The goal of formal schooling has broadened in recent decades to include not only academic development, but also the development of socially competent and well-adjusted individuals. Educators have focused on social and emotional learning (SEL) to meet this goal. SEL is the instructional approach to the fostering of social and emotional competencies, such as: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The majority of early research in this area was conducted in the United States and Europe. This book provides an essential next step in the field by reviewing the more recent research from Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, highlighting the need for more cross-cultural collaboration and an understanding of the limitations of wide-spread implementation without addressing context-specific needs.
This book is divided into three sections. The first section includes chapters specific to research on SEL in Australia. There are several chapters addressing competencies, context, assessment, and school connectedness in typically-developing populations. The rest of this section includes chapters addressing the particular needs of SEL in at-risk populations (i.e., children with ADHD, ASD, developmental disabilities, learning disorders, and behavioral disorders), gifted children, and teachers.
The second section includes chapters specific to research on SEL in the Asia-Pacific region. Each chapter reviews how SEL is implemented in individual cultures, such as Korea, Singapore, and indigenous New Zealand. Comparisons among these chapters provides insight into how SEL programs can be adapted to meet culture-specific needs, as well as the various ways that individual nations integrate SEL priorities with their traditional academic priorities.
The third section focuses on individual intervention programs, their implementation in Australia, and the challenges associated with these programs, such as implementation in socially-disadvantaged areas and teacher preparation. Finally, the editors include introductory and concluding chapters, which pull together this diverse area of research and give readers a clear vision of the most critical issues addressed in the book.
This book will be of use to a wide audience of researchers, teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, counselors, and psychologists. The chapters provide critical reviews of how SEL programs are implemented, difficulties that have been identified with existing programs, assessment of SEL, training in SEL programs, and examples of how SEL can be integrated with traditional academic educational environments. The book is written such that chapters can be read independently, in sections, or as a whole, and thus can be useful as a resource for upper-level undergraduate and graduate level courses in educational and developmental psychology.
