Social And Emotional Learning

One of the objectives of social and emotional learning is to develop skills that aid in forming more positive relationships and attachments with both adults and peers. There are activities that can be done in schools, as previously mentioned, that could prepare children with these skills of interacting positively and resolve conflicts in an effective way (O'Leary, 2012). Social and emotional learning is very much associated with the idea of positive psychology. This is due to the fact that the development of social and emotional skills in children will have a positive effect on different areas in their life, like a better sense of confidence, and improvement in their learning and in their mental health. Positive psychology is the study of what

This might be due to the idea that social and emotional skills are not viewed as an important part of the curriculum and they have nothing to do with the aims of education. Therefore, the school staff do not work hard on these programs and they do not give much importance to learning these skills during school days. This might also be since there are not many programs that integrate social and emotional skills with the academic content, although the numbers for these types of programs to be created is increasing (Jones, Aber & Brown, 2011). Many social and emotional programs give a lot of attention to skills needed in the classroom, but social and emotional skills are important for other places in the school, like in the playgrounds or in rooms of activities. Furthermore, teachers learn just a little during their training about how to encourage social and emotional skills and about how to deal with clashes between students or other social and emotional-related problems (Lopes, Mestre, Guil, Kremenitzer & Salovey, 2012; Kremenitzer, 2005) (as cited in Jones & Bouffard, 2012). In Malta, these concepts are starting to gain importance as well, in fact the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta offers a Masters of Education in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Furthermore, social and emotional education in Malta was incorporated within the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) that was published in 2012. The curriculum includes a number of learning areas which are directly related to social and emotional education, such as religious and ethics education, education for democracy and visual and performing arts, but health and physical education is the content area most focused on social and emotional order for a deep understanding of the ‘self’, ‘other’ and the impact of choices