently gone back to my exclusion and exclusion criteria, and back to my focus of the information I want to extract from these articles.

Right now, I’ve worked my way through a couple of articles. While this doesn’t seem huge, I will explain why it’s a slow process later in this post. But first, I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts about how researchers are conceptualizing and implementing social and emotional learning in K-8 schools.

Emerging thoughts, wonderings, and observations

The initial research I have been exploring has been interesting as they have implemented self-regulated learning strategies and cooperative learning strategies in classrooms in Quebec (Abrami et al., 1994, 2008). This implementation has focused on training teachers, but allowing for the flexibility of strategies and materials that the teachers can implement within their classrooms. Something that I think addresses the contextual needs of each classroom. It’s hard to implement something that is one size fits all.

This approach and discussion that the authors have made me wonder about our approaches to SEL initiatives. It contrasts the program approach to provide teachers with resources and knowledge and allows them to adapt as needed. Abrami et al. (2008) mention the importance of providing teachers with the knowledge of the skills and the pedagogical strategies to implement them in the classroom effectively. It will be interesting to explore this idea with the educator interviews that I conducted.

Many of the challenges that the researchers observe within the classroom are echoed in the research on SEL implementation challenges. Predominantly, the challenge of time for implementation. Even when the teachers were provided with a time slot to focus on implementing the strategies (within a geometry lesson), they were often busy with administrative and classroom management to effectively foster the students’ collaboration and reflection skills (Abrami et al., 1994). This is not a novel finding. Researchers and teachers have strongly stated that time has a significant impact on the teaching strategies, curriculum, and classroom management strategies they can implement effectively.

Mindset challenges

I am finding that I’m often finding myself focusing on the results of the studies. Much of the research that I have explored over my career that has synthesized multiple sources, like what I am doing here, has been meta-analyses and systematic reviews. These approaches focus on the quality and outcomes of the studies. Thus, I always find myself trying to delve deeply into these areas of the articles. However, I keep reminding myself that this is a scoping review, with a very different goal.

Current tools I’m using

I have created a Google sheet to quickly place the essential aspects of the studies (e.g., definitions provided, implementation methods) all in one place. This way, I can see trends and demographics. This will also allow me to quickly create a table later for my publications to summarize the included studies and why.

I’m using Atlas.ti to “code” the main points, definitions, and data that I want to extract from the articles. This also will allow me to look at trends and cross related themes within and across the articles.

Next Steps

I will be continuing to analyze the articles for the scoping review. As I fine-tune what I am pulling from the articles, the process will get faster.

Any thoughts or feedback? Let me know in the comments below!

If you have any questions or would like more information, please feel free to email me at hwoods@uottawa.ca.

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