Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

What is SOCIAL and EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)? It is about becoming SKILLED in dealing with ourselves, our relationships and our learning. There are three words in SEL: SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL and LEARNING.

SOCIAL is our social skills. It is about showing empathy, for example learning to understand other people (pupils/friends/peers/adults) and showing them appreciation. It is about creating positive relationships with others, for example, learning how to collaborate with others and be kind. We can learn SOCIAL SKILLS.

EMOTIONAL is learning to manage our emotions. We experience both positive and negative emotions and thoughts. If we learn to ACCURATELY RECOGNISE and MANAGE our emotions and thoughts, we can choose positive actions and make constructive choices. We can learn EMOTIONAL SKILLS.

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LEARNING indicates that social and emotional skills can be LEARNED by children, young people and adults. Social and emotional skills can also be TAUGHT by adults. Children and young people learn from each other. But children and young people also need a lot of guidance and modelling from adults. We can strengthen social and emotional skills through mindful and systematic training. Then we are able to get along better with others; it can help us in all learning situations. 

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Executive Functions (EF)

What are Executive Functions (EF)? Executive Functions are a set of skills that are necessary for planning, organising, guiding, revising, regulating, and evaluating behaviour to adapt effectively to the environment around us. The skills are called cognitive flexibility, inhibition of response and working memory. Our executive functions are established throughout childhood and develop further into adulthood.

Executive functions (EF) are those that allow us:

• To concentrate and be FOCUSED during a task.

• To REMEMBER information when it is useful to solve a task and juggle MULTIPLE tasks successfully.

• To make PLANS by prioritising tasks, setting and achieving goals, taking actions.

• To REFLECT and notice if we are doing an activity well or not.

• To CHANGE what we are doing if we see that it is not working for us.

• To work even if we want to do something else and avoid things that DISTRACT us.

• To CONTROL impulses.

• To choose how we SOLVE A PROBLEM.
   

Goals

In the REFLECT project we aim to promote children’s social, emotional and academic engagement and growth by offering evidence-based strategies to enhance SEL and EF in daily practice. Ultimately we aim to decrease the risk of social exclusion and improve pupils' academic performance by enhancing the awareness of the importance of SEL and EF and empowering pupils and their context. We will do this by targeting teachers, parents, and pupils. The age range of 8 to 12 years will be our focus because that age is crucial for interventions on SEL and EF. We developed a list of cross-cultural criteria that are essential for an evidence-based intervention on SEL and EF. Based on the literature review we created a compendium of essential evidence-based components for enhancing SEL and EF.

The same teacher course will be implemented in all countries with at least five school teams participating per country. The impact of this course will be evaluated through self-report questionnaires. We want to empower pupils, teachers and parents by creating an app with tips and tricks about SEL and EF.

The result will be an easy-to-implement evidence-based toolbox to promote SEL and EF at different levels, that will be cross-cultural and easily transferable to other users (teachers, parents, pupils) and other countries.

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Approach

See-Think-Say-Do approach

We have developed this reflective coaching model to support the REFLECT programme. It reflects the SEL and EF principles and can be used at any time by pupils, parents and teachers. It offers a process by which behaviours and responses can be explored, mirroring different components of SEL and EF. It provides a flow that takes account of thought and emotions, and creates breathing space to reinforce the use of reflective practices before taking action or saying something. The SEE THINK SAY DO flow uses reflective questions which can be applied easily and quickly or be built in over time.
This is a tool that can be used to build up SEL and EF practice. It involves small steps that include conversations and actions with a range of people across school, home and community.

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