The benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) have been evidenced. The most important factor in the success of SEL is the teacher. Beyond assuring that teachers entering the field have the skills and knowledge to teach SEL, they must possess the dispositions to want to teach SEL as well as to establish responsive relationships with learners as diverse individuals. This chapter addresses the need to develop responsive dispositions in action within teacher preparation programs. Studies indicate that there is a lack of instruction in SEL for teacher candidates. Training opportunities that do exist focus on procedures and processes to implement social and emotional learning. Beyond implementation, preparation of novice teachers needs to ensure that they have the dispositions to fully understand and embrace SEL. Strategies and approaches to develop dispositions in preservice teachers that are required for impactful SEL are examined. This is particularly important in working with preservice teachers who may find themselves in schools with students unlike themselves.
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Social and Emotional Learning
Social and emotional learning (SEL) can be thought of as a process by which students learn to recognize and manage emotions, care about others, make good decisions, and behave ethically and responsibly. It is a community-based concept whose goals include developing positive relationships with others. Another goal of SEL is to decrease negative behavior choices and develop a more prosocial orientation for students working together as learners. Social and emotional learning has been implemented across multiple schools throughout the United States, but how it is implemented is important to achieving its goals. SEL teachers and researchers have found that integrating social and emotional skills into learning teaches students critical life skills that positively impact their personal development as well as academic performance (CASEL, 2003). When SEL is integrated into every aspect of the student learning experience, it leads to more equitable learning conditions and allows flexibility to adapt to students’ varied community contexts, needs, and values (Shriver & Weissberg, 2020). This implies that teachers need to be disposed towards making SEL an authentic and embedded part of teaching and learning to meet diverse student needs, rather than disposed to its technical implementation in terms of steps, processes, and materials.
Background
The potential benefits of SEL have been evidenced for several decades. SEL’s origination in the work of James Comer in the late 1960’s at the Yale’s School of Medicine Child Study Center has been followed by multiple successful innovations and was later coined Social Emotional Learning by CASEL (Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning) in 1994. SEL has continued to grow and has recently come to the fore on the national stage as a promising intervention to promote positive, inclusive school cultures, and relationships. More than 90% of schools and districts in the United States report a focus on developing student SEL skills (Duchesneau, 2020). SEL is premised on building five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Previous studies on SEL in the school context largely confirm the positive effects of SEL across all grade levels (e.g., Harrell et al., 2009; Durlak et al., 2011; Sklad et al., 2012; Wigelsworth et al., 2016; Taylor et al., 2017; Corcoran et al., 2018). Research indicates that social and emotional learning leads to improved academic outcomes and behaviors, whose benefits are both long-term and global, helping to improve life outcomes for students (Durlak et al., 2011).
In addition to research on the positive academic impact of SEL, studies also indicate that students value social and emotional learning. Students from schools that embrace SEL describe their learning experiences as supportive and nurturing. SEL cultivates students’ perceptions of themselves as valued members of multi-dimensional learning communities (Jones et al., 2020). Further,
“Students in schools with a strong commitment to social and emotional development report having better learning environments, feeling respected more, feeling safer, doing better academically, getting along well with others better, being better prepared for life, and being more likely to serve and give back to their communities than those students not in such schools” (DePaoli et al., 2018, p.2).