Exploring the Influence of Social Emotional Development on Academic Achievement in Vocational Education: Insights from Student Mentor Interventions

Abstract

While we tend to give a lot of importance to academic success, social emotional development (SED) skills prepare a student to manage feelings, build resiliency, resolve conflicts, take decisions, build, and maintain relationships, increase self-esteem, and have a positive mindset. The aim of this research is to explore if there is a link between social emotional development and students’ academic achievement amongst Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) students. Hence, this research pursued the following objectives to understand the students’ social emotional development and how they can be supported, discover factors that keep students from obtaining good academic results, understand if the drop-out rate at MCAST can be reduced by building school connectedness, and reinforcing beneficial holistic wellbeing and positive academic outcomes. A qualitative reflexive thematic analysis research approach was adopted. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were designed to gather primary data from three mentors working at MCAST together with the researcher’s reflection. The data was recorded, transcribed, and processed using the six-phase framework proposed by Braun and Clarke (2022) as they provide guidance in doing and learning reflexive thematic analysis. Amongst others, the findings of the journal entries showed that students in lower levels are not adequately resilient, tend to give up, and finally end up as dropouts. Moreover, low self-esteem is keeping them back from finding support, as they believe that they are failures. Furthermore, students must wait for support, thus more professionals need to be employed. Additionally, social emotional learning, college activities, as well as a reduction in class-size, can enhance the sense of belonging.