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Fellows give their answers on the "hot topic" of Day 2 of Getting Smart: Measuring and Evaluating Social and Emotional Skills

“We have to move from a position where SEL development is seen as a responsibility of the individual teacher in teaching it, to the responsibility of the whole school, in partnership with the parents of the children at the school and also the community around the school – because children are social beings, and social learning takes place in all of those contexts, not just the school context.”
Graham Robb
Chair, Trustees of the Campus School, UK
 
“Society and state should be responsible for promoting and making it possible for SEL to be accessible in families, schools, communities, and also services – for example, in rehabilitation centers for substance users or in prisons. I think the state should take responsibility for making this accessible and available, but then, it should be done in partnership with all the stakeholders involved, especially with kids as well.”
Carmel Cefai
Director, Center for Resilience and Socio-Emotional Health at the University of Malta, Malta
 
 “The development of SEL starts pretty much from the time you were born. A lot of that happens intuitively – the conditions at home drive a lot of that development. But the key is how you nurture that once you go into formal education. That’s the challenge. And that’s where we need a really good and informed group of people to nurture the development, so that it becomes complete..”
Baldev Singh
Director of Education, Imagine Education, UK
 
“I don’t think any one person or group is responsible. I think there are a lot of people who need to take part in it. Parents, teachers, family members, people in the community, and we also need to make sure that our policy makers and government officials are thinking about it, even though they might not have a direct influence on children.”
Catherine Millett
Senior Research Scientist, Policy Evaluation and Research Center, ETS, USA
 
“If we take everything into account, there are a lot of partners that are connected to child development. SEL development can start with parents, educators or people in the community. We need to ask parents to understand the meaning of child development in their social and emotional skills, and give them tools to do it in at home and outside of the school. It’s also important to use a lot of professional bodies, such as NGOs, that will bring their knowledge into the school and help them achieve their goal.”
Ayelet Giladi
General and Academic Manager,
NCIW Research Institute for Innovation in Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
 
“It depends on the time and dimension of development. Before the children enter primary school, their family plays the main role in SEL development. However, once their formal education begins, school environments have a greater impact on it. It also depends on the aspects of development we are looking at. For example, children’s home environment affects the development of emotional stability, while their school environment has a greater impact on the development of morality.”
Meesook Kim
Senior Research Fellow, Korean Educational Development Institute, Republic of Korea

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