Positive Education and SEL
- Arzu Atasoy
- Jan 4, 2023
- 3 min read
Lifelong learning is an attitude that both the OECD and the World Economic Forum have emphasized in special reports, with significant implications for development today and in the future.
Adopting lifelong learning means unlearning what we know, learning new things or continuously improving in today's uncertain, complex, fast and agile business world. Being a lifelong learner can be taught to children and young people starting from pre-school. Positive education is an important way to teach this attitude and the skills it requires.
Positive education;
- A place where positive emotions are concentrated,
- It is designed with active participation where the learner is in the flow,
- Communication and interaction between learners, strengthening bonds and belonging,
- Where learners find meaning,
- Supported by a sense of achievement/progress, small or large
- It is an approach with a mental and physical fitness component.
The sine qua non of positive education is Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Because learning is a process in which emotions interact with the mind. No matter what age we are, the social and emotional dimension of learning is essential. Therefore, on the basis of positive education, learning processes designed with social-emotional dimensions should start from early childhood.
Social-emotional learning is about the individual;
Self-awareness, that is, recognizing one's own and others' feelings, values and prejudices and having a development-oriented mindset
Self-management, i.e. managing emotions, having internal discipline, setting personal and team goals, taking initiative
Social awareness, i.e. respecting different opinions, showing empathy and compassion, recognizing the strengths of others, gratitude & appreciation, understanding the influence of systems on behavior
Relationship skills, i.e. being able to communicate effectively, listen, develop positive relationships, know how to compromise, withstand negative social pressure, show leadership and protect the rights of others
Responsible decision-making skills include behaviors such as analyzing information in rational ways, finding solutions to social and individual problems, seeing the consequences of behaviors, and taking actions that contribute to their own and society's well-being.
Academic success is inevitable in an educational environment with a strong social emotional learning foundation. In such an environment, learners feel safe because they are accepted for who they are. They accept mistakes as part of development, experience the satisfaction of contributing to the whole with their individual characteristics, get to know themselves better, and see how they get results when they do what they do. Curiosity, discovery, sharing and production are realized in a collective context, and knowledge becomes permanent in their long-term memory in relation to experience.
So how does learning these things at school from a young age affect individuals' success in life? Let's look at it from this perspective...
The World Economic Forum regularly publishes the skills that are projected to impact the quality of the workforce and development in the future. In its recent Future of Work 2020 report, it shared a list of the skills that will be needed in business life in 2025. In addition to analytical skills, skills such as leadership and social impact, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility, and creativity are predicted to be the skills we will need more in the future. When we look at this list, we can once again see how important social-emotional skills are today as well as in the future.
On the other hand, the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals is a framework that defines the areas of development required for the continuity of humanity and the planet we live in as goals and subgoals. There are 17 main goals in this framework. Among these goals, Quality Education, number 4, is at a central point that contributes to all other goals. It is almost impossible to achieve other development goals without quality education.
When teachers, who are the most important agents of quality education, implement social emotional learning in their classrooms, they make a significant investment in the lifelong well-being and future economic conditions of their students.
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