Positive Influence of Social Emotional Learning in Elementary Learning

Elementary education is the foundation of all future education. It helps children form lasting views and skills about themselves and the world around them, introducing them to their culture, the environment, and the universe (Bennett, 1986). Students today experience more distraction, pressure, and mental health issues than before, and schools should face these issues and help struggling students (Tate, 2019). Most schools today still only focus on academic achievements, but to help students achieve academic success, students’ other needs, such as social emotions, need to be taken care of. The Every Student Succeed Act recognizes social-emotional learning (SEL) as an important factor that could promote immediate and later successes with and beyond academics for students (Mulvahill, 2006). It targets to develop five key skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, and responsible decisions making, which are skills closely related to knowledge about emotions and their functions (Lyashesky et al., 2020). Teachers could easily implement SEL learning into their classrooms, in ways such as daily check-ins and talk times with students, promoting partnerships and teamwork, teaching communicative and reflective languages, and so much more (Mulvahill, 2006). Social emotional learning benefits elementary learning because it builds on self-efficacy, develops self-control and management, and improves interpersonal skills.

The focus of self-awareness in SEL programs improves learners’ self-efficacy, leading to better performance in learning. According to CASEL (2020), self-awareness is one’s ability to understand their own emotions, thoughts, and values and the influences they cause in situations . Self-awareness is closely related to a learner’s confidence in their abilities because they are more sensitive to their feelings and changes, which help them evaluate their capabilities more accurately and make better predictions. This explanation suggests that individuals with more self-awareness are better at identifying their strengths and limitations realistically and making sounder decisions, leading to better self-efficacy experiences. Self-efficacy is an individual’s judgment of their abilities to perform certain tasks, influencing people’s effort and persistence (Schunk, 1995). Children develop a sense of whether they are capable of performing the required tasks since they are young, and self-efficacy is relatively stable after it is developed. Therefore, it is critical to building a strong and positive self-efficacy in students at a young age. When children perceive themselves as competent, they tend to take more risks in the classroom, participating and challenging themselves in academic problems, which leads to more learning opportunities (Denham & Brown, 2010). In a study conducted by Schunk (1995), self-efficacy and learning were found to be significantly and positively correlated. Additionally, a positive correlation was found between first graders’ self-perceived academic competence score and their later reading and mathematics performances (Denham & Brown, 2010). These studies support the idea that the self-efficacy formed through self-awareness could improve children’s learning. Despite the great result of self-awareness and self-efficacy, they are not always accurate. A study found that while most people believed they are self-aware, only 10-15% of the people fit the criteria of self-awareness (Eurich, 2018). This result suggests that it is crucial to building a solid foundation in emotional knowledge from a young age to help children develop genuine yet truthful self-portraits. Increasing children’s self-efficacy by developing self-awareness is one way to enhance elementary learning because children would understand themselves better and feel more assertive with their capabilities.

Another approach to improving elementary learning is self-management because it helps children control their emotions and behaviors and helps them follow learning activities better. Self-management is defined as one’s capability to successfully control their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to execute their goals (CASEL, 2020). Therefore, self-management includes managing one’s emotions when the situation requires it and organizing and planning before performing actions. Understanding thoughts and emotions do not equate to controlling their expression, and it could be a difficult task for children. One of the studies in a literature review on the relationship between SEL and academic success showed that children could be distracted from learning if they are disturbed by negative emotions, and the ability to remain in positive attitudes makes children more capable of participating in learning (Denham & Brown, 2010). Another study in the same review showed that kindergarteners’ emotional regulations predicted children’s attention regulations in first grade, predicting their later academic successes. These connections between emotional management and learning highlight the importance of teaching emotional regulation and self-management as it could impact children’s ability to focus and learn. Nevertheless, self-management is not only about emotional control but also about behavioral control. Behavioral management includes the ability to perform an action or restrict an action, such as carrying out complex directions, concentrate, ask questions, or seek help. One study in Denham and Brown’s literature review found that children’s behavioral regulation was positively correlated to their kindergarten achievements. A different study in the review found that first graders’ inhibitory control could predict their third grade’s reading scores. Self-management abilities are closely related to children’s ability to follow directions and perform learning tasks, and the differences between children’s abilities influence their academic performances as well. Another research from the literature review found that the academic performance gap widens between those with and without self-control skills until second grade and persisted until sixth grade. Although the gap only lasted until sixth grade, the learning loss through those years is unmeasurable and could cause significant harm academically and mentally. Therefore, it is necessary to learn and practice self-management skills from a young age. Advancement in self-management is also a method to improve elementary learning as it helps them focus and keep up more easily in school.

While it is critical to have self-awareness and self-management, it is also beneficial to have social awareness and relationship skills to help smoothen the learning process. School is a setting where students do not learn alone, but instead, with their peers’ company in collaboration with their teachers (Zins et al., 2007). Therefore, their interpersonal connections would greatly impact their learning. Social awareness is about being able to empathize and take perspectives for those from diverse backgrounds, while relationship skills are about forming and maintaining healthy relationships with others and navigating interpersonal interactions (CASEL, 2020). When children can label and interpret their emotions through their self-awareness and have learned to control their behaviors through self-management, they are more able to empathize with others and understand the difficulties and experiences they are going through. The ability to empathize is key to good interpersonal communication because it helps guide how people would act. Early schooling research has suggested that children’s ability to control their emotions greatly impacts their relationship with their peers and teachers, which could harm or help their chances of performing well academically (Raver, 2002). When children are not getting along with their peers, they may not have the attention to learn and lose opportunities to experience learning through discussions and interactions. Children with good relationship skills can learn through solving problems in teams and learn by teaching other peers, which are techniques to improve learning transfer (Malkiewich, 2020). Not only does their abilities influence their relationship with peers, but it was also found that teachers generally give disruptive children less positive feedback and guide them through instructions and tasks less (Raver, 2002). The lack of encouragement and quality relations from peers and teachers could reduce children’s self-confidence and cause them to dislike school and learning. Although social awareness and relationship skills are all critical, they also contain distinct values depending on the family. Teachers should be aware of how children interact with others because it could reflect the family situation. When there are differences between what was taught at home and in school, children could be confused. Therefore, the SEL programs would need to be especially careful in their lessons and ensure good communication with the families to ensure that children are receiving consistent emotional knowledge. Since students do not learn alone in schools, interpersonal skills are also critical in improving elementary learning as it helps them navigate social situations in school.

Despite all the benefits of SEL, it contains skills that are difficult to teach. According to developmental theory, some SEL skills are stage salient and are built upon each other (Jones et al., 2017). Therefore, certain skills should be taught before others. Due to the great variation in individual backgrounds and experiences, it is common that children are on different levels of social emotional controls. The different levels in children of the same grade could make it difficult for teachers to teach, especially when the gap is significant. Therefore, as suggested by Jones and her colleges, SEL interventions should be more tailored to different ages and grades since the early age when children are more in the same levels instead of teaching the same skills across different years. As mentioned earlier, social emotional knowledge can be very personalized and complex. Therefore, the teaching process could be resource consuming. Inequalities in school resources could make it challenging for some schools to send their teachers to training and include SEL into their curriculum when there are not enough teachers or time to cover the academic subjects. The process of teaching SEL could also require a lot of time and energy and could interfere with academic learning. Therefore, it could be challenging to balance between SEL and academic teaching. Regardless, increasing self-efficacy and improving self-control and relationship skills can be conducted in various forms and should be implemented in elementary schools to benefit learning.

Social emotional learning has proven to be in favor of academic learning and significant for human development; thus, research should focus more on how to make SEL interventions more applicable and effective in a diverse range of schools. Responsible decision making is better practiced when children are confident about their abilities, in control of their behaviors and actions, and able to interact with their teachers and peers healthily and constructively. School is a small society where students learn with their peers through their teachers’ guidance, and SEL helps everyone be more in tune with themselves and communicate better with others. Primary education is a period for foundational learning, but SEL is a long journey that should be explored throughout the years in the education systems. SEL intervention can be problem-solving focused and can help improve learning quality in diverse conditions.

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References

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