In part 1 of the series, I delved into the need for supportive relationships and opportunities to better develop and practice social, emotional and cognitive skills in different contexts. Parents and educators need to grant autonomy from the relationship and allow children to take responsibility. This is only possible if we design the environment so that children learn this at school and in their own environment.
Social and emotional skills are critical skills also perceived to be important to help children adapt and cope to a constantly changing world. The emphasis on promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) is necessary in order to improve students’ wellbeing and make sure that children’s life paths are not compromised.
Since last year, I have taken the route of researching and learning about the effects of SEL or the lack thereof on young people and adults. In a conversation about the importance of SEL with Andre Knol, a young professional who recently returned to St. Maarten and who I’ve known during my tenure as principal of a primary school, he shares his INPIRELESS experience in school. I’ve asked him to reflect on growing up and his experience in the school environment during the primary years. His response:
“Just like all humans, I love learning. I love solving problems. It can even be addicting. That’s why I have always excelled at math, physics and chemistry. I grew up trilingual, and my parents always read books with me, so I excelled in language subjects in school too. Overall, I had great report cards from first grade up to the last year of high school. Despite excelling, I have never been inspired in school. In college, my classmates all considered me to be one of the smartest, yet I never finished my studies.
How could it be that I thrived academically, yet felt so uninspired the whole time? Well, for one, I was a ‘good boy’. I always obeyed my teachers and parents and did what I was told to do without much fuss. At home, I had lots of time to play sports and games and my father was an adventurous man and took me on some of his adventures too. I understood as a kid that the relationship between me and teachers and parents was like a business, and I had to deliver my end of the deal. In exchange, I get to play and have fun. This didn’t always sit right with me though. I always missed a sense of purpose. Like why do I have to go to school? Why is this my end of the deal? My mother told me that I had to go to school because I had to get a job. Judging by the stress her job gave her, this didn’t seem like a good bargain. It didn’t seem like the school really cared about what I was interested in. I was forced to go to school and in school, I was forced to do what the teachers wanted me to do. Deep down, I hated it. My parents were having a hard time going through divorce and I was sensitive to that. I didn’t want to be another burden for them. But there were days when I would cry and fight to stay at home because I didn’t want to spend another meaningless day at school where everyone only cares whether I did my homework and studied for my test. Nobody really cared to explain to me why it felt like jail, and this is just how it is.
I did not receive validation for the way I felt. I did not receive encouragement for my interests were they to lie outside of the school curriculum (which envelops about 5% of what life has to offer). I was not allowed to play for more than 30 minutes a day. Playing is key to a child’s happiness. To play means to explore and experiment with what our human body offers in terms of experience when engaging with the outside world. I was forced to do work the whole day, regardless of what I thought of it. This continued at home since we got homework. I can go on and on, but the point is that I did not see many wants and needs reflected in the school environment. I did not explicitly learn any life skills. I learned to be literate, topography, counting, etc. which is great – but I learned nothing about communication skills, confidence, mindsets, emotions, social skills, accountability, ambition, communication, conflict resolution, decisiveness, delegation, flexibility, initiative, stress management, teamwork, and the list goes on”.
My concern was validated by listening to the experience Andre shared. Just before our conversation, I participated in the virtual fourth annual International SEL Day Summit of 10th March 2023 organized by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) different experts who collectively spread the word about the importance and impact of social-emotional learning. During the summit, the urge to prove to society that all learning is social and emotional based on social interaction, relationships, and connections was strongly communicated. This justifies that no aspect of learning without social-emotional learning is possible. These skills have been shown to impact academic outcomes which are reflected in critical thinking-, decision-making- and problem-solving skills as well as goal setting and achievement, collaboration, resilience, and empathy.
Those are THE skills employers, and companies need in a workforce.
CASEL’s Five Core Competency Areas for Social and Emotional Learning
In my point of view, these CASEL competency areas (see figure) can also be developed through Experiential learning [1].
[1] https://www.splashlearn.com/blog/what-is-inquiry-based-learning-a-complete-overview/
Experiential Education offers a conceptual basis that proved to be useful in other contexts such as childcare, primary and special education, secondary education, teacher training and any kind of setting where learning and professional development is meant to take place.[1]
Professor Ferre Laevers from Leuven Belgium who I consider the father of Experiential Education is a known pioneer in Early Years education who promotes ‘experiential education’, which focuses on the perspective of the learner.
Why I consider Experiential learning one of the most powerful and unique approaches of learning and specifically 21st Century Learning is because it has a lot to offer with regard to the creation of a powerful learning environment and the understanding and assessment of sustainable development. Its major contribution lies in the discovery and conceptualization of well-being and involvement as key indicators of process quality. ‘How are children doing?’ is the question that comes first. This is the most conclusive way to assess the quality of any educational or care setting. Even how limited it may be, any increase in the levels of well-being and involvement means children are getting emotionally stronger and are developing at a deeper level within the areas of development that are addressed while they are engaged. With these two measures, teachers get the beacons to maximize their impact for the benefit of children today and the adults they become. An asset of this process-oriented approach is that it gives practitioners immediate feedback on the impact of their approach; it is relevant to any part of the curriculum and provides direct feedback.[2]
This to me implies that a school – and classroom environment should be a community where children need to be seen, feel safe, valued, ask questions and have the opportunity to develop skills and values through personal connections.
I shared this belief with Andre, and he responds:
“Humans love learning and problem-solving, but most of us dislike school. Why? Let’s take a brief look.
Over the last 40 years, there have been countless studies on how the human brain works, yet educational institutions stick to the same old tradition: “I am the teacher, you close your mouth and listen to me. Here’s your homework, you will be tested on this information in two weeks from now. If you’re good at it, you may not be tested again, and if you are not good at it you will have to do it again.” It is not the most efficient way of learning. Because in order for a human to introduce and develop a concept in their brain, the individual must attach meaning to the concept. We are not machines, nor do we all have the same gifts or share the same interests – yet we are treated as though we are identical computers where information can be stored at emotionless will. We are not being encouraged to think and connect, we are being forced to remember and retain. It almost seems as if we’ve forgotten the purpose of getting kids in a classroom.
The goal of education is to aid humans in getting better at contributing to their society. Humans are stronger when they work together. An individual may live in abundance because they live in a community that has built a system that works (a.k.a. a functioning economy). To be human is to respect the society and contribute towards its well-being, therefore being rewarded with wealth and abundance. To contribute to society’s well-being, one must respect and contribute towards their own well-being first. In the same way, we know that to love someone else, we must love ourselves first. This is what a good school teaches a kid. For a happy human is a fruitful human. An unhappy human only creates destruction. Thus, the goal of education is not only the development of skills that help us to contribute to society, but it is primarily to help humans to connect with themselves. To teach self-, environmental- and social awareness. Through our connections, we attach meaning to concepts and are fueled and desire to learn more, so that we may care for others and add value to their lives. As human beings, we can learn how to keep ourselves happy. We can learn how to pay attention to our well-being. A happy human is developed by SEL and results in a human who is constantly solving problems and treating others the way they treat themselves, with respect. And as adults, we know by now, that all conflict is solved with respect. SEL, in the long run, helps humanity to raise not just skillful, but inspirational, respectful and emotionally intelligent humans, resulting in a world with less conflict.”
Andre explains how social and emotional competencies help students/humans to be successful.
And I believe that these skills can only help humans to be connected with self, others and their environment. You can only develop empathy, self-awareness and better coping skills and good relationships through those competencies. And schools should be instrumental in doing this and reducing the risk of unsafe behavior and low, negative well-being in children.
Deep Level Learning
According to Professor Laevers, well-being and involvement are the quality areas of Experiential Learning, which is a process-oriented approach. Deep-level or fundamental learning is the effect or outcome we want to achieve. Learning should not affect the basic competencies of the child and is linked to real life situations.
Professor Laevers states further that the basic insight within the EXE-theory is that the most economic and conclusive way to assess the quality of any educational setting (from the pre-school level to adult education) is to focus on two dimensions: the degree of ‘emotional well-being’ and the level of ‘involvement’. When we want to know how each of the children is doing in a setting, we first have to explore the degree in which children do feel at ease, act spontaneously, show vitality and self-confidence. All this indicates that their emotional well-being is ok and that their physical needs, the need for tenderness and affection, the need for safety and clarity, the need for social recognition, the need to feel competent and the need for meaning in life and moral value are satisfied. The second criterion is linked to the developmental process and urges the adult to set up a challenging environment favoring involvement. Good schools have to succeed on both tasks: only paying attention to emotional well-being and a positive climate is not enough, while efforts to enhance involvement will only have an impact if children and students feel at home and are free from emotional constraints. Involvement, the key word. The concept of involvement refers to a dimension of human activity. Involvement is not linked to specific types of behavior nor to specific levels of development.
During my lengthy conversation with Andre, I brought up the importance of “Learning through play” which helps children acquire social and emotional skills. Many Education experts write that Play provides great learning opportunities for children and young people to develop social and emotional capabilities and to learn subject knowledge. I mentioned in an earlier article that Learning through play takes different forms at different education levels. I wrote about project-based learning/inquiry-based learning whereby all subject areas are integrated (Science, math etc.) as an example. Role play is another example whereby children practice social and emotional skills and create opportunities for developing social relations, behaviors, creativity and imagination. I asked Andre what he thinks about learning through play, he replies:
‘’Philosophically speaking, SEL is a way of life, in that the foundation of one’s happiness is built on their social life, emotional well-being, and their progress (learning) in work or studies. I was born in the year 2000 and yet, as modern as you might think my education was, I still have had a lot of catching up to do with my emotional well-being. Educating about the human brain, our minds, our emotions, and how to handle them, has never been included in school – it is not a wonder that I went through depression and faced mental health issues. Teaching myself that the way I think determines how I experience the world has been one of the biggest discoveries of my life. Before understanding human nature, human interaction, and the nature of reality, it was easy to spiral downwards. This spiral contains the disengagement that we see in many kids and students who sit in the back of the class, inattentive. I was one of them. It is one thing to simply not be interested in a subject, but our school systems have failed us in teaching us about ourselves. We were not given the space to express our wants and needs. Instead, our system implies to kids that their obedience and work are senior to their emotions. An adult who continues this in the form of self-domestication may end up with serious mental health issues, failure to find a purpose in life and possibly displaying self-destructive habits. I.e., not contributing to their community.
Experiential Education is a way of connecting yourself with your work, instead of separating the two. It teaches kids to be aware of their feelings and their understanding of what they’re doing and to be able to communicate these in an objective manner to their peers and teachers. A human who understands that they are not their thoughts, emotions, and feelings is able to observe themselves objectively and thereby identify their strengths and weaknesses through Experiential Education.
In terms of academic subjects, I don’t think we have necessarily been doing it wrong for the last century. I just think that with the tools and technology that are available now, a school is capable of catering education to each individual’s unique gifts and weaknesses. We don’t need to send our children through the factory model that schools presented to us 100 years ago.
In terms of learning about the foundations for what makes a human happy – this should be standardized education for all humans growing up. I think that growing up, we should learn about self-awareness, the mind, neurochemicals, hormones, physiology, psychology, and all things that contribute towards a stable emotional mentality. Experiential education puts young humans in situations where they can, with the assistance of guidance and mentorship, reflect on how their thoughts and actions. We can learn from a young how these are connected to their experiences and the way they feel about and perceive them. It may seem so foreign to adults for their kids to learn about this stuff and that is exactly my point. If you had learned this growing up, it would have been “normal”. Imagine a society in which having healthy mindsets and open hearts is normal. This is the direction SEL points our society towards”.
We believe that evidence based SEL is the foundation for a good mental health and the success of students. Please share your feedback with us.
[1] https://www.european-agency.org/sites/default/files/Laevers.pdf
[2] https://expertisecentrum.cego.be/competenties-en-disposities/?lang=en
Which SEL skills are students developing?