Teachers struggle with notably poor occupational health and well-being. Although social and emotional competencies (SECs) are posited to promote teachers’ occupational health and well-being, a direct ...test of these associations is needed to identify targets for intervention. The present study tested the associations between SECs and occupational health and well-being in a sample of 158 pre-service teachers. Results indicated that when tested individually, all SECs predicted some outcomes, but mindfulness skills, self-compassion, and cognitive reappraisal were the most consistent predictors across outcomes. Findings have implications for pre-service training programs, which aim to prepare individuals for successful careers as educators.
•Social and emotional competencies predicted pre-service teachers' occupational health and well-being.•Mindfulness and self-compassion were consistent predictors of personal well-being.•Mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal were consistent predictors of occupational health.•Cognitive reappraisal skills and mindfulness skills were predictive of commitment to a career in teaching.•Developing these competencies during pre-service may help to preserve teachers' occupational health and well-being.
School absenteeism is associated with multiple negative short and long-term impacts, such as school grade retention and mental health difficulties.
The present study aimed to understand the role of ...resilience-related internal assets, student engagement, and perception of school success as protective factors for truancy. Additionally, we investigated whether there were differences in these variables between students living in residential care and students living with their parents.
This study included 118 participants aged 11 to 23 years old (M = 17.16, SE = 0.26). The majority were female (n = 61, 51.7 %) and Portuguese (n = 98, 83.1 %), with half living in residential care. In this cross-sectional study, participants responded to self-report questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to understand the factors associated with truancy.
There were no group differences in resilience-related internal assets and their perception of school success. On the contrary, participants in residential care reported more unexcused school absences, more grade retentions, higher levels of depression, and lower levels of student engagement. Moreover, hierarchical linear regression controlling for key variables (i.e., living in residential care or with parents, school grade retention, and depression) showed that perception of school success and resilience-related internal assets significantly contributed to truancy.
Results are discussed in the context of universal and selective interventions. These interventions can foster individual strengths and provide opportunities for every student to experience success. Consequently, they promote engagement and reduce the likelihood of school absences, especially for those in more vulnerable situations such as youth in residential care.
•Participants in residential care experienced more truancy and less school engagement.•The association between success perception and engagement is higher for those in care.•Resilience internal assets were negatively associated with truancy.•School success perception protects from truancy especially for young in residential care.
Social and emotional competencies are crucial to healthy student development in the educational context. Empirical studies have demonstrated that students’ social and emotional competencies favour ...achievement performance and positive interpersonal relationships at the school. Students’ social and emotional competencies could be developed at the school through the influence of respectful and supportive contexts. These contexts are mainly generated by teachers at the school through the inclusive education.
This study aimed to analyse the relation between the inclusive education by teachers and the social and emotional competencies of their students in compulsory secondary education. This relation was examined considering three levels (school, classroom and individual).
Participants were 294 teachers (age range 24–64 years, Mage = 43.52, SD = 10.00; 58.8% female) and 3550 of their students (age range 11–16 years, Mage = 12.73, SD = 1.05; 48.4% female), from 40 schools and 174 classrooms of Spanish compulsory secondary education.
This ex-post-facto cross-sectional and multilevel study was conducted with self-report surveys.
Many correlations showed a positive relation between inclusive education by teachers and their students’ social and emotional competencies in the three levels. When the school and classroom levels mean scores for inclusive education by teachers were analysed using multilevel regression modelling, the school organization for inclusive education was significantly related to their students’ social and emotional competencies.
Inclusive education by teachers could be an effective pedagogical action to develop the students’ social and emotional competencies. Political and school implications are discussed.
•A multilevel study with a sample of 294 teachers and 3550 of their students.•Inclusive education of teachers and social and emotional competencies of students.•New insights on teachers' role in their student's learning process.•The inclusive education favours the students’ social and emotional competencies.
Increased Internet use has introduced several behavior patterns into the daily routines of adolescents, such as phubbing, cybergossip, and media multitasking during homework. These habits can ...potentialize risks, particularly in post-pandemic situations. Socio-emotional competencies can act as protective factors against cybernetic risks; however, they have not yet been studied in relation with habitual digital behavior. To fill that gap, this study's objective is to analyze, across a sample of 776 students of secondary education (12–16 years old), to what extent socio-emotional competencies in digital interaction (“socio-emotional e-competencies”) are related to phubbing, cybergossip, and media multitasking during academic tasks, while being able to predict those behaviors in function of gender and age. We also propose to elicit whether those three behaviors can be regarded as indicators of habitual digital behavior in general. Our structural equation model results indicate that they act as a sole variable, which we denote as “habitual digital behavior”. On the other hand, emotional e-regulation and e-self-control of impulsiveness act as protective factors in adolescence, whereas emotional e-independence is crucial in girls and older students, and emotional e-awareness is important in boys. To close, we discuss the relevance of educating students in the matter of e-socio-economic competencies.
•Media multitasking during homework, cybergossip, and phubbing: habitual digital behaviors in adolescence.•Need to develop specific socio-emotional competencies for digital environments.•Socio-emotional e-competencies predict habitual digital behaviors.•Emotional e-regulation and e-self-control of impulsiveness are protective factors.•In girls, emotional e-independence is key in reducing risks on the Internet.
•This study serves as the first to examine the acceptability and preliminary impact of a school-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) intervention in rural Chinese elementary schools.•The SEL ...program showed a preliminary impact by strengthening rural Chinese children’s self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship skills. In addition, it was highly acceptable to rural Chinese children.•Rural children of work-away parents and rural boys experienced greater gains in social-emotional competencies.
While Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) as school-based mental health preventative interventions have been extensively examined in western contexts, they have not yet been studied much in China. Several SEL programs have been developed or adapted for Chinese contexts, but few studies have examined their intervention effects in resource constrained settings, especially rare in rural schools. This study serves as the first to examine the acceptability and preliminary impact of a school-based SEL intervention in rural Chinese elementary schools. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention study with a two-level cluster design was adopted. The sample consisted of 1247 fifth graders nested within 28 classrooms in Southwest China. Students rated the SEL curriculum as highly satisfactory, interesting, helpful, and practical. Findings demonstrated significant SEL intervention effects on rural children’s overall self-reported social and emotional competencies (ES = 0.213) and three subdomains including self-awareness (ES = 0.342), social awareness (ES = 0.25), and relationship skills (ES = 0.185). However, no intervention effects were found in the subdomains including self-management and responsive decision-making. Additionally, the subgroup analysis revealed that children of work-away parents, as well as boys, obtained greater benefits from the SEL intervention. These findings are interpreted in light of their practice, research, and policy implications to further strengthen school-based SEL efforts for improving rural children’s wellbeing.
Student engagement (SE) is known as one of the most relevant predictors of academic achievement and completion. Social and emotional competencies (SECs) are well established as critical skills for ...healthy and adaptative youth development. This systematic review investigated the associations between SE and SECs in students aged 10–25 years. The review followed the PRISMA guidelines. Nine databases were searched for peer-reviewed literature published between 2004 and 2020. A total of 91 studies were selected, including 92879 youth students. Emotional engagement is the most studied dimension of student engagement and largely surpasses the number of studies that analysed the multidimensional SE concept. The number of studies in each of the five CASEL domains is uneven, with more studies focussing on self-management, self-awareness, and relationship skills, in association with SE. Overall, most studies showed that SECs are positively associated with SE and negatively associated with disengagement, with similar results for middle, high school and university students from different backgrounds, suggesting that educational institutions should implement social and emotional learning programmes to increase SE. Studies reporting age and gender differences with respect to SE showed unanimously higher SE values for girls and younger students. There is a clear need for studies that use the multidimensional SE concept, including university students and applying cross-cultural analyses.
•Data is analysed for students from 10 to 25 years old.•Social and emotional competencies are positively associated with student engagement.•Most studies analysed the association between engagement and self-management.•There is evidence showing that girls and younger students report higher engagement.
Desirable interpersonal interactions require literacy competence and social and emotional competencies, which are closely related to empathy. This study aimed to investigate whether social and ...emotional competencies and empathy predict literacy competence in Primary Education, assessing students' socio-educational characteristics.
The three variables were analysed in a sample consisting of 516 Primary Education children from six schools in Spain.
competence was higher in girls and students from the ethnic-cultural majority. Empathy and social and emotional competencies were related to literacy competence.
Literacy competence could be improved by targeting social and emotional development. New intervention programs could be based on the results.
How educators and students process and respond to emotions can either enhance or impede the development of the whole child. Social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to the processes of developing ...social and emotional competencies, which depend on individuals’ capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions (i.e., emotional intelligence or EI). Consensus across disciplines about the importance of EI highlights the need to advance the science of how to teach SEL. RULER, an evidence-based approach to teaching EI, provides an educational framework that encompasses a set of practices for comprehensive SEL integration across a school or district. In this article, we describe RULER, explain how it teaches EI, and summarize evidence of its effectiveness.
•Bullying victimization is cross-sectionally and longitudinally related to somatic symptoms.•Bullying perpetration is only cross-sectionally related to somatic symptoms.•Scoring high in affective ...empathy is related to high scores in somatization cross-sectionally and one year later.•Low self-awareness and low responsible decision making are uniquely related to high somatic symptoms.
Somatic symptoms are an important adolescent health problem that affects individuals and the society as a whole. Although research focused on somatic symptoms has been very fruitful, studies about their longitudinal predictors are still in their early stages. The present study focuses on the relations between social and emotional competencies, empathy and bullying, and the presence of somatic symptoms concurrently and one year later.
The sample consisted of 384 Spanish adolescents, who participated in a longitudinal study with a one-year follow-up. Validated questionnaires were used to assess social and emotional competencies, bullying, empathy and somatic complaints.
High scores in social and emotional competencies were related to low scores in somatic symptoms one year later. High affective empathy predicted more somatic symptoms concurrently and one year later. Bullying victimization was related to more somatic symptoms concurrently and one year later.
Other-reports could be useful to further validate the results obtained with self-reports. Non-linear relations could be tested. Representative samples could be used in future studies.
These results suggest that it may be important to promote social and emotional competencies and reduce bullying to decrease somatic symptoms. More studies are needed to understand the impact of high affective empathy on somatic symptoms.
Teachers' wellbeing plays a critical role in their overall job satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness in building supporting learning environments. In today's dynamic educational settings, where ...teachers often face numerous challenges and stressors, their wellbeing becomes increasingly vital. Consequently, there is an urgent need to innovate and develop targeted training interventions that can support specifically the wellbeing of educators.
This study sought to provide an overview of the "Online Wellbeing Course - OWC," a serious game developed to enhance teachers' wellbeing, and to investigate the participants' feedback after being engaged in the OWC, utilizing a qualitative approach through focus group discussions. A total of 189 in-service teachers took part in the study. To qualitatively explore their experiences with the OWC, participants were involved in focus groups and asked to provide feedback about how and to what extent the course was beneficial for their wellbeing.
Teachers reported enhancements in areas such as emotional competence, self-care strategies, social awareness, relationship skills, decision-making, and school climate.
These outcomes suggested the potential of serious games as an innovative training approach for supporting teachers' wellbeing, offering valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and educators.
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