Abstract:

Socio-emotional learning (SEL) has a high impact for students and teachers in elementary schools (Zins & Elias, 2006). According to the network Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL, 2005), socio-emotional learning is defined as process for acquiring social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral key competences. With help of this method, students learn to perceive their emotions and regulate them, feel and show empathy for their classmates, develop positive relationships, interact constructively with others and make responsible decisions.
Even though, this positive impact is proven in countries like Australia, England, Singapore, or the US, in Germany SEL is still not integrated into the school curriculum. However, there are some elementary schools that implemented SEL. Implementation is a process including several steps like adoption, initializing, realization, evaluation, and institutionalization. Furthermore, factors influencing this process are organizational aspects like curriculum or training as well as personal factors like acceptance.

To get further insights into the implementation process in elementary schools in Germany, we did a qualitative research study with seven teachers in diverse elementary schools. Our main research questions were:
1. How was SEL implemented in elementary schools in Germany?
2. How was SEL accepted by the teachers?
3. Which didactical aspects are relevant for SEL?
4. Which effects has SEL for children?

The interviews were conducted using an interview guideline with main questions based on the theoretical implementation model. The interviews took between 30 and 45 minutes. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using a content-structured method (Kuckartz, 2018). Units of meaning were deductively coded according to main categories according to the theoretical implementation model.

Results of the first research question indicate that SEL was organizationally implemented weekly in one school lesson mostly on Mondays or Wednesdays. Overall, only three teachers reported that they have a specific SEL curriculum for every school year. Main objectives of SEL were emotional competencies, as well as group cohesion.

Regarding the second research question, results show that all teachers accepted SEL very much – not only regarding their attitude towards SEL, but also regarding their behavior. Furthermore, even though, there was no training on SEL or personal supervision in SEL, all seven teachers are very much intrinsically motivated to teach SEL.

Main didactical aspects (RQ 3) refer to didactical methods to teach SEL and didactical competencies of the teachers. Teachers use a great variety of diverse methods like role play, children’s books, or exercises to show feelings. In their answers teachers also stress the necessity that they need socio-emotional competencies as well as didactical competencies of classroom management and adaptive planning. These are main pre-requisites for successful SEL.
Regarding the last research question, according to the teachers’ answers, SEL has positive effects on children’s’ emotional and social competencies, e.g. mobbing in classroom was reduced as well as conflicts between children.

This interview study shows that even though teachers are very convinced of SEL regarding its impact on socio-emotional learning for their students, there is still no curriculum or training for teachers to facilitate the implementation process in Germany.

Keywords:

Socio-emotional learning, implementation, elementary schools.