Received: 17 June 2024 Revised: 26 July 2024 Accepted: 6 August 2024 DOI: 10.1002/jcad.12537 RESEARCH ARTICLE Meta-analysis of social and emotional learning interventions delivered by school counselors Matthew E. Lemberger-Truelove 1 Dan Li 2 Hyunhee Kim 3 LeAnn Wills 3 Kaleb Thompson 1 Yung-Yu Lee 1 1 Department of Counseling and Higher Education, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA 2 Department of Health Promotion Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA 3 Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA Correspondence Matthew E. Lemberger-Truelove, Department of Counseling and Higher Education, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle, Welch Complex 2, Denton, TX 76203, USA. Email: matthew.lemberger-truelove@unt.edu In accordance with COPE Standards, the editorial process was decentered from the standard editor who is an author of the current article. The publication decision was made by an assigned Associate Editor using a double-blind procedure. Abstract The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the effectiveness of school counselor-led social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions, including an explo- ration of the moderators that could influence variations in these effect sizes. Drawing from 28 published articles over the last 20 years in school counseling-affiliated aca- demic journals, results indicated that school counseling SEL interventions result in a small to moderate significant mean effect size (Hedges’s g = 0.308). While the mod- erator analyses did not yield statistically significant results, the different magnitudes of the effect sizes across the subgroups based on these moderators have implications for school counseling practice, research, and policymaking. KEYWORDS school counseling, social and emotional learning, student outcomes INTRODUCTION Social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions support students, educators, and other school stakeholders in how they manage affective experiences, build mutual relation- ships, and commit to purposeful decisions (Weissberg et al., 2015). Interventions grounded in SEL are associated with higher levels of academic achievement, fewer disciplinary concerns, and heightened psychological and social expe- riences (Corcoran et al., 2018; Domitrovich et al., 2022; Durlak et al., 2011, 2022). The pertinence of SEL for school counselors is evident, as the American School Counseling Association (ASCA) (2021) created the ASCA Student Stan- dards: Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success, which were influenced by SEL scholarship and reflect overlap- ping competencies within SEL theory (Dolan, 2022; Roche et al., 2020). Despite the commonalities between ASCA and SEL, school systems often compromise the delivery of direct counseling services and the formal implementation of © 2024 by the American Counseling Association. SEL programming (Van Velsor, 2009). Additionally, in many schools, school counselors are assigned as primary providers of SEL, tasking them with the challenging role of advocat- ing for these necessary programs while at the same time encumbering them with limited resources (e.g., time, training, financial support; Lindsey, 2024). While school counseling services are largely in harmony with SEL, the empirical literature pertaining to school counselor-delivered SEL interventions is lacking. This is not surprising given school counseling interventions constitute 0.1% of the counseling literature and few of these studies include a description of the conceptual framework (Griffith et al., 2019). The paucity of robust empirical support is especially troubling given that contemporary students and educators are experiencing profound mental and social duress (Harding et al., 2019). Considered together, it is important to know if school counselor-led SEL interventions contribute to desired development but also what qualities of practice might best contribute to these aspirational ends. J Couns Dev. 2024;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcad 1