By Elaine Lau, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

School-based social emotional learning (SEL) programmes first emerged in North America and have gradually become an important component of early childhood education across the globe. In view of the nature of social-emotional competencies being inherently embodied and culturally responsive, Hayashi and colleagues recently proposed a bioecological and embodied framework for the development and implementation of a SEL curriculum.

Following CASEL’sFramework for Systemic Social and Emotional Learning,they emphasized that the design of any SEL curriculum or program should consider the culture and adopt situated and embodied learning in order to allow children to be able to develop SEL competencies that are transferrable to or applied in other contexts, such as at home or in the community. As different cultures have differences in values, beliefs, and norms or customs, the interactions, behaviours, and engagements considered to constitute social competence might vary…