McREL’s Scaffolding Early Learning (SEL) is grounded in research on language acquisition and child development, aligns with current theory on early literacy development, and produces positive results for teachers and students.
Based on Lev Vygotsky’s approach to education, SEL directly targets the critical domains of early literacy development while at the same time boosting skills important for all learning, such as self-regulation.
A growing body of empirical evidence validates SEL’s positive impact on children’s school readiness because of its emphasis on literacy skills and executive functions, or cognitive control. Students whose teachers receive training in SEL consistently score significantly better than comparison groups on assessments designed to measure progress on literacy components, such as letter recognition, sound-to-symbol correspondence, and word recognition.