Why is social-emotional learning (SEL) important?

Insights assesses students' social-emotional learning (SEL) skills in four areas: emotion recognition, social perspective-taking, social problem-solving, and self-control. 

These four SEL skills are related to the CASEL SEL competencies.

Emotion recognition refers to how well your child is able to understand facial expressions, which is an important social cue.

Why emotion recognition is important: Understanding others’ emotions helps children make positive decisions about how to interact with others. If a playmate is becoming angry, for example, and the child recognizes this, they can alter what they are doing to help reduce the playmate’s anger.

Social perspective-taking refers to how well your child was able to understand the perspective or point of view of a character in a brief story.

Why social perspective-taking is important: Understanding other peoples’ point of view, especially when what they believe is different from what your child believes, is an important skill. Strong perspective-taking skills can help children negotiate differences of opinion and develop compassion and greater understanding for people from different backgrounds.

Social problem-solving refers to how children think about and work through challenging social situations, such as joining an ongoing activity or dealing with getting bumped into in the hallway.

Why social problem-solving is important: Members of any group - a classroom, for example - have different needs and preferences. Because of this, everyday life includes social challenges and conflicts. Most of these challenges are minor. Some are bigger. The more children can identify when there is a problem and the more ways they have to resolve those problems positively, the readier they are to face inevitable interpersonal challenges.

Self-control refers to children’s ability to manage their feelings and behavior.

Why self-control is important: The way children look at the world and their experiences produce an incredible range of emotional responses, which in turn, influences actions. The ability to manage emotions - for example, calming oneself when nervous, or getting “psyched up” before a big game - are key to success in a range of situations.