School leaders must navigate nonacademic barriers to learning. One type of affective, nonacademic reform is social-emotional learning (SEL), a quickly growing K–12 school initiative. Yet scant empirical literature exists on the actions, interactions, and beliefs of school principals charged with leading SEL reforms. The needs of diverse learners in SEL reforms—and how school leaders might create culturally relevant, gender-aware, queer-friendly SEL programming—are ignored by empirical research. This article seeks to contribute conceptually by exploring two questions: To what extent does current research inform school leadership of SEL implementation for diverse learners? How might school leaders conceptualize the implementation of SEL reforms from a caring, equity-oriented lens? A leadership framework for SEL reforms, rooted in caring and equity, is proposed.

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Purpose There is a growing consensus in education that schools can and should attend to students’ social-emotional development. Emerging research and popular texts indicate that students’ mindsets, beliefs, dispositions, emotions and behaviors can advance outcomes, such as college readiness, career success, mental health and relationships. Despite this growing awareness, many districts and schools are still struggling to implement strategies that develop students’ social-emotional skills. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by examining the social-emotional learning (SEL) practices in ten middle schools with strong student-reported data on SEL outcomes, particularly for African American and Latinx students. Design/methodology/approach Case study methods, including interviews, observations and document analysis, were employed. Findings The authors identify six categories of common SEL practices: strategies that promote positive school climate and relationships, supporting positive behavior, use of elective courses and extracurricular activities, SEL-specific classroom practices and curricula, personnel strategies and measurement and data use. Absence of a common definition of SEL and lack of alignment among SEL practices were two challenges cited by respondents. Originality/value This is the first study to analyze SEL practices in outlier schools, with a focus on successful practices with schools that have a majority of African American and/or Latinx students.

Although school choice advocates often promote a vision of additional schooling options for all students, the predominant target of school choice researchers has been densely populated, urban cores in the United States. However, this belies the fact that many rural communities have similarly engaged in forms of school choice decision-making. While we do not argue for further encroachment of school choice policies in rural contexts, we believe there are myriad, novel opportunities for meaningful education research regarding school choice, equity, and conceptions of rurality. To advance toward a robust agenda for rural school choice, we review the existing literature on school choice and rural education, provide key recommendations, and assert the need for additional consideration of the following: critical socio-political histories and theories; methodological diversity; issues of race, racism, sexual orientation, and equity; social-emotional learning and development; impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic; and broadened understandings of rurality.