Pre-service and practicing teachers' commitment to and comfort with social emotional learning

Abstract

Although teachers' beliefs about social-emotional learning have become a topic of interest, understanding how they relate to teachers' own social-emotional competence is unknown. We used a predictive correlation design to examine how Canadian pre-service (n=138) and inservice (n=276) teachers' beliefs about social-emotional competence relate to their comfort with and commitment to social-emotional learning, and how both sets of beliefs are related to their perceived efficacy for classroom management and engagement with students. Regression analyses revealed that comfort with social-emotional learning significantly predicted both outcomes for both groups whereas commitment to social-emotional learning did not. Perceived social-emotional competence also played an important role. Pre-service teachers felt more committed to social-emotional learning, whereas in-service teachers felt more comfortable and believed they had higher levels of social-emotional competence themselves. Implications for supporting the development of teachers' own social-emotional competence and suggestions for future research are provided.