Young Children's Emotional Experiences

Jane Murray, Ioanna Palaiologou, Jane Murray, Ioanna Palaiologou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367257255
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000021202
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Based on a rich seam of research evidence, this book leverages value in engaging with scientific enquiry to further understanding of young children's emotional experiences.

Early childhood development has featured increasingly prominently on international policymakers' agenda in recent years. Yet whilst policy foregrounds economic imperatives including academic attainment, school readiness, and time-bound outcomes, similar attention has not been afforded to the potential value of nourishing affective engagements that may secure 'emotional capital' for infants and young children. This collection from the field of early childhood is therefore timely. Its chapters are based on empirical evidence derived from contemporary scientific studies, and address challenges and opportunities inherent in young children's emotional experiences in diverse twenty-first century early childhood education and care contexts. The authors provoke debate, discussion, and critique, and they ask significant questions of the policymakers, practitioners, and carers who may influence young children's lives and their emotional experiences. The findings that are presented in the chapters indicate overall that a test-based approach may detract from young children's emotional development as well as the positive affective experiences in early childhood which have potential to provide an important foundation for a fulfilling life.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.

1 Promoting and marginalising young children’s social and emotional experiences through SEL

Peter Wood

ABSTRACT

This paper raises questions about social and emotional learning (SEL) as a facilitator of all children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills. Drawing on qualitative data, in the form of group and individual interviews with a range of primary school and early years staff members across four case studies, the findings indicate that children’s social and emotional behaviours linked to social class, gender and ethnicity were targeted through SEL, revealing a propensity for staff to endorse a normative model of experiences for young children. By clarifying some of the concerns around such monist approaches to SEL, I make the case for an agonistic model that not only embraces difference and contestation, but uses them as a focus for learning.

Introduction

In this paper I illustrate how social and emotional learning (SEL) schemes have the capacity to impose a normative model of social and emotional experiences within schools. This article draws on data from a large study that focussed on the way SEL was being utilised in British primary schools, by their staff members. Here, I pay attention to one aspect of the findings, demonstrating how such schemes, in their operationalisation, may endorse and/or marginalise young children’s social and emotional experiences. To do so, the paper makes use of qualitative data, in the form of the accounts of various staff members who worked with SEL across a range of primary schools. The article focusses on the interplay between staff members’ existing perceptions of young children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills, and their developing understanding of the SEL schemes within their schools. In contributing to the field, I identify social and emotional experiences linked to social class, gender and ethnicity that were targeted through the staff members’ use of SEL and, in doing so, illustrate how the emotions, social behaviours and cultural norms that are experienced by young children, were consistently ‘othered’ (Paechter, 1998) in schools.

As a way of contextualising the findings, and in the section that follows, I provide an overview of recent educational policy and changes in the early years and primary school sectors in Britain, that have focussed on the development of children’s social and emotional skills. Then, I provide details of the empirical study, the research process and methodologies employed, the staff member sample, and the analysis of data. Next, I present the research findings that contribute explicitly to our understandings of SEL utilisation to ‘other’ the social and emotional experiences of children and aspects of their identity relating to: (i) social class, (ii) gender, (iii) ethnicity. After considering some of the consequences of using such schemes in this way, and clarifying particular concerns around a propensity for monist approaches to SEL and social and emotional development, I conclude by making the case for an alternative, agonistic model (Mouffe, 2005), where variance in the emotions, social behaviours and cultural norms that are experienced by young children should be viewed less as a point of contention and more as a focus for learning.

Educational policy and young children’s social and emotional well-being in Britain

Public debate and opinion pertaining to the social and emotional experiences of children in Britain has intensified since the turn of the millennium. A range of ‘dramatic events’ (Hayden, 2010) involving young children, such as the abduction and murder of Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1992, and incidents of child neglect and cruelty, as in the case of Victoria Climbie in 2000, influenced the formation of an alternative approach to schooling, and although interest in children’s well-being is ‘nothing new’ there is now ‘far more attention being paid to social and emotional matters, in education’ (Weare, 2007, p. 239). In 2003, the ‘Every Child Matters: Green Paper’ identified the need to improve the emotional well-being of children in Britain, creating widespread consultation regarding the services provided, particularly within the education system. A year later, section 10 of the Children’s Act (2004) utilised the term ‘well-being’ to define five outcomes, namely to be healthy, to stay safe, to enjoy and achieve, to make a positive contribution and to achieve economic well-being. Stemming from the act was the ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ (2004) document which concentrated on improving the well-being of children in a number of institutions, including schools.

In essence, this document signalled a change in direction for policy-makers as it recognised the important role that schools could and should play in meeting the social and emotional well-being needs of British children. Emphasis on this role gathered momentum following the publication of a report commissioned by United Nations Children Fund (2007) where, in comparison to those in 20 other ‘wealthy’ countries, children in Britain disliked school the most and had the highest rates of emotional ill health. This ‘state of neglect’ (Bradshaw, Hoelscher, & Richardson, 2007) highlighted the need for the major improvements suggested in ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ (2003) and so, in April 2008, the Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA 2008) in Britain published ‘A big picture of the curriculum’, which identified the five outcomes of the ‘Every Child Matters’ as a main priority of early years and primary education.

Regarding the early years specifically, in 2008, a statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) maintained that young children must be supported in experiences that allow them to develop their social skills, disposition to learn, self-respect and sense of self, with an emphasis on providers to ensure ‘support for children’s emotional well-being’ (DCSF, 2008, p. 12). Whilst explicit within many of the themes and commitments of the EYFS, following a Government commissioned review of the framework in 2010, captured by Tickell (2011), children’s personal, social and emotional development is now emphasised as ‘crucial’ (DfE, 2017, p. 7) and a ‘prime’ area of learning and development in subsequent revisions of the framework (see DfE, 2010, 2012, 2014). Over a similar period, Ofsted’s common inspection frameworks have consistently identified social and emotional well-being as a priority for maintained schools and academies in Britain (see Ofsted, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2016). To achieve this, across both sectors, various schemes and educational initiatives have been utilised, and in the next section I present information relating to one of these.

Social and emotional learning

‘Social and emotional learning’ (SEL) schemes aim to develop social, emotional and behavioural skills, and intra and inter personal intelligence (Gardner, 1983), and according to Weare (2007), help children to establish and maintain relationships with others, as they intend to facilitate their ability in understanding and responding to their own emotions and those of others. Two of the most recent examples of SEL in Britain is the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) initiative, and its early years counterpart, Social and Emotional Aspects of Development (SEAD). With the fundamental aim of improving children’s social and emotional skills (DfES, 2005c), SEAL focusses on developing children’s self-awareness, emotional control, empathy, motivation and social skills, and so makes use of Goleman’s (1995) notion of emotional intelligence as a guiding concept, to structure its delivery over three waves of intervention. The scheme takes the form of whole-school development work, where social and emotional skills are not only promoted but explicitly taught across the curriculum in classroom-based SEAL lessons. This, as well as other whole-school events including assemblies and playground activities, form the ‘first wave’ of SEAL, which has the fundamental objective of developing a whole-school ethos where social, emotional and behavioural development is prioritised (Humphrey et al., 2008). Children may also be supported in a second wave, via small group work sessions, whilst for those whom the previous two waves have not been successful, one-to-one intervention, known as ‘wave three’, is also an option.

Evaluations of the scheme have been offered by a host of authors, where more detailed overviews of the initiative can be found (see Banerjee, 2010; Hallam, Rhamie, & Shaw, 2006; Humphrey et al., 2008), but, in the main, the consensus seems to reveal favourable outcomes, including improvements in pupils’ social and emotional skills (Humphrey et al., 2008), anger management strategies (Hallam, 2009) and higher attainment (Banerjee, 2010). Continuing the optimism afforded to the scheme, Weare (2007) maintained that SEAL and SEAD contribute ‘directly to the realisation of the “Every Child Matters agenda” (p. 241), which has encouraged past governments to advocate their use in early years and school settings as a way of promoting ‘emotional health’ (see DCSF, 2008) amongst young children. Although there is research to the contrary, that casts doubt over the effectiveness of the schemes as a means of improving the ‘core … targetted’ social and emotional skills of children (Humphrey et al., 2008, p. 90), more vehement opposition may be found in the views of those who challenge the legitimacy of SEL as an educational tool per se. Complementing Craig’s (2007) criticism of SEAL as an ‘experiment’ that, in the long term, may impede well-being, Ecclestone and Hayes’ (2009, p. 383) work, on what they term ‘therapeutic education’, posits that SEL, in its portrayal of ‘people as needing more and more emotional support’, creates a degree of ‘anxiousness’ amongst young children that hinders social and emotional development in the long term.

Whilst the varied opinions explored in the research introduced above are useful in an evaluative sense, they do little to detail the varied and complex nature of SEL schemes (Mistry, Burton, & Brundett, 2004), nor do they demonstrate the variance in the way they may be being delivered, not only between staff, but schools in general. As there is a distinct tendency for researchers to use summative assessments to evaluate the impact of SEL, insight into how schools interpret and negotiate such schemes is required. Indeed, there have been calls for work to comprehend how ‘social and emotional dimensions of school functioning … links to the schools’ approaches to implementation’ (Banerjee, 2010, p. 9), whilst others have expressed a need for research focussing on the extent to which schools vary in the ‘fidelity’ of following the official guidance associated with SEL (Humphrey, Lendrum, & Wigelsworth, 2010). Consequently, concerns have been raised that the discourses of emotions inherent in SEL are susceptible to exploitation (Burman, 2009), as it has been claimed such schemes can be utilised for identity construction (Hartley, 2003) and the imposition of ‘appropriate’ feelings and behaviours (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2008) in schools. In this article I contribute to these on-going debates by sharing the views of a range of primary school staff members who worked with SEL in their daily practice. In uncovering how they interpreted the scheme and then put it to use in their schools, an unanticipated finding related to the prevalence of staff to engage with SEL as a vehicle to marginalise and/or promote certain values, norms, behaviours and emotions linked to social class, gender and ethnicity, and experienced by children. The research process from which this finding was made is detailed next.

The research study

The data from which this article draws its focus were derived from a large study that explored the interpretation and use of the SEAL initiative, amongst a range of staff members, in primary schools in a town in Northern England. Drawing on Hargreaves’ (1995) typology of school culture and popular notions of ‘whole-school approaches’ (Banerjee, 2010; Weare, 2000, 2004, 2007), this study focussed specifically on the main motivations for using SEAL in primary schools; how the scheme was being interpreted and utilised; and the influences of any variance in motivation, interpretation and use. All primary schools implementing the SEAL initiative in the town were approached to take part in a three-phased, mixed-methods empirical investigation. Phase one, a 29-item questionnaire that employed a combination of both Likert-scale and open-ended forms of response, was completed by 402 staff members across 38 primary schools, whilst phases two (10 focus group interviews with 44 staff members) and three (24 semi-structured interviews with primary school staff) were conducted in four schools, selected in order to achieve a maximum variation (Henry, 1990) of case studies. Consequently, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and utilised in the main study. The quantitative element of the study, carried ou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Young children’s emotional experiences
• 1 Promoting and marginalising young children’s social and emotional experiences through SEL
• 2 Love, satisfaction and exhaustion in the nursery: methodological issues in evaluating the impact of Work Discussion groups in the nursery
• 3 Making the personal visible: emotion in the nursery
• 4 Being touched – the transformative potential of nurturing touch practices in relation to toddlers’ learning and emotional well-being
• 5 Young children’s agency: exploring children’s interactions with practitioners and ancillary staff members in Greek early childhood education and care settings
• 6 Children’s negotiation tactics and socio-emotional self-regulation in child-led play experiences: the influence of the preschool pedagogic culture
• 7 Indirect effects of cognitive self-regulation on the relation between emotion knowledge and emotionality
• 8 The Hare and the Tortoise go to Forest School: taking the scenic route to academic attainment via emotional wellbeing outdoors
• Index