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Social and Emotional Learning - an Introduction

by Marilyn Robb at 8/24/2005 2:14 pm

Societies all over the world are changing, and these changes inevitably contribute to the atmosphere in schools today. The economic changes in the world have put pressures on families and affects the parents' ability to support their children in many ways including with their school work.

Since the Sputnik era of the 1950s attention has been focused on the need for educational reform. The list of reform efforts worldwide since then has indeed been long. Reform efforts targeted both programs and processes. However, the history of educational reform seems to be one of failure. Despite the increasing number of curriculum changes, and school reform efforts of varying types, the problems in school seem to persist and even increase. The issues of violence, drop-out, delinquency, low academic performance etc., continue to present huge challenges to all concerned. Part of the reason why these reform efforts do not seem to be effective is because they do not take into account the social and emotional dimensions of educational change. Educational reform efforts have neglected the emotional healing of the teachers necessary for real change to take place.

During any experience in life accompanying emotions are stored in our memory along with the recorded information entering our senses at the time. If these emotions are not dealt with appropriately ( i.e. released by the body's natural healing processes), these emotions become locked in with the information. These emotions can then get triggered in a present day situation and act as a controller of our present behaviour. These triggers interfere with our ability to think rationally at the moment and so to pay attention and to learn. These triggers often have behavioural responses attached to them.

All human beings carry around a great amount of stored up emotions from previous experiences. Classrooms are very re-stimulating environments for both teachers and students. There are many stimuli in the classroom that can trigger locked in feelings. The behaviour response attached to the feelings can be triggered by the stimuli in the classroom. These behaviour responses are reinforced by repeated triggering on a daily basis.