Social Emotional Learning has been in the news the past few days — both for good and bad reasons. Here are some new additions to The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the folks behind the PISA tests, published a book that you can read for free online – Skills for Social Progress:The Power of Social and Emotional Skills. Though I am glad they at least don’t call it “non-cognitive skills,” I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed with it. You won’t find a better source of research for why SEL skill development helps students, but it’s remarkably light on recommendations about how to actually help develop those skills.

Rethinking How Students Succeed: A wave of noncognitive skill initiatives holds promise for making teachers more effective and students more successful is a much more accessible report on SEL research and shares a few places that have SEL programs in place.

On the not-so-helpful SEL side of things, David Brooks has written another column related to SEL, The Cost Of Relativism. He apparently wasn’t content with his awful column last year (With Friends Like David Brooks, Social Emotional Learning Doesn’t Need Any Enemies). I was planning on writing a lengthy commentary on his piece, but The New Republic beat me to it — you’ll want to read it.  Brooks’ columns provide more reasons for the cautions I raided in my Washington Post column, The manipulation of Social Emotional Learning.