Applied Developmental Science

ISSN: 1088-8691 (Print) 1532-480X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hads20

Equitable learning and development: Applying

science to foster liberatory education

Camille A. Farrington

To cite this article: Camille A. Farrington (2019): Equitable learning and development:
Applying science to foster liberatory education, Applied Developmental Science, DOI:
10.1080/10888691.2019.1609730

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2019.1609730

Published online: 14 May 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 12

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hads20
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2019.1609730
COMMENTARY
Equitable learning and development: Applying science to foster
liberatory education
Camille A. Farrington
University of Chicago
For over 100 years, certain enduring aims, beliefs,
and criticisms have shaped the evolution of educa-
tional policy and practice in America. Any effort to
reform or transform K–12 schooling to align with the
science of learning and development must take into
account the prevailing and often contradictory goals
and assumptions underlying the school system we
have inherited, and how this system shapes the daily
experiences of students in classrooms across the
country. Racial equity must be at the center of our
concerns, both because children of color share in the
human right to health and wholeness and because we
live in a precarious moment in human existence. We
cannot afford to waste the talents and contributions
of any young person by squandering opportunities
for their learning and development in a miseduca-
tive system.
In recent years, the social-emotional learning (SEL)
movement seems to have crashed headlong into both
the academic standards/accountability movement and
a renewed movement for educational equity. In this
commentary, I want to grapple with this specific ten-
sion—borne of long-standing beliefs and criticisms
but experienced anew today across schools, districts,
and states—and consider what recent scholarship on
the science of learning and development has to offer
toward resolving this tension.
Proponents of rigorous academic standards situate
educational disparities as a problem of inconsistent
and unambitious expectations and support for stu-
dents’ intellectual work. They believe that students
need to develop cognitive skills and broad knowledge
of the world to unlock future options, and they are
deeply committed to ensuring that all students have
rigorous opportunities to think and to develop those
skills and knowledge. Some proponents of the stand-
ards movement worry that the new attention to
CONTACT Camille A. Farrington camillef@uchicago.edu
IL 60637.
ß 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
social-emotional learning will take educators’ eyes off
the prize and that schools will lose hard-won, aca-
demic-focused instructional minutes to faddish SEL
programs that may amount to little more than
“fluff”—all to the detriment of students with the most
disadvantages.
Proponents of social-emotional learning counter
that “learning is social and emotional,” and that if
schools support broader inter- and intra-personal
development, students will be healthier and more
well-adjusted, and the school and classroom climate
will be more conducive to academic learning
(National Commission on Social, Emotional, and
Academic Development, 2018). Proponents of SEL or
social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD)
argue that a holistic focus on student development is
essential both for students’ success in school and for
their long-term well-being.
While there is wide general support for expanding
the focus of schools to include broader student devel-
opment, there is also resistance from some educators
and outside observers who have decried SEL efforts as
racist. In particular, the focus on “grit” has come
under criticism (Herold, 2015), but the cultural
assumptions underlying the broader social-emotional
learning movement have also been questioned. Does
“character education” or “self-regulation” really just
mean we are doubling down on compliance and
adherence to White dominant norms of behavior? Is
SEL being used to advance yet another deficit narra-
tive that blames students of color for not having the
perseverance or self-management skills necessary to
succeed in school? The pushback against this criticism
has been vigorous and broad-based but has acknowl-
edged that, in order for SEL to benefit students of
color, it must be undertaken with an explicit racial
equity lens (Aspen Institute, 2018; Chatmon & Osta,
University of Chicago Consortium on School Research 1313 E. 60th Street Chicago,
2 C. A. FARRINGTON
2018; Gregory & Fergus, 2017; Jagers, 2018;
Simmons, 2017).
Amid these tensions, schools need to decide how to
invest resources and instructional minutes in ways
that are most advantageous to their students. What
does the science of learning and development have to
contribute to school and district leaders making these
decisions? Darling-Hammond and colleagues (2019,
this issue) are comprehensive in delineating the kinds
of policies and practices in K–12 education that are
most aligned with developmental science, but here I
highlight a particular aspect of the science that I
believe has the most transformational potential:
understanding the power of students’ subjective
experience and meaning-making in shaping their
learning and development. First, it is helpful to situate
this discussion in a broader understanding of K–12
educational history and what has led us here. I then
describe how a focus on individual student experience
points to a way of thinking that can lead us out of the
tensions between rigor, SEL, and racial equity.
Equity, academic excellence, and holistic
development: Tensions among
educational reforms
To truly understand the what, why, and how of prac-
tice in K–12 schools requires an archeological dig
through our collective history of evolving assump-
tions, fears, convictions, and aspirations.1 One of the
earliest and most enduring aims of public schooling
has been identifying hidden talent among the masses:
discovering those children with extraordinary promise,
whose abilities are worthy of cultivating at taxpayer
expense. We can think of this as the meritocracy para-
digm. Over 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson (1788)
argued that, by trying to educate everyone, schools
could easily identify those who were actually educable.
Early proponents of public high schools likewise saw
them as a way to offer opportunity to all, but then
continue support only to those who merited it (Reese,
1995). Much of the current educational system stands
on bedrock beliefs in race- and class-based theories of
intelligence, upon which we built foundations of
ostensibly “meritocratic” structures. By running all
children through a set of lessons, testing their reten-
tion, and tallying their performance, educators could
effectively stratify students by their academic rankings.
1
For a much more thorough treatment of the history summarized here,
please see, for example: Anderson (1988); Cuban (1993); Franklin and
Savage (2004): Kliebard (2004); MacDonald (2004); Reese (1995); Reyhner
and Eder (2004); Spring (1986); Tyack (1974); Tyack and Cuban (1995).
Explanations for the variability of intelligence and
effort have varied over time: race, culture, genes,
physical environment, home training, religious devo-
tion, random variation, and divine providence
(Conant, 1961; Deschenes, Tyack, & Cuban, 2001).
Regardless of the explanation at any given moment,
schools have long been seen as a natural sorting
mechanism, dividing those who are intelligent and
willing to work hard from those who are not, so that
every student gets what they deserve (Dench, 2006;
Young, 1996).
Note that this was absolutely not a system designed
to ensure that all students would learn the specified
content. A teacher training textbook from 1920 made
it clear to aspiring teachers that “all students learning”
was not the goal: “Nothing that education can do will
enable a non-selected [i.e., inherently inferior] group
of individuals to approach quality either in ability or
in achievement. Indeed, it may be confidently asserted
that the net result of education is to magnify differen-
ces rather than eliminate them” (Strayer &
Engelhardt, 1920, quoted in Reese, 2005,
pp. 155–156).
Underlying the meritocracy paradigm was an
assumption that the existing social and economic hier-
archy was right and natural; the challenge was in effi-
ciently slotting people into their appropriate places in
that social order (Farrington & Small, 2008). Early in
the twentieth century, taxpayers were adamant that
their money not be wasted on students who engen-
dered little hope for academic success. As educational
historian David Labaree (1988) explained,
“Meritocratic theory argues that individual differences
in ability, motivation, and character define varying
degrees of individual worth or merit. Accordingly,
those with the most merit should receive the largest
share of social rewards, and it becomes society’s
responsibility to guarantee that people get what they
deserve” (p. 23). All the mechanisms of “meritocracy”
in our current system (and there are many) derive
from this central aim of identifying and rewarding
academic merit.
The early architects of the “modern” American
school system in the early twentieth century were also
true believers in the “cult of efficiency” (Callahan,
1962), an orientation toward the administration of
public services that reshaped our understanding of
school into an economic enterprise rather than a
moral, civic, or humanistic one. These architects
revered standardization, doubling down on the batch-
processing pedagogy originated in the 19th century:
teachers delivered preset curricula to students in large

classrooms with desks bolted forward, tested children’s
retention of information, meticulously recorded marks
and grades, and marched forward through the text-
book (Cuban, 1993; Tyack, 1974). The foundational
structures laid in the 1800s and early 1900s still
largely dictate the type of education most students
receive in high schools today, regardless of how our
beliefs and goals might (or might not) have changed.
A small percentage of children has always thrived
under this system; teachers and administrators
deemed them the most intelligent and deserving stu-
dents, and promoted them to the next grade. It is crit-
ical to understand that the percentage of children who
benefited from this system is and has always been
small. The fundamental purpose of a “meritocratic”
education system is to identify and educate a small
subset of students, while progressively weeding out all
of those who do not excel by whatever particular met-
rics we have devised (Farrington, 2014). A hundred
years ago, most children left formal education before
high school and repeated at least one grade while still
enrolled. This is to say that the pace of instruction
was not calibrated to the pace at which most students
were learning. But of course that was the point: to dif-
ferentiate the small percentage of students who could
keep up with this accelerated pace. In 1909, “the aver-
age child in the average city school system progres-
s[ed] … at the rate of eight grades in ten years”
(Ayres, 1909, p. 88). By the time students left formal
schooling, the researcher noted, the vast majority were
“thoroughly trained in failure” (Ayres, 1909, p. 220).
A call for rigorous academic standards
Against this basic premise of schooling as meritocracy,
several recurring criticisms have shaped practice in
K–12 schools. One was the push for schools to be
more academically rigorous and, further, to hold uni-
formly high academic expectations for everyone. This
push for more rigor most often took the form of add-
itional, advanced course requirements at the high
school level. In the early 21st century, the Common
Core State Standards, Next Generation Science
Standards, and other state-specific academic standards
aim to raise the level of intellectual rigor for all stu-
dents in K–12 classrooms. However, the push for aca-
demic standards has deep roots. As far back as 1893,
the National Education Association’s “Committee of
Ten” unanimously insisted on a college preparatory
education for all high school students, regardless of
their college aspirations. (This was particularly note-
worthy in 1893, when fewer than 5% of young people
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 3
went to college.) The Committee asserted that rigor-
ous study in mathematics, science, and languages
would develop in all students the “powers of obser-
vation, memory, expression, and reasoning” that
would benefit them throughout life (National
Education Association, 1894, p. 57). Furthermore,
they argued, high schools should not foreclose a stu-
dent’s option to attend college by offering courses
of study that would not qualify them for college
admission. The effect of the Committee of Ten
report was to largely standardize the high school
curriculum and institutionalize the requirement that
all students take multiple years of coursework
organized around individual disciplines (mathemat-
ics, sciences, history, geography, English composition
and literature, and at least one additional language),
which is the basic structure of the vast majority of
high schools today.
Yet, a hundred years later, concerns about lax aca-
demic standards persisted. Students experienced
widely different quality and depth of academic
instruction, depending on where they attended school
and into which track they were programed. The archi-
tects of modern-day standards reform were motivated
by a deep commitment to ensuring high academic
expectations for all children, regardless of race, gen-
der, or geography, with equal access to rigorous cur-
ricula that would allow each child to fully develop
their intellectual capacity. Under No Child Left
Behind, the federal policy requirement of disaggregat-
ing data by student subgroups would hold schools
accountable for educating everyone. Most reformers
also believed that, in addition to articulating clear
standards, states should ensure that teachers and stu-
dents had the resources necessary to meet those
standards, in the form of high-quality curricula,
ongoing professional development, and sufficient
instructional time.
The goals of the academic standards movement are
not only noble, they are also more aligned with sci-
ence than are the pessimistic assumptions of a strictly
meritocratic system. As we learn more about the
brain’s plasticity and the ways teachers can optimize
learning, it becomes clear that the vast majority of
students have the raw materials to engage in rigorous
academic work and to meet high standards of achieve-
ment. Yet, there has been major pushback against the
standards movement, not because of its basic goals,
but because of the unintended consequences of
its policies.
First and foremost, while the movement largely
succeeded in implementing rigorous standards for all
4 C. A. FARRINGTON
children, deep inequities persisted in funding and
resources, and hence in learning opportunities to
actually meet the higher bar. Many districts imple-
mented new standards without concomitant support
for high-quality curricula or teacher professional
development. While disaggregated data may be a net
positive, the Federal No Child Left Behind legislation
also put in place an accountability structure that
substantially increased students’ exposure to high-
stakes tests. To ensure sufficient instructional time
for tested subjects (primarily math and reading),
elementary and middle schools narrowed their cur-
ricula and increased didactic instruction, particularly
in schools serving low-income students and students
of color (Au, 2007; Hamilton et al., 2007; McMurrer,
2007; Valli & Buese, 2007). Harvard professor Jal
Mehta recently observed that, despite the intentions
of proponents:
The effort to close achievement gaps has in practice
doubled down on the century-old industrial model of
schooling: … teaching as transmission, batch
processing of students, conventional assessments,
tracking and leveling, and all the rest. Anything that
moves away from those assumptions—like project-
based learning, problem-based learning,
interdisciplinary learning, authentic assessment, or
constructivist pedagogy—is seen as ‘risky;’ something
that is ‘OK for the privileged kids’ but somehow
distracts from the real work of closing achievement
gaps on state-sponsored tests. (Mehta, 2019)
Furthermore, the punitive consequences for low-
performing schools set up an environment of compli-
ance and fear. Compounding these challenges, new
academic standards left intact an old educational sys-
tem designed to promote high performers and weed
out everybody else. The underlying mechanics of mer-
itocracy were not well suited to the expectation that
all students would meet a shared set of rigor-
ous standards.
A call for more holistic development
Whereas one recurring theme has been the call for
schools to be more academically rigorous, another
recurring criticism is that schools pay too much atten-
tion to academics at the cost of broader student devel-
opment. New urgency around social-emotional
learning has been fueled by this sense that schools
have focused too narrowly on academic knowledge
and skills, forgetting that young people need a broader
set of competencies to be healthy and successful in
the world. Over the past 150 years, critics have pushed
schools to include more “elective” (non-academic)
courses, as well as hygiene and health education, arts
and music, vocational training, moral education, and
civics classes (Kliebard, 2004). As the president of the
Chicago Board of Education lamented early in the
20th century, “Our high schools place too great
importance upon the training of brainworkers and too
little stress upon the training for manual arts. We can-
not all be poets and professors, you know” (“Pleads
for new school methods,” 1909, p. 20). More recently,
researchers have called for universal, school-based
social-emotional competence interventions at scale
because, they argued, social-emotional competence is
“critical to success in school and life for all children”
(Domitrovich et al., 2017, p. 408).
These competing movements in education have
created a pendulum swing of programs and policies
for over a century, as efforts to increase intellectual
rigor—particularly in the high school—alternate with
movements to make schooling more directly useful,
beneficial, and relevant to more people.
A call for racial equity
Woven throughout this educational history is yet
another set of voices, arguing that, regardless of
whether the focus is on academic or more holistic
development, schools are racist institutions that pur-
sue these goals in ways that perpetuate stereotypes
and reproduce racial inequality. Some critics rejected
the basic premise of meritocracy; they argued it was
the inequitable distribution of opportunity that deter-
mined educational achievement and life outcomes.
Rather than selecting and sorting children into the
socioeconomic slots they “deserved,” some critics
argued that public education should be a vehicle for
upending an unjust social order by providing to those
who have been oppressed the means to end their
oppression. Others believed in a meritocratic system,
but they wanted a level playing field to enter the com-
petition. Early battles for racial equity centered on
policies of racial exclusion, where parents fought to
secure equal access to education in the public institu-
tions attended by White students. Black and Native
American families, as well as families who had immi-
grated from Mexico, China, and Japan, have each had
to sue for the rights of their children to attend regular
public schools in the United States (Spring, 1986). As
communities of color secured legal rights of access to
education, they still found that their children were
having different experiences—and starkly different
outcomes on average—from White children. Concerns
about implicit bias, low expectations, and lingering

stereotypes of intellectual inferiority have prompted
demands for culturally competent educators and more
culturally responsive schools, particularly in urban
school districts that predominantly serve African
American and Latino students. Educational equity is
commanding renewed attention as of late, in the face
of persistent racial disparities in funding, opportunity,
and outcomes, within a system that too often seems
wholly unresponsive to the long-standing concerns of
communities of color. The push-back against social-
emotional learning programs must also be understood
in this light.
Looking forward: The science of learning and
development
Across these recurring criticisms, one thing seems
clear: our current system of K–12 public schooling is
still inadequate to the task of preparing a diverse gen-
eration of young people for the future. It may be that
coursework is not rigorous enough, that schools focus
too narrowly on academics at the expense of broader
development, or that we allow racial disparities to
continue unabated; whatever the cause, most observers
agree that schools need to undergo some fundamental
transformation if they are to advance democracy and
meet the needs of a diverse citizenry. As we collect-
ively consider what 21st century learning might look
like in the United States, the tension between these
enduring aims and criticisms is alive and well. This
tension plays out every day in school board meetings,
state houses, think tanks, advocacy organizations,
business roundtables, research centers, newspaper edi-
torials, opinion pieces, PTO meetings, and in the daily
lives of teachers, school leaders, children, and parents
across the country.
Amid these debates, we also have a new body of
evidence synthesizing the science of human learning
and development (Cantor et al., 2018; Farrington
et al., 2012; Immordino-Yang et al., 2018; Nagaoka
et al., 2015; Osher et al., 2017) and applying this
research to K–12 school practice (Darling-Hammond,
Flook, Cook-Harvey, Barron, & Osher, 2019). What I
find most hopeful in this recent body of work is that
it provides the basis for a unified path forward for a
new American education: education that is simultan-
eously rigorous, and holistic, and liberatory.
The stakes are high. Children coming of age in this
century will grow up in a society that is richly diverse,
where no single racial or ethnic group holds a major-
ity. Together, this generation is inheriting a world of
escalating economic inequality, deep cultural divides,
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 5
disruptive technologies likely to transform the organ-
ization and nature of work, and potentially existential
threats to the health of our planet. We need schools
that prepare young people not so much to “fit in” to
an existing social and economic order, but to leverage
their intelligence, passions, and cultural assets to vig-
orously “bend” the nation and the world “toward
justice” in an era that will require much of them.
The science of learning and development provides
reason for us to be incredibly optimistic about our
collective human capacity to meet these challenges.
The emerging picture indicates that every human
being has much richer potential than we may have
imagined. We also know this critical key: that develop-
mental experiences and human relationships are what
cultivate that potential in young people, assuming we
are also committed and organized to meet their basic
physical needs.
Subjective meaning of American
K–12 education
Public education is contested space. The schools in
which the vast majority of children are educated today
are the amalgamated products of two centuries of
push and pull in the debate over the desired ends and
means of public schooling. Systems and structures
designed so “geniuses [could be] raked from the
rubbish”2 sit side by side with policies intended to set
high academic expectations for students regardless of
race, culture, language, religion, gender, or learning
differences. The critical point that the science of learn-
ing and development should make clear to us is that
these systems, structures, policies, and practices have
psychological weight. They mean something to stu-
dents, and teachers, and parents; and, this meaning
shapes their thinking about school and learning and
each other, and defines what is possible for them to
achieve there.
The frame of these enduring educational aims and
criticisms provides context for the present conversa-
tion about how best to support the social, emotional,
and academic development of young people in public
schools today. Recent scholarship such as the compre-
hensive work by Darling-Hammond et al. (2019)
2
Thomas Jefferson (1788, p. 156), writing in support of publicly-funded
education for White children in Virginia in order to identify a talented
few, argued that: “Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be
made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of
the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed.
By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the
rubbish annually, and be instructed at the public expense, so far as the
grammar schools go.”
6 C. A. FARRINGTON
allows us to leverage the lessons learned from two
centuries of reform to design rigorous and culturally
responsive learning environments that enable the
equitable learning and holistic development of all chil-
dren, along with the necessary learning and develop-
ment of the adults who must make this happen. By
underscoring the importance of students’ subjective
experience in schools, coupled with our deepening
understanding of the psychological conditions that
support academic engagement, the cumulative science
of learning and development puts us in a position to
make radical change in American education. I focus
here on the high school, as this seems to me the most
problematic of our current educational institutions—
and the most misaligned with everything we know
about learning and development.
Adolescent development and American
high schools
What the science of learning and development makes
clear is that human beings construct meaning from
events and interactions, and those meanings can have
a greater impact on a person’s behavior and future
development than the events and interactions them-
selves. Adolescence is a critical stage of human devel-
opment. Teenagers are in the midst of leaving behind
childhood and contemplating who they will become as
adults. This gives rise to three deep psychosocial pre-
occupations: developing their own interests and attrib-
utes (learning about the Self); understanding their
place within the social world of peers and adults
beyond their family (learning about Others); and
building general knowledge and understanding of how
things work (learning about the World) (Farrington,
Kroshinsky, Beechum, Johnshon, & Weiss, 2018).3
Adolescents tend to view everything they encounter
through this self-referential lens: Who am I? Where
do I fit in? What am I capable of? How might I con-
tribute to the world? (Farrington et al., 2012; Nagaoka
et al., 2015).
Young people are actively scanning their environ-
ments for new or confirmatory information about
themselves, others, and the larger world, building up
schema to guide them in the future. During adoles-
cence, they are also actively developing their identities
as racialized and gendered people, coming to under-
stand what it means to be a Latina or an African
American male or a White transgendered person in
3
This section of the article draws extensively from a previously
unpublished paper written for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(Farrington et al., 2018).
the world. All of this is in play when a student inter-
acts with peers and adults at school.
High school students are trying to make sense of
themselves and the world in an educational system
that sends very mixed messages about their identities
and their futures: we encourage students to dream big
and set high aspirations, and yet we continually
remind them that they are being rank-ordered in a
way that will largely determine their options. We say
we care about their learning, but if they struggle to
understand something, we leave them behind and
move on to the next unit.
When young people enter a high school classroom,
they must situate themselves psychologically within an
environment that can directly influence their motiv-
ation and engagement in learning (Dweck, Walton, &
Cohen, 2011). How am I feeling today? What do I
think of this academic task that my teacher is asking
me to do? Is it relevant or meaningful to me? Do I
find it interesting? Do I know how to do it? Do I
think I will be successful? Do I trust that my teacher
knows what she’s talking about and has my best inter-
ests at heart? Does she even know me? How am I
feeling about the other people in my class today? Am
I worried about an interaction I had with one of my
peers? Why am I doing this anyway? Do I believe it
will get me where I want to go? Do I even know
where I want to go? Students are not likely to directly
ask themselves this series of questions, but the list
illustrates the psychological dynamics that shape their
performance.
Students of color, particularly, receive mixed mes-
sages in school, where a “colorblind" notion of aca-
demic success collides with racial stereotypes about
chronic underperformance. Theresa Perry (2003)
argued that the contextual nature of learning makes
the task of high academic achievement “distinctive”
for African American students particularly. She poses
some questions of her own that can be added to the
aforementioned list:
How do I commit myself to do work that is
predicated on a belief in the power of the mind,
when African-American intellectual inferiority is so
much a part of the taken-for-granted notions of the
larger society that individuals in and out of school,
even good and well-intentioned people, individuals
who purport to be acting on my behalf, routinely
register doubts about my intellectual competence?
Can I commit myself to work hard over time if I
know that, no matter what I or other members of my
reference group accomplish, these accomplishments
are not likely to change how [we] are viewed by the

larger society, or to alter our castelike position in the
society? I still will not be able to get a cab. I still will
be followed in department stores. I still will be
stopped when I drive through certain neighborhoods.
I will still be viewed as a criminal, a deviant, and an
illiterate. (Perry, 2003, pp. 5–6)
We know from psychological science that how
young people interpret their environments largely
shapes their behavior and performance in those set-
tings. In applying basic research about child and ado-
lescent psychosocial development to schools and
classrooms, researchers have identified several key
beliefs that support motivated learning, with evidence
across academic content areas and student demo-
graphic and achievement characteristics. These beliefs
have more recently come to be known as “learning
mindsets” (Quay & Romero, 2015). Learning mindsets
draw upon various aspects of students’ perceptions of
themselves, others, and the world to make sense of
and respond to learning situations and challenges, and
there is a robust body of evidence showing that learn-
ing mindsets are positively related to student behav-
iors, persistence, and performance on academic tasks
(Paunesku et al., 2015; Farrington et al., 2012; Yeager
& Walton, 2011). Learning mindsets align with stu-
dents’ needs for competence, relatedness, and auton-
omy (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Niemiec & Ryan, 2009) and
can be summarized by four first-person statements:
1. I belong in this learning community. [Belonging,
identity safety, relatedness]
2. I can succeed at this. [Self-efficacy/expectancy of
success, competence]
3. My ability and competence grow with my effort.
[Growth mindset, locus of control, autonomy]
4. This work has value for me. [Value, relevance,
purpose, autonomy]
When students believe these things to be true, they
are more likely to focus their attention on learning
and to persevere with challenging academic tasks.
When students perceive that any of these is not true,
they are more likely to disengage from learning
(Farrington et al., 2012).
Students’ choices about engagement or disengage-
ment are highly consequential. Over time, positive
mindsets and active engagement in learning are associ-
ated with deeper understanding of academic concepts
and better academic achievement, as well as enjoyment
of learning and development of positive academic
identities. Conversely, maladaptive mindsets become
part of a recursive cycle of withdrawal from learning
(Yeager & Walton, 2011), leading to gaps in knowledge
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 7
and skills that can undermine students’ future learning
as well as their enjoyment of and confidence in their
learning ability (Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990).
Whether or not students “believe” in or endorse a
particular mindset has to do with both their own sub-
jective (internal) experience and more objective (exter-
nal) conditions of the learning context. Across subject
areas and grade levels, particular aspects of learning
environments and of teachers’ instructional practices
have been shown to influence students’ mindsets and
psychological experience of learning. These include:
norms and routines for student and teacher interac-
tions in the classroom, the depth and quality of the
learning tasks, teacher grading practices (Black &
Wiliam, 2004), the quality and frequency of feedback
(Hattie, 1992), opportunities for student autonomy and
choice (Froiland, Davison, & Worrell, 2016) as well as
for collaborative learning (Boaler & Greeno, 2000),
messages about the nature and purpose of learning and
the role of mistakes in the learning process (Turner
et al., 2002), teachers’ affective support for learning
(Sakiz, Pape, & Hoy, 2012), and the extent to which the
teacher connects learning to students’ prior knowledge
and interests (Gordon & Bridglall, 2006).
Scholarship on the science of learning and develop-
ment has also investigated the extent to which the
persistence of inequitable educational outcomes might
be explained by a mismatch between the dominant
culture of schools and the cultural worlds (and cul-
tural models of self) of African American, Latinx, and
low-income students (Fryberg & Markus, 2007;
Hammond, 2015). Research on culturally responsive
classrooms and instructional practices is building evi-
dence to show that children and adolescents are more
likely to engage in learning when norms and practices
within schools and classrooms align with students’
home cultures (Au & Jordan, 1981; Brady, Germano,
& Fryberg, 2017; Espinoza-Herold, 2003; Hollins,
1996; Ladson-Billings, 1994). In aligned contexts, stu-
dents are more likely to feel seen, known, and valued
by their teachers, and to trust them as reliable and
legitimate sources of support for learning.
Culturally responsive practices support the creation
of what have been called “identity-safe” learning envi-
ronments (Steele & Cohn-Vargas, 2013), where young
people feel like they can bring their full selves into a
learning space, where they routinely see “people like
them” engaged in deep intellectual work, and where
learning “makes sense” to them based on their encul-
tured understanding of themselves and the world
(Oyserman & Fryberg, 2006; Oyserman, Terry, &
Bybee, 2002). Identity-safe environments are
8 C. A. FARRINGTON
psychologically safe and welcoming not only in regard
to racial/ethnic cultural identity, but to the many
other aspects of identity that make students whole
people, including home language, socio-economic sta-
tus, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affili-
ation, physical ability/disability, and special
educational needs. Teachers who are able to take the
time to know and understand their students are also
more able to be inclusive of and responsive to stu-
dents’ individual interests, preferences, and goals.
The science of learning and development tells us
that human beings are active agents in their own
development. Not only do people seek out situations
and experiences that affect their learning, but they
interpret the meaning of situations and experiences in
ways that profoundly shape the impact those stimuli
have on development (Osher et al., 2017). We also
know that schools and classrooms are powerful con-
texts for learning and development, and that teachers
can directly control (or at least strongly influence)
most psychologically important aspects of classrooms.
How does this fact help to resolve the tension
between academic rigor, SEL, and equity? I share the
conviction of academic standards proponents that
schools need to hold high expectations for students’
work and learning. Indeed, the most vocal of school
critics on issues of racial equity explicitly call for high
intellectual expectations of students of color (Gordon
& Bridglall, 2006; Steele & Cohn-Vargas, 2013; Perry,
Steele, & Hilliard, 2003). The problem has been, how-
ever, that “business as usual” in traditional schools
and classrooms has not been at all effective in creating
the conditions to support students of color to rou-
tinely meet those high expectations. Furthermore, des-
pite decades of reform efforts, we have made little
progress as a nation in eliminating differences in aca-
demic performance across racial/ethnic groups.
Social-psychological mindset interventions in educa-
tion are demonstrating that creating the right psycho-
logical conditions (or experimentally manipulating
students’ perceptions of those conditions) within a
specific education setting can significantly improve the
performance of students of color. Some of these condi-
tions are enhanced by the explicit development of stu-
dents’ social-emotional skills (e.g., teaching strategies
for successful collaboration with peers), but most of
the psychological conditions that support adaptive
mindsets are created by making different pedagogical
choices in the classroom. For example, teachers can
give “wise feedback” (Yeager et al., 2014) that conveys
high standards and belief in a student’s ability, along
with explicit strategy suggestions, without taking up
additional instructional time. Students of color have
been shown to respond positively to wise feedback in a
way that increases their academic performance. This is
an example of a way to leverage a social-emotional
approach to support students in reaching high aca-
demic goals, and it has the added benefit of being par-
ticularly effective with students of color.
Darling-Hammond et al. (2019) created an exten-
sive overview of specific SEL and SEAD practices
shown to support students’ learning and development.
Teachers, school leaders, and district and state admin-
istrators would most benefit from this list if they keep
these basic ideas in mind: (1) What young people
experience within their schools and classrooms has a
big impact on their learning and development, but
how they interpret those experiences is even more
important; (2) teachers can ensure that students have
particularly rich experiences and opportunities avail-
able to them, and furthermore, they can shape how
students make meaning of those experiences; (3)
Many if not most of the existing structures, policies,
and practices in K–12 education—particularly at the
high school level—were designed a long time ago to
accomplish some very different student outcomes: pri-
marily to sort and winnow. Therefore, to ensure stu-
dents meet high academic expectations, teachers will
need to step outside the lines of routine instructional
practice. This is particularly true for teachers working
with students of color, low-income students, English
language learners, or other young people who have
been historically marginalized in schools and society.
The recommended practices in Darling-Hammond
et al. (2019) have evidence of effectiveness precisely
because they respond to students’ psychological needs.
Intentionally creating counter-narratives of achieve-
ment for marginalized students—backed up by practi-
ces that directly support their success—is the best bet
we have for eliminating differences in academic
achievement among subgroups as we raise the bar for
quality work. The process for working toward educa-
tional equity has to begin by being in proximity to
the students, families, and communities most affected
by inequity, listening to understand their experiences,
and working to change the structures and practices
that they identify as being most in their way.
Liberatory education is a collective process of under-
standing the system in which we are each located,
understanding how this system is experienced by
those who benefit the least from it, and using what-
ever power we have to co-create more equitable struc-
tures and practices.

References
Anderson, J. D. (1988). The education of Blacks in the
South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press. doi:10.1086/ahr/95.3.915
Aspen Institute, Education and Society Program. (2018).
Pursuing social and emotional development through a
racial equity lens: A call for action. Washington, DC:
Aspen Institute, Education and Society Program.
Au, W. (2007). High-stakes testing and curricular control: A
qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5),
258–267. doi:10.3102/0013189X07306523
Au, K., & Jordan, C. (1981). Teaching reading to Hawaiian
children: Finding a culturally appropriate solution. In H.
Trueba, G. Guthrie & K. Au (Eds.), Culture and the bilin-
gual classroom: Studies in classroom ethnography (pp.
139–152). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Ayres, L. P. (1909). Laggards in our schools: A study of
retardation and elimination in city school systems.
Philadelphia, PA: Russell Sage Foundation.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2004). The formative purpose:
Assessment must first promote learning. In M. Wilson
(Ed.), Toward coherence between classroom assessment
and accountability. 103rd Yearbook of the National
Society for the Study of Education (pp. 20–50). Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Boaler, J., & Greeno, J. G. (2000). Identity, agency, and
knowing in mathematics worlds. In J. Boaler (Ed.),
Multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learn-
ing (pp. 171–200). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Brady, L. M., Germano, A. L., & Fryberg, S. A., (2017).
Leveraging cultural differences to promote educational
equality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 79–83. doi:
10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.003
Callahan, R. E. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cantor, P., Osher, D., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2018).
Maleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children
learn and develop in context. Applied Developmental
Science. doi:10.1080/10888691.2017.1398649.
Chatmon, L. R., & Osta, K. (2018). August 17). Social-emo-
tional learning can build a more-inclusive school commu-
nity – but only if done well. Education Week
Commentary, 38(1), 32.
Conant, J. B. (1961). Slums and suburbs: A commentary on
schools in metropolitan Areas. New York: McGraw Hill.
Cuban, L. (1993). How teachers taught: Constancy and
change in American classrooms 1880-1990 (2nd ed.). New
York: Teachers College Press.
Darling-Hammond, L., Flook, L., Cook-Harvey, C., Barron,
B., & Osher, D. (2019). Implications for educational prac-
tice of the science of learning and development. Applied
Developmental Science, 1.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why”
of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination
of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
Dench, G. (Ed.). (2006). The rise and rise of meritocracy.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Deschenes, S., Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (2001). Mismatch:
Historical perspectives on schools and students who
don’t fit them. Teachers College Record, 103(4), 525–547.
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 9
Domitrovich, C. E., Durlak, J. A., Staley, K. C., &
Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Social-emotional competence:
An essential factor for promoting positive adjustment
and reducing risk in school children. Child Development,
88(2), 408–416. doi:10.1111/cdev.12739
Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011).
Academic tenacity: Mindsets and skills that promote long-
term learning. Paper prepared for the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA.
Espinoza-Herold, M. (2003). Issues in Latino education:
Race, school culture, and the politics of academic success.
Boston, MA: Pearson Education Group.
Farrington, C. A. (2014). Failing at school: Lessons for rede-
signing urban high schools. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Farrington, C. A., Kroshinsky, F., Beechum, N. O.,
Johnshon, D. W., & Weiss, E. M. (2018). Middle years
math: Executive summary of evidence on student and
teacher social-emotional learning. Prepared for the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. Chicago: University of
Chicago Consortium on School Research.
Farrington, C. A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka,
J., Keyes, T. S., Johnson, D. W., & Beechum, N. O.
(2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners: The role
of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance – A
critical literature review. Chicago: University of Chicago
Consortium on School Research.
Farrington, C. A., & Small, M. H. (2008). A new model of
student assessment for the 21st century. Washington, DC:
American Youth Policy Forum.
Franklin, V. P., & Savage, C. J. (Eds.), (2004). Cultural cap-
ital and Black education: African American communities
and the funding of Black schooling, 1865 to the present.
Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Froiland, J. M., Davison, M. L., & Worrell, F. C. (2016).
Aloha teachers: Teacher autonomy support promotes
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students’ motiv-
ation, school belonging, course-taking and math achieve-
ment. Social Psychology of Education, 19(4), 879–894. doi:
10.1007/s11218-016-9355-9
Fryberg, S. A., & Markus, H. R. (2007). Cultural models of
education in American Indian, Asian American and
European American contexts. Social Psychology of
Education, 10(2), 213–246. doi:10.1007/s11218-007-9017-z
Gordon, E. W., & Bridglall, B. L.,. In (2006). The affirmative
development of academic ability: In pursuit of social just-
ice. In A. F. Ball (Ed.), With more deliberate speed:
Achieving equity and excellence in education – Realizing
the full potential of Brown v. Board of Education, 105th
Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of
Education, Part 2 (pp. 58–68). Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Gregory, A., & Fergus, E. (2017). Social and emotional
learning and equity in school discipline. The Future of
Children, 27(1), 117–136. doi:10.1353/foc.2017.0006
Hamilton, L. S., Stecher, B. M., Marsh, J. A., McCombs,
J. S., Robyn, A., & Russell, J. L. (2007). Standards-based
accountability under No Child Left Behind: Experiences of
teachers and administrators in three states. Santa Monica,
CA: RAND.
Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching & the
brain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
10 C. A. FARRINGTON
Hattie, J. A. (1992). Measuring the effects of schooling.
Australian Journal of Education, 36(1), 5–13.
Herold, B. (2015). Is ‘grit’ racist? Education Week, Digital
Education Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.edweek.org/
edweek/DigitalEducation/2015/01/is_grit_racist.html (accessed
on January 24, 2015).
Hollins, E. R. (1996). Culture in school learning: Revealing
the deep meaning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., Darling-Hammond, L., & Krone,
C. (2018). The brain basis for integrated social, emotional,
and academic development: How emotions and social rela-
tionships drive learning. Washington, DC: The Aspen
Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, &
Academic Development.
Jagers, R. (2018). Why we can’t have social and emotional
learning without equity. Education Week, Learning Is
Social & Emotional Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.
edweek.org/edweek/learning_social_emotional/2018/07/
why_we_cant_have_social_and_emotional_learning_with-
out_equity.html (accessed on July 6, 2018).
Jefferson, T. (1788). Notes on the State of Virginia.
Philadelphia, PA: Prichard and Hall. https://docsouth.
unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/jefferson.html
Kliebard, H. M. (2004). The struggle for the American curricu-
lum 1893-1958 (3rd edition). New York: Routledge Falmer.
Labaree, D. F. (1988). The making of an American high
school: The credentials market and the Central High
School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939 New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful
teachers of African American children. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass. doi:10.1093/sw/21.2.166
MacDonald, V. (Ed.). (2004). Latino education in the United
States: A narrated history from 1513-2000. New York:
Palgrave MacMillan.
McMurrer, J. (2007). Choices, changes, and challenges:
Curriculum and instruction in the NCLB era.
Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy.
Meece, J. L., Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (1990). Predictors
of math anxiety and its influence on young adolescents’
course enrollment intentions and performance in math-
ematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 60. doi:
10.1037//0022-0663.82.1.60
Mehta, J., (2019). Why equity has been a conservative force
in American education – and how that could change.
Education Week. Next Gen Learning in Action Blog.
Retrieved from https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/next_gen_
learning/2019/02/why_equity_conservative_force_American_
education.html (accessed on February 14, 2019).
Nagaoka, J., Farrington, C. A., Ehrlich, S. B., & Heath,
R. D. (2015). Foundations for young adult success: A
developmental framework. Chicago: University of Chicago
Consortium on School Research.
National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic
Development (2018). How learning happens: Supporting
students’ social, emotional, and academic development.
Interim Report. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute.
National Education Association (1894). Report of the
Committee on Secondary School Studies. New York:
American Book Company.
Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, compe-
tence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-
determination theory to educational practice. School
Field, 7(2), 133–144. doi:10.1177/1477878509104318
Osher, D., Cantor, P., Berg, J., Steyer, L., & Rose, T. (2017).
Drivers of human development: How relationships and con-
text shape learning and development. Applied
Developmental Science. doi:10.1080/10888691.2017.1398650
Oyserman, D., & Fryberg, S. (2006). The possible selves of
diverse adolescents: Content and function across gender,
race and national origin. In C. Dunkel & J. Kerpelman
(Eds.), Possible selves: Theory, research, and applications
(pp. 17–39). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Oyserman, D., Terry, K., & Bybee, D. (2002). A possible
selves intervention to enhance school involvement.
Journal of Adolescence, 25(3), 313–326.
Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N.,
Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-set interven-
tions are a scalable treatment for academic underachieve-
ment. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784–793. doi:10.1177/
0956797615571017
Perry, T. (2003). Up from the parched earth: Toward a the-
ory of African-American achievement. In T. Perry, C.
Steele, & A. G. Hilliard III (Eds.), Young, gifted, and
Black: Promoting high achievement among African-
American students. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Perry, T., Steele, C., & Hilliard III, A. G. (2003). Young,
gifted, and Black: Promoting high achievement among
African-American students. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
“Pleads for new school methods.” (1909). Chicago Daily
Tribune, p. 20.
Quay, L., & Romero, C. (2015). What we know about learn-
ing mindsets from scientific research. Mindset Scholars
Network. Retrieved from http://mindsetscholarsnetwork.
org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/What-We-Know-About-
Learning-Mindsets.pdf
Reese, W. J. (1995). The origins of the American high school.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. doi:10.1086/ahr/
102.1.164
Reese, W. J. (2005). America’s public schools: From the
Common School to “No Child Left Behind.” Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reyhner, J., & Eder, J. (2004). American Indian education:
A history. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Sakiz, G., Pape, S. J., & Hoy, A. W. (2012). Does perceived
teacher affective support matter for middle school stu-
dents in mathematics classrooms?. Journal of School
Psychology, 50(2), 235–255. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2011.10.005
Simmons, D., (2017). Is social-emotional learning really
going to work for students of color? Education Week,
Teacher. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/tm/
articles/2017/06/07/we-need-to-redefine-social-emotional-
learningfor.html (accessed on June 7, 2017).
Spring, J. (1986). The American school: 1642-1985. White
Plains, NY: Longman.
Steele, D. M., & Cohn-Vargas, B. (2013). Identity safe classrooms:
Places to belong and learn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Strayer, G. D., & Engelhardt, N. L. (1920). The classroom
teacher at work in American schools. New York:
American Book Company.
Turner, J. C., Midgley, C., Meyer, D. K., Gheen, M.,
Anderman, E. M., Kang, Y., & Patrick, H. (2002). The
classroom environment and students’ reports of avoid-
ance strategies in mathematics: A multimethod study.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(1), 88. doi:10.1037//
0022-0663.94.1.88
Tyack, D. B., (1974). The one best system: A history of
American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A
century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Valli, L., & Buese, D. (2007). The changing roles of teachers
in an era of high-stakes accountability. American
Educational Research Journal, 44(3), 519–558. doi:
10.3102/0002831207306859
APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 11
Yeager, D. S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Apfel, N.,
Brzustoski, P., Master, A., … Cohen, G. L. (2014).
Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to pro-
vide critical feedback across the racial divide. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 804–824. doi:
10.1037/a0033906
Yeager, D . S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social-psycho-
logical interventions in education: They’re not magic.
Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 267–301. doi:
10.3102/0034654311405999
Young, M. (1996). The rise of meritocracy. New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers.