Emotional Intelligence: Why Social-Emotional Learning Is Important

QWERTY is excited to have Dr. Barbara Fatum join us on a consulting basis to help us both further our ability to perform educational tests and bring new diversity to our existing test offerings.  She continues as a guest blogger today as we continue a series on Social Emotional Intelligence and Learning.

In our last post, we discussed Emotional Intelligence at a basic level.  We noted that research has demonstrated that Emotional Intelligence facilitates learning a systematic set of skills (popularly known as EQ) that allow individuals to consider multiple perspectives and multiple options.

Using EQ to consider the aforementioned perspectives and options has been shown to help a person or group create and maintain relationships that contribute to the growth of the parties involved in the relationship. Developing EQ skills helps individuals to recognize, exercise and model awareness and knowledge of their “inner selves,” leading to improved ability to help manage, prioritize, blend and choose appropriate responses and actions.

Academically and socially, children who learn EQ skills to improve Social Emotional Learning (SEL) are better prepared to deal with the adversities of life, to learn from mistakes, to reframe difficult situations and to adapt to life’s constantly changing circumstances.  As the founder of the Nueva School in Hillsborough, CA, and co-founder of the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Network, Karen McCown observed, “If we don’t help children to create a ‘neural dialogue’ between their emotional data and their cognitive processing, we are limiting their capacity to grow and learn in a healthy manner.”

Developing EQ to facilitate Social Emotional Learning can lead to improvements in attitude, behavior and performance in a school setting.  Improvements in school-focused attitude can lead a student to develop a stronger sense of community, better academic motivation, clearer connections between consequences and behaviors, and a greater capacity to cope with school stressors.  Commensurately, school success-focused behaviors including greater participation, reduced absences/increased attendance, reduced incidents of disruptions, improved pro-graduation behaviors and ownership of one’s individual learning style can follow.  Additionally, specific measures of improved performance have been noted, including: 1.) better math, literacy and social studies skills  2.) higher achievement test scores (including standardized tests) and grades  3.) improved learning-to-learn skills and problem solving abilities and 4.) improved reading comprehension and higher-level reasoning.

Frustratingly, although the positive results of Social and Emotional Learning research have come to national attention, many schools are unsure how to incorporate SEL into their curriculums, but the good news is that the research supports the idea that Emotional Intelligence abilities can be taught. Emotional Intelligence can be thought of like a muscle; the more the individual uses this muscle, the stronger it can become.  With practice, individuals can increase their emotional intelligence no matter the level they at which they begin.

In our next entry, we’ll introduce some ways for parents and educators to cultivate Social Emotional Learning.

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