Promoting Emotional and Social Development in Schools

A Practical Guide

Simon Blake, Julia Bird, Lynne Gerlach

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781412907316, 9781412907309
• eBook ISBN: 9781446234709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The social and emotional needs of children have become increasingly important to educators in recent years, as the impact they have on improving behaviour and promoting inclusion has become evident.

Written in an accessible style for busy practitioners, this book gives advice on creating an emotionally and socially ?healthy? school.

The book:

- shows why schools should promote emotional and social development

- includes practical ideas & activities for those working in primary & secondary schools

- uses a range of case studies to illustrate the impact of good practice

- includes INSET / personal review materials, and audit tools

CHAPTER 1

Why this book matters

In schools the particular challenge (for the promotion of emotional and social development) is that there are so many children in a class and limited staff time. But how can children learn if their very basic needs are not being met, if they are hungry, scared or have had interruptions in their emotional and social development. It is for this reason that we must really help people understand the importance of robust and rigorous approaches to supporting emotional and social development. Only if we understand the way children and young people develop will we be able improve the emotional health and well-being, and therefore the learning, achievement, aspirations and health of the children and young people we work with. There is no alternative – I am completely convinced of that. (Bird, 2006)

Children and young people’s emotional health is increasingly being recognised as important, not only in its own right, but because emotions play a significant role in learning. How we feel affects who we are and how we are, affects what we do, how we relate, how we get on, how we cope, the people we become and the world we create. Research in neuroscience has recently underlined the fact that emotional well-being is not a given; it is developed, and its healthy development can be influenced by the ways adults interact with children and young people. The quality of the relationship between them is key.

Frances Gilbert, a writer and teacher, writing in the Times Educational Supplement about emotional intelligence in August 2006, stated, the way we recognise other people’s feelings, and our understanding and means of dealing with our own emotions are an essential part of growth. She goes on to discuss the important and central role of developing emotional intelligence amongst pupils in school as a vehicle for improving behaviour and promoting learning.

This book is based on the belief that promoting emotional health and well-being is important, and that children and young people are better able to learn in school if we respond positively and proactively to their emotional and social development needs. It is also based on a conviction that schools have a crucial role in developing children’s and young people’s emotional capacity – their resilience, their resourcefulness and their reflexivity – which in turn supports them to experience emotional well-being. This helps them manage their lives now, develop high aspirations and be well prepared for an exciting, stimulating and positive adult life.

At an international level, the World Health Organization has emphasised the importance of schools promoting mental health as part of their broad educational role in fostering healthy social and emotional development of pupils. They define child-friendly schools as one which:

encourages tolerance and equality between boys and girls and different ethnic, religious and social groups. It promotes active involvement and cooperation, avoids the use of physical punishment and does not tolerate bullying. It is also a supportive and nurturing environment providing education, which responds to the reality of the children’s lives. Finally it helps to establish connections between school and family life, encourages creativity as well as academic abilities, and promotes the self-esteem and self-confidence of children. (World Health Organization, 2001: 1)

Children and young people themselves think that emotional health and well-being is crucial. When asked, they generally have a lot to say about the area. Many of those we have worked with have said that they would like more opportunities to consider what emotional health and well-being is, and that they have not really thought about it before. One young person described how just actually thinking about and talking with her peers about emotional health and well-being had helped her make the links between what she ate and how she felt, and the relationship between physical activity, sleep and emotional well-being.

The following definition of emotional health and well-being was developed by a group of young people from the North and Republic of Ireland who were involved in the Getting It Together project, a youth-led project addressing emotional health.

Emotional health is:

• about how you feel inside;
• about balancing your emotions and having control of them;
• about self-esteem and confidence;
• about being comfortable with who you are;
• about coping with your feelings and building up resilience of your ‘bounce-back ability’.

Others have defined emotional intelligence as having a thinking heart and a feeling brain thus emphasising a capacity to think whilst feeling.

Young people in the Getting It Together project developed the following charter setting out what they thought would be helpful for those working in schools and other services to do to promote emotional health and well-being. This is available as a poster that can be displayed in staffrooms and common rooms. It can also be used as a discussion starter in PSHE about your pupils’ ideas and advice for services to promote emotional health and well-being (NCBs 2006).

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Our charter for promoting young people’s emotional health

Emotional health is:

• about how you feel inside;
• about balancing your emotions and having control of them;
• about self-esteem and confidence;
• about being comfortable with who you are;
• about coping with your feelings and building up resilience and your ‘bounce-backability’.

It is important to promote young people’s emotional health, because it is about how we feel, and how we feel affects what we do, how we get on, how we cope and the people we will become.

Here are some things you can do to promote young people’s emotional health:

• Organise activities to build trust between professionals and young people, and among young people and their friends.
• Display posters and run workshops in schools and community settings on emotional health and young people.
• Undertake outreach activities and take services to young people.
• Advertise helplines, use emails to advise young people about local services and one-to-one advice and support.
• Use national campaigns such as Mental Health Day to raise awareness of emotional health.
• Make links to other aspects of health such as healthy eating, stress reduction and physical activity.
• Use residentials, fun days and other strategies to promote friendships and team building and provide new experiences.

We want adults who:

• Understand that the way they treat us in everyday life affects our confidence, our self-esteem and our emotional health. We don’t want to be treated like children, but don’t expect us to be adults either.
• Communicate well with us and listen to what we think and how we feel.
• Encourage us to broaden our horizons and try new things.
• Ask us what we want and make sure we are involved in decisions that affect us – and don’t just ask, action it and involve us in the solutions to problems.
• Understand and remember what it felt like to be young and recognise that we are young and we need to learn our own lessons and make our own mistakes.
• Don’t put us under too much pressure.

To be confident in services we have to be sure that services are confidential. One of the biggest things that stops young people accessing services is our fear that people will gossip about us getting help.

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Reproduced with thanks to Cooperation and Working Together – A mental health initiative working across the North and Republic of Ireland.

This book is based on research, and the practical experience of a wide range of professionals working in and with schools, who have shared their ideas, successes and challenges with National Children’s Bureau and Sowelu Associates over the last decade within the context of development projects and training across the UK, Ireland and beyond.

The book is divided into three main parts. The first provides an overview of the theory and evidence about emotional health, children and young people. It provides an important framework for everyone in schools trying to promote emotional well-being, positive behaviour, achievement and health. It brings together different strands of thinking to help you understand the range of actions and interventions schools can develop as both preventative and reactive strategies.

It also provides a brief overview of the policy context in England – even though this book is written for an international audience, this is purposely included as a case study, because there have been some important developments in children’s policy in England in recent years that will be of benefit to others.

Chapters 3–8 focus on translating theory to practice. These chapters set out the range of issues relating to policy development, establishing policy and partnerships and offer a range of practical tried and tested ideas for promoting emotional and social development in schools. These are illustrated with a range of quotes from children and young people as well as case studies to motivate, inspire you and remind you that this is not an optional extra, or a desirable add on, but absolutely core to enabling children and young people, to grow, play and learn with confidence and enthusiasm.

Chapter 9 provides practical guidance and some introductory activities to support a whole school focus on emotional and social development. These can be used in an in-service training session (INSET), a series of staff meetings or a combination of the two.

Effective ‘joining up’

Children and young people need adults in education, health and care who are willing to hold them, to hold boundaries, to understand them, to listen to them and to help them work out what they need. It is not going to work to go in with a bit more drug education or a bit more Citizenship education to meet specific policy objectives. Sure these are important, but it is much more complicated than that. We need to identify where there have been interruptions in children’s emotional and social development and work out what emotional development steps need to be revisited and relearned so they can move forward. It is only through true relationship with children and young people that we can do this without alienating or blaming them for the symptoms of these interruptions; symptoms that dominate the media and public policy debates – antisocial behaviour, teenage pregnancy, substance misuse etc. (Bird, 2006)

This emphasises the need to think about the holistic and joined-up nature of children’s lives and the importance of responding to their needs in an equally joined-up and holistic way. It highlights how the promotion of emotional health and well-being lies at the centre of our efforts to improve outcomes for children and young people. Children and young people tell us time and again that education and support is often offered in relation to specific issues such as sex or alcohol and other drugs and, as a result, can feel irrelevant or dislocated from their experience (Blake, 2005).

Antidote (a campaign for emotional literacy) believes that emotional literacy has a vital part to play in tackling the multiple challenges facing our communities, by enabling people to:

• Find ways of feeling connected to each other, and of using their relationships to process the emotions that might otherwise cause them to lash out in rage or to withdraw in despair
• Deal with the emotions that can render them unable to take in new information, and to access emotional states such as curiosity, resilience and joy that lead to a richer experience of learning
• Engage in activities that promote both physical and emotional well-being, and to broaden the range of issues they can talk about with each other in ways that make it less likely they will abuse drugs and alcohol, bully their peers or engage in other forms of self-destructive activity

Below are some real-life examples where an approach based on the ostensible issues is unlikely to be successful unless coupled with support or learning in relation to emotions and emotional literacy.

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Example 1 – Bullying

Children who are hurt and abused will often hurt and bully other children. An effective response is one where the immediate response to the bullying behaviours ensures that those bullied are safe and feel safe, that there is a visible commitment to stopping the bullying and that the child or young person doing the bullying takes responsibility for their behaviour and makes amends.

This is coupled with longer-term support to identify and address any deep-rooted hurt and emotional distress that contributes to the child needing to beh...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Foreword
• 1 Why this book matters
• 2 An overview of the evidence from research and practice
• 3 Getting started: a whole-school approach
• 4 Planning provision for promoting emotional and social development
• 5 Campaigns and awareness-raising events
• 6 Promoting calmness, anger management and stress reduction
• 7 Play and creativity
• 8 Pastoral support and access to services
• 9 Professional development
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Glossary
• Further reading
• Useful resources and organisations
• References
• Index