Abstract:

The socio-emotional dimension is widely recognized to play a fundamental role in the teaching and learning processes, and the last few decades have seen the development of numerous programs aimed at socio-emotional well-being at school, generally inspired by the construct of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). The need to invest in the socio-emotional dimension at school has become even more evident with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has stimulated reflection on the type of school we want to think about for the future, in particular with regard to its function in promoting the well-being and health of children (Colao et al., 2020).

International literature has shown how SEL programs can have a positive impact on multiple aspects in pupils' lives (Mahooney et al., 2018; Duncan et al., 2017; Durlak et al., 2011). While there has been a great deal of investment over the years in the promotion of SEL programs aimed at pupils and in evaluating their effectiveness, on the other hand, research on the socio-emotional training of teachers remains more limited. Teachers represent one of the few stable role models for children in a mobile society such as the current one (Eccles & Roeser, 2011), and they are expected to respond to the socio-emotional needs of pupils (Jenning & Greenberg, 2009). But what do we know about the socio-emotional skills of the teachers themselves? It has been highlighted that a greater investment in research is necessary to better understand how the SEL fits into teachers’ training, what its contents are and what quality (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). This becomes even more important following the pandemic, which has entailed new emotional challenges for the world of education and schooling: the socio-emotional skills of teachers become even more important in supporting children in the face of the complexity of today's society.

The aim of this article is to present part of the results of a research, still in progress, that is focused on an in-depth study of the literature on the double side of SEL programs aimed at children and training practices aimed at teachers. The research has examined: manuals and accredited publications on the subject; scientific articles identified through databases using “social and emotional learning” as keywords and selecting those articles focused on the practices in place; the reference bibliography of the articles most frequently cited in the literature; other sources that provided information on aspects still poorly investigated.

The work presented here focuses on the results emerged in a specific part of this research, aimed at investigating teachers’ training practices on socio-emotional aspects, in relation to scientific publications in the years of the pandemic. The google scholar search engine was used, using "SEL" AND “teachers’ training” as keywords, selecting scientific publications from 2020 to today. The data obtained are presented and discussed, with the aim of depicting the state of the art on research relating to teachers’ training practices on social-emotional aspects at the time of Covid-19, in order to identify strengths and criticalities of the current proposals and to obtain useful data to guide development future research and improvement of practices.

Keywords:

Social and emotional learning, teachers' training, COVID-19.