Social and Emotional Education in Primary School Integrating Theory and Research into Practice

This book synthesizes concepts, findings, and best practices for a complete guide to planning, implementing, and evaluating social and emotional education (SEE) programs. Emphasizing "caught" as well as taught lessons, it offers a whole-school framework for SEE, with content, rationales, assessment tools, and age-appropriate strategies. Interventions are also included for use across subjects, to engage learners and assist students with behavioral and emotional difficulties. And the lessons travel beyond the classroom, involving the whole school, families and communities.

Key areas of coverage include:

• How SEE can be taught and assessed as a core competence.
• Classroom and whole school frameworks to enhance SEE.
• Examples of targeted interventions for at-risk students.
• Techniques for enlisting parents and communities in supporting SEE.
• A complete online set of SEE class and homework activities.

Social and Emotional Education in Primary School is an essential resource for scientist-practitioners, educators, and other professionals as well as researchers and graduate students in special and general education, child and school psychology, educational psychology, social work, positive psychology, and family-related fields.

Foreword by Maurice J. Elias.- Chapter 1. An Education that Matters in the 21st Century.- Part I: Heart in Education.- Chapter 2. Social and Emotional Education: A Framework for Primary Schools.- Chapter 3. An Overarching Structure for the Implementation of Social and Emotional Education.- Part II:  Heart in the Classroom.- Chapter 4. Taught Social and Emotional Education: SEE in the Curriculum.- Chapter 5. Caught Social and Emotional Education: A Caring Classroom Community.- Chapter 6. Targeted Interventions for Pupils Experiencing Difficulties.- Part III:  Heart in the Whole School Community.- Chapter 7. A Whole School Approach to SEE: The School as a Caring Community.- Chapter 8. From Neurasthenia to Eudaimonia: Teachers’ Wellbeing and Resilience.- Chapter 9. Reaching Out: Parents’/Carers’ Engagement, Education and Wellbeing.- Chapter 10. Conclusion.

Carmel Cefai, Ph.D., CPsychol., is the Director of the European Centre for  Resilience and  Health, and Head of the Department of Psychology, at the University of Malta, Malta. He is founding Honoury co-Chair of the European Network for Social and Emotional Competence (ENSEC) and joint editor of the International Journal of Emotional Education. For a number of years he also worked as a school teacher and educational psychologist. He leads a number of international projects on social and emotional education, mental health and resilience in schools, and has numerous publications in the area, including the popular Promoting Resilience in the Classroom: A Guide to Developing Pupils Emotional and Cognitive Skills (2008).

Valeria Cavioni, Ph.D., is an educational psychologist in Italy, and she’s currently collaborating in research and teaching with the Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Pavia in Italy. She is also involved in research projects on wellbeing with the European Centre for  Resilience and Health at the University of Malta. Her field of research is social and emotional learning and emotional wellbeing in nursery and primary schools, and she is presently working on evidence-based programs in this area. She has published various scientific papers, book chapters and participated in numerous conferences on social and emotional development in childhood.