ABSTRACT

This chapter begins by considering how, and why, educators, researchers, and the public have gradually begun recognizing the importance of social-emotional learning to young children’s school readiness and academic success. It aims to specific domains of social-emotional learning—self-regulation, emotion understanding, and social skills—to understand why they are important to classroom success, and what approaches teachers can take to strengthen these capabilities in young children. Educational researchers have gradually recognized the importance of social-emotional learning to school achievement. Once the importance of social-emotional learning to achievement is recognized, the question is how to support this kind of learning. Individual differences in self-regulation have significant consequences for school success because these differences affect many aspects of how young children behave in the classroom. The widening recognition that social-emotional learning is foundational draws renewed attention to the preschool or early elementary classroom as an environment for learning.