What specific skills are developed through social and emotional learning?
Dr. Elias: This is an evolving academic area, so everybody has a different take on what the skills are. But within the formulation that we have adopted at CASEL (The Collaborative for Academic, Social, Emotional Learning), we have five areas. The first one is awareness which deals with the ability to recognize feelings in yourself and others. The second area is self-regulation of emotion. Once you are aware of strong feelings in yourself and others, how do you deal with them? How do you manage them? How do you know and use your strengths? This is a key aspect of self-regulation. The third area focuses on motivation. How do we get ourselves going? How do we put our skills to productive use? Do we have a sense of hope and optimism? Are we able to mobilize humor and creativity? Are we able to set long- and short-term goals? It’s all part of the general area of motivation for getting things done. A fourth area is empathy and perspective taking. Here again we are dealing with the ability to
