Health and Wellbeing in Childhood

Research undertaken over the last 20 years provides compelling evidence that early and ongoing development of socio-emotional skills contributes to an individual’s overall health, wellbeing and competence throughout life. Moreover, competence in this domain is now recognised as fundamental to school readiness, school adjustment and academic achievement. Consequently, social and emotional learning (SEL) is an important theme in current educational policy, curriculum frameworks and classroom practice, particularly in the early years of schooling. This chapter focuses on a particular group of vulnerable learners – young children with special needs. We introduce the Teaching Pyramid (Fox et al., 2003), a validated, multi-level model for promoting young children’s social-emotional development while preventing problem behaviour. Next, we discuss aspects related to making decisions about 1. what to teach and 2. how to teach. We then highplight the critical importance of social understanding for children with special needs and provide key evidence-informed strategies for teachers to use in their everyday classroom practices to strengthen SEL in the early years. Finally, we argue the case for partnering with families in order to strengthen SEL outcomes for these children across school, home, and community environments.