In Central America’s Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—educational institutions face a crisis of in-school and out-of-school violence and dropout rates 22% above the average for the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. This crisis—often gang-related—jeopardizes not only the safety of students, but their long-term mental health and economic prospects.
The challenge for educators and policymakers is not only to protect children by keeping them off the streets when they might be unsupervised and victimized or influenced by criminals. It is to expose them to socio-emotional learning that can help them control impulsive responses, regulate their emotions, and funnel their energy into more productive ends.
In a recent study, we explored a promising intervention rooted in socio-emotional learning administered in after-school programs. We examined whether those programs that are focused on socio-emotional learning can improve adolescents’ behaviors and academic outcomes, and, crucially, which kind of curriculum yields the greatest benefits.
Beyond Academics: The Intervention
Rather than providing conventional academic support and recreation, involving athletic and artistic extracurricular activities, after-school programs as we reimagined them could be environments for cultivating emotional regulation and resilience—cornerstones of student development. Accordingly, we conducted a randomized trial across 21 schools located in violent neighborhoods in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, assigning them to three kinds of after-school programs:
- Clubs: based solely on recreational activities such as sports, art, and dancing.
- Mindfulness-focused programs: psychological interventions based on a mindfulness and relaxation program, including breathing, stretching, relaxation, and focusing.
- Virtue-focused programs: psychological interventions intended to strengthen character and virtues, including training on concepts like perserverance, and activities of self-reflection in which students think about how to achieve their goals.
The interventions unfolded with each virtue- and mindfulness-focused session immediately followed by activities from the clubs group. Participants in all groups of the experiment attended two after-school sessions per week (1.5 hours each) for seven months (April–October, 2019). All sessions were facilitated by volunteers with no formal training in social work or psychology. By comparing the average outcomes of students enrolled in schools assigned to either of the two psychology-based curricula with students enrolled in schools assigned to the clubs group, we measured net socio-emotional learning.
The evidence was compelling: We found that, compared to the clubs group, socio-emotional learning curricula (in the virtue and mindfulness groups) improved student behavior by a striking 23 percentage points while significantly increasing emotional regulation. Beyond merely providing a protective environment, socio-emotional learning was clearly effective.
Exploring the Power of Mindfulness
The impact of mindfulness activities was especially so. While both socio-emotional learning approaches—virtue and mindfulness—yielded notable benefits in behavior, the mindfulness curriculum, characterized by breathing exercises and focusing techniques like directed meditation, significantly reduced dropout rates and bolstered youth resilience and focus. This positioned mindfulness as a critical component in the educational arsenal against violence and dropout.
Tailoring Socio-Emotional Learning Interventions to Best Combat School Violence
The behavioral gains from socio-emotional learning were also greatest among those with the greatest needs. They were largest among the highest-risk students, who tended to be male, older, haver lower skill levels and less supervision, come from violent areas, and exhibit adverse behaviors before the intervention.
In Central America’s crisis of violence, students potentially face a cascade of negative outcomes, including dropout and gang-recruitment. Our study shows that socio-emotional learning offers another way out and can become a catalyst for change in schools. As an evidence-based, cost-effective intervention, it can strengthen schools not only as safe spaces but also as places of holistic development.
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