ABSTRACT
How educators and students process and respond to emotions influences children’s education in ways that affect their social, emotional, and cognitive development. A recent meta-analysis of research on programs focused on social and emotional learning (SEL) shows that a systematic process for promoting students’ social and emotional development is the common element among schools that report an increase in academic success, improved quality of relationships between teachers and students, and a decrease in problem behavior (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). SEL can be especially powerful when grounded in theory and empirical evidence and when adult stakeholders in children’s education are actively involved in cultivating and modeling their own social and emotional competencies (Brackett et al., 2009). As this chapter illustrates, SEL programming results in significant shifts in social, emotional, and academic competencies as well as improvements in the quality of learning environments.
