Primary schools: Spaces for children’s social and emotional learning

Abstract

Primary schools are crucial for children’s academic and social development, and in recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on incorporating socio-emotional development into the curriculum. Positive peet interactions and experiences at school, a key element of children’s social lives, facilitate their positive social and psychological development. Linked to peer relationships within school settings are core skills such as emotion regulation and prosociality. Emotion regulation plays a crucial role in shaping social connections, well-being, relationship satisfaction, and mental health, significantly affecting emotional expression, behaviour, and the quality of social interactions. Prosociality is seen to personally benefit children, by improving their mental health and wellbeing, and it also provides children with the skills needed to establish or develop communities based on principles of cooperation and belonging. In this commentary, our goal is to delve into current research on socio-emotional learning and interactional experiences within schoot settings, focusing on how emotion regulation and pro-social behaviour influence children’s experiences at school. We recommend that schools need to enhance the overall wellbeing and social development of children by fostering positive school environments, encouraging healthy peer relationships, and offering opportunities for the development of socio-emotional regulation skills, as well as prosocial behaviour.