Educating the Whole Child: Improving school climate to support student success

New knowledge about human development from neuroscience and the sciences of learning and development demonstrates that effective learning depends on secure attachments; affirming relationships; rich, hands-on learning experiences; and explicit integration of social, emotional, and academic skills. A positive school environment supports students’ growth across all the developmental pathways—physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and emotional—while it reduces stress and anxiety that create biological impediments to learning. Such an environment takes a “whole child” approach to education, seeking to address the distinctive strengths, needs, and interests of students as they engage in learning.

Given that emotions and relationships strongly influence learning—and that these are the byproducts of how students are treated at school, as well as at home and in their communities—a positive school climate is at the core of a successful educational experience. School climate creates the physiological and psychological conditions for productive learning. Without secure relationships and supports for development, student engagement and learning are undermined.

In this paper, we examine how schools can use effective, research-based practices to create settings in which students’ healthy growth and development are central to the design of classrooms and the school as a whole. We describe key findings from the sciences of learning and development, the school conditions and practices that should derive from this science, and the policy strategies that could support these conditions and practices on a wide scale.