Building Consensus for Integrated STEM and Social-Emotional Development: From Convening to Implementation

Learn about the connections between STEM and social-emotional development practices and their implications for research and implementation.Keywords: Informal EducationEquityInterdisciplinaryPolicyResearchSTEM AcknowledgmentsThe STEM+SED Conference was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (Award Number 1940155). The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.We thank the NSF for their support and the opportunity to explore the connections between SED and STEM. We also thank Christine “Kit” Klein, PhD and Kristin Lewis-Warner, EdM for being thought partners in this work, Gregory Croft, BS and Hannah Meisels, BA for providing conference technical support and assisting with the scoping review, as well as Sara Meyers Hoots, EdM, Virginia Andrews, MPH, and Tori Oliveira, MS for their careful review of this manuscript. Most importantly, we must share our deep sense of gratitude to all our steering committee members and conference participants for the resilience they showed during one of the most challenging and uncertain times in history. To the district leaders, program directors, and educators who reinvented programming overnight, to the funders and policy makers who stepped up with funding and revised policies to meet the immediate needs of your communities, to the researchers who sustained lab and study activities—and the many doing it all without childcare or family support—we were inspired by your flexibility, perseverance, and commitment to your work and to our conference.