School Counselors’ Implementation of Educator SEL Interventions: A Critical Participatory Action Research and Healing Study

This article uses a healing research methodology to describe how school counselors create, implement, and facilitate psychoeducational Educator Social-Emotional Learning (EduSEL) interventions. Using individual and small group interventions, school counselors sought to improve educators’ social and emotional competence, which fosters healthier school and classroom environments (Jagers et al., 2019). This study applies Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) to investigate how the facilitators of these interventions perceive educators’ wellness. School counselors report that EduSEL sessions fostered deeper professional learning for teachers and enabled them to develop personal insights, participate in healing, and learn practical strategies to translate into the classroom. Simultaneously, school counselors participated in a parallel SEL process, deepening their own social and emotional competence, along with their professional and clinical practices, to improve the effectiveness of SEL interventions and enhancing their role in promoting SEL across the school community. We briefly discuss several implications for school counselors within the context of EduSEL practice/training, policy, and research.