The Social-Emotional Education and Its Implications on School Context: A Literature Review

Abstract

Social-emotional education is the process of acquiring and practicing skills for emotional identification and management, as well as relationship skills and caring attitudes towards others. The present work aimed to identify some intervention programs in social-emotional education at schools. Thereunto, a literature review was made using the descriptors “educação socioemocional”, “aprendizagem emocional”, “social emotional learning”, “intervenção” and “intervention” in the research bases of BVS and PsychNet, including empirical articles written in portuguese, english or Spanish, with an intervention done and evaluated in the school context. The results show a concentration of social-emotional education programs in USA, more interventions guided by teachers that included the knowledge and practices in the school curriculum, and intervention results that show improvements in pro-social behavior, emotional symptoms, behavioral problems, self-esteem, emotion regulation, inattention and hyperactive symptoms, self-regulation and empathy. These social-emotional intervention programs show meaningful results to develop the competences spoken above, however, they reached only a few of the aimed competences and had a small effect of the results in many studies. The socialemotional education is important as a tool for better adaptation of children to their environment, developing in long term a better self-esteem and empathy. The teachers also benefit from the interventions, enhancing their teaching practices and contributing to the promotion of mental health care in schools.