Bridgeport Early Childhood SEL Initiative

Funding Source: Tauck Family Foundation

Team Members: Craig Bailey, Whitney Sanders, Fuzhe Xie, Lauren Costello, Michael Strambler & Joanna Meyer (The Consultation Center at Yale), Suzanne Clement (Cooperative Educational Services), Jill Keating-Herbst (All Our Kin-Bridgeport), Daphnee Nicolas, Sarah Kadden

This multi-year community-based, research-to-practice partnership between Yale University and local community stakeholders is tasked with creating a community of practice by infusing SEL into the culture and infrastructure of the community and ensuring coordinated, equitable access to high-quality SEL programming and supports for early childhood educators, young children, and families of Bridgeport, CT.

Led by the Initiative’s Steering Committee, BECSELI:

• Provides access to RULER to all of Bridgeport’s center-based and family-based childcare providers
• Strengthens and coordinates SEL programming between Bridgeport’s early childhood settings and Bridgeport Public Schools
• Uses SEL as a catalyst to share resources by creating and facilitating a community-wide professional development network of providers and stakeholders.

Data are collected to evaluate whether BECSELI is making a difference in Bridgeport’s early care and education settings as well as in the lives of educators and leaders, including survey data collected from Bridgeport’s early childhood center- and family-based childcare staff. Data include indicators of school and classroom climate, efficacy, relationships, social and emotional skills, general indicators of wellbeing, and RULER implementation and efficacy.

Community partners for this project include Bridgeport Public Schools, Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition (Regional Youth Adult Social Action Partnership), Alliance for Community Empowerment, United Way of Coastal Fairfield County, Early Childhood Laboratory School at Housatonic Community College, Bridgeport YMCA, Child and Family Guidance Center, Child First, Skane School Consultation Center.

For additional information such as annual reports, visit our Open Science Framework page.

• Bailey, C. S., Meyer, J., Strambler, M. J., Sanders, W., Xie, F., & Burget-Foster, S. (2023, April). Associations among early childhood educator emotional intelligence skills, mindsets, emotional well-being, and SEL practices: The importance of cognitive reappraisal. In C. Cipriano (Chair), What we learned measuring educator well-being during the 2021-22 school year: SEL assessment science and practice [Symposium]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL. https://osf.io/6npsg.

Connection to Research Agenda: Emotion Science, Intervention Evaluation