“It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head – it is the unique intersection of both.” – David Caruso
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a developmental process that helps people learn skills to support healthy relationships and development. For students, it refers to the process through which they learn social, emotional, and related skills, attitudes, behaviours, and values, and also ways to apply them in real life.
To understand the importance of let’s look at some statistics.
In 2008, a meta-analysis on SEL programs revealed some interesting facts. It was noticed that on average, students receiving school-based SEL scored 11 percentile points higher on academic achievement tests than their peers who did not receive SEL.
A school-based research which included 207 studies of programs involving 288,000 students summarized the findings across all the studies and found a broad range of benefits for students:
• 9% decrease in conduct problems, such as classroom misbehaviour and aggression
• 10% decrease in emotional distress, such as anxiety and depression
• 9% improvement in attitudes about self, others, and school
• 23% improvement in social and emotional skills
• 9% improvement in school and classroom behaviour
• 11 % improvement in achievement test scores
However, as schools are increasingly becoming multicultural and multilingual with students from diverse social and economic backgrounds, the system needs to adapt itself to serve students with different motivations for engaging in learning, behaving positively, and performing academically. SEL provides a foundation for safe and positive learning and enhances students' ability to succeed in school, careers, and life.
According to the latest research, the global Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) market size was valued at USD 1738.71 million in 2024 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 18.52% during the forecast period, reaching USD 4818.28 million by 2031.
Research shows that SEL not only improves achievement but it also increases prosocial behaviors (such as kindness, sharing, and empathy), improves student attitudes toward school, and reduces depression and stress among students.
Effective social and emotional learning programming involves coordinated classroom,
schoolwide, family, and community practices that help students develop the following five key skills:
- Self-Awareness
- Self-Management
- Relationship Skills
- Social Awareness
- Responsible Decision Making
Let’s look at some of the most pertinent reasons why SEL-guided is gaining popularity in the education industry.
Enhances academic performance: It has been deduced that students participating in SEL at school exhibit better results reflected by their grades, test scores, attendance, and homework completion. It builds social and emotional skills that increase student engagement and lead to improved academic performance. The positive impact on academics also has long-term effects. Years after students participated in SEL, their academic performance was an average of 13 percentile points higher than students who didn’t participate.
Make students future-ready: Students who engage in SEL programs see consistent improvements in social and emotional skills, and stronger social and emotional skills contribute to positive lifetime outcomes up to 18 years later.
Contributes to a healthy and safe school environment: SEL can cultivate important things like caring relationships, safe and supportive environments, social and emotional skills that help against mental health risks. Though, it does not ensure a remedy to mental healthy issue, but it might help alleviate the consequences to an extent. SEL also helps to promote cross cultural readiness and acceptance.
We will focus on how SEL can be implemented in the classroom and how educators can make the most of it in our next article.