Abstract:

Social-emotional learning (SEL) plays a great role in students’ development. Especially, school is a main institution to learn social-emotional skills when interacting face-to-face with teachers and classmates. These skills include five issues, namely self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (Durlak, 2015). During the pandemic, interaction and learning in presence was not possible. Instead, students had to learn themselves using digital devices losing the direct contact to their teachers and classmates (Langmeyer et al., 2020). Furthermore, in daily life students reduced the time they spent with friends so that they had less possibilities to satisfy their basic needs, felt emotionally burdened, and noticed a lower quality of life (Langmeyer et al., 2020). This stressful situation may also affect students’ social-emotional skills.

Therefore, a qualitative interview study was conducted with nine teachers (8 females, 1 male) from different primary and secondary schools in Germany. Main data source was a qualitative interview guideline with open questions referring to the research issues. These included aspects about the effects of the pandemic on students’ social-emotional skills, as well as on further effects on students’ social-emotional development. All interviews were transcribed and analysed with MAXQDA using a coding scheme generated according to a qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2018). This coding scheme was developed deductively using theoretical assumptions regarding social-emotional learning, and inductively using the data set. Two coders double rated 30% of the interviews with an inter-rater reliability of r=.93.

Regarding the first research question about the development of social-emotional skills, teachers mainly observed two developments: First, regarding individual skills of perceiving and regulating emotions, five teachers mentioned that students were more sensitive and had great problems in regulating their emotions increasing emotional releases and aggressions in class. Second, regarding social skills, all teachers described their students as overburdened with the situation when coming back to school, and not able to stick to the rules in the classroom. The ability for empathic reactions and for respect towards others’ needs decreased leading to difficulties in students’ relationships. Regarding the second research question about students’ social-emotional development, all teachers observe that students show more depressions and aggressions and have more conflicts with other classmates compared to former students.

The study shows that teachers in Germany evaluate students’ social-emotional skills lower in respect of controlling own emotions, and of taking care about their classmates’ emotions and well-being due to the lockdown. This interview study shows the importance of fostering social-emotional learning, especially after Corona using explicit training methods to improve students’ skills.

References:
[1] Durlak, J.A. (2015). Studying program implementation is not easy but it is essential. Prev Sci, 16, 1123–1127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-015-0606-3
[2] Langmeyer, A., Guglhör-Rudan, A., Naab, T., Urlen, M. & Winklhofer, U. (2020). Kindsein in Zeiten von Corona: Erste Ergebnisse zum veränderten Alltag und zum Wohlbefinden von Kindern. Deutsches Jugendinstitut.
[3] Kuckartz, U. (2018). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse – Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. Beltz Juventa.

Keywords:

COVID-19, social-emotional learning, skills, qualitative interview.