Exposing your child to social and emotional learning programmes at school will not only affect your child’s mental health, social skills and learning ability, but will also lead to a long-term positive result, according to a new study conducted. When a child is subjected to social-emotional learning, its helps them to recognise and understand their emotions, feel empathy and build friendships. It also facilitates a child’s decision making prowess
"Social-emotional learning programmes teach the skills that children need to succeed and thrive in life," said Eva Oberle, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada.
Researchers found that students who participate in such social-emotional programmed graduated from college at a rate 11% higher than those who didn’t. The high school graduation rate was 6% higher than their peers. Such children’s drug use and behavioural problems were around 6% lower and arrest rates were also 19% lower. These children were 13.5% less likely to develop mental problem. Every single child was benefitted from such learning technique, regardless of race, socio-economic background and location.
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"Teaching social-emotional learning in schools is a way to support individual children in their pathways to success, and it's also a way to promote better public health outcomes later in life," Oberle said.
For the study, published in the journal Child Development, the team analysed results from 82 different programmes involving more than 97,000 students from kindergarten to middle school in the US, Europe and the UK where the effects were assessed at least six months after the programs completed.
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Schools are an ideal place to implement these interventions because they will reach almost all children, including those who are disadvantaged, the researchers noted.These skills need to be strengthened over time and more schools should embed social-emotional learning methodically into the curriculum, instead of following programmed like one-off.
(With IANS Inputs)
