Social-Emotional Learning Approaches: Prevent Bullying and Promote Positive School Climate

​Dorothy L. Espelage is an Edward William Gutgsell & Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor and Hardie Scholar of Education, in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign. She is recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Prevention Science from the American Psychological Association. She earned her PhD in Counseling Psychology from Indiana University in 1997. She has conducted research on bullying, homophobic teasing, sexual harassment, dating violence, and gang violence for the last 20 years. As a result, she presents regularly at regional, national, and international conferences and is author on over 140 peer-reviewed journal articles and 25 chapters. She is associate editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology. Her research focuses on translating empirical findings into prevention and intervention programming and she has secured five million dollars of external funding. She authored a 2011 White House brief on bullying among LGBTQ youth and attended the White House Conference in 2011. Espelage just completed a CDC-funded study that included a randomized clinical trial of a social emotional learning prevention program in 36 middle schools to reduce aggression.

View her Ed-Talk Factsheet here.

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