SEL (Socio-emotional Learning) is an acronym that indicates the socio-emotional learning or the learning of those skills and abilities that, according to several authors (e.g. Payton et al., 2008; Durlak et al., 2011) allow individuals to recognize and manage their emotions, deal successfully with conflicts, face and solve interpersonal problems, understand and show empathy towards others, establish and maintain positive relationships, establish and achieve positive goals.
Is it possible to develop these skills with online education as well?
The Covid-19 pandemic has halted educational and training activities for many months around the world. The shift from face-to-face to online education has certainly produced an acceleration of the digital transformation that is a requirement of the 21st century, but it has also revealed that teachers are not well prepared for digital teaching. The results of a SchoolEducationGatewaysurvey of 4859 respondents from more than 40 countries (86% of whom were teachers or school leaders) show that as a result of COVID-19, most teachers (66.9%) had to teach online for the first time. It is very relevant that the prevailing concern of the teaching staff who participated in the research is motivation to learn (76.1%), management of emotions (61.8%) and self-management of the learning process (60.9%). The online teaching system should be accompanied by the personal development skills needed to best manage: interpersonal communication processes, empathy, creative thinking, etc. Teachers with high literacy of social and emotional skills and equipped with digital skills are more likely to be able to help students both socially, emotionally and digitally.
The overall aim of the project is to improve the skills of primary school teachers in the area of social and emotional development within digitisation through the development of courses aimed at:
The DigiSEL project is coordinated by Kütahya Dumlupınar University, Turkey, and involves other universities from Italy, Poland and Spain:
The project has a duration of 24 month (from 6/2021 to 5/2023).
Research Group
prof. Maria Cinque (referent for Italy)
Contacts: m.cinque@lumsa.it
Dr. Maria Pia Ferdinandi
Dr. Carina Rossa
Dr Ioana Zagrean