Social emotional learning: a discourse for the times

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has risen up the educational agenda in recent years but is now considered as crucial given the problems brought about by school closures during the COVD-19 pandemic. This paper considers SEL as part of a wider historical process in which children are encouraged to voice what they think and feel, with this being considered taken as a key aspect of their development. In so doing children learn how to display their agency and how to talk in psychological terms such how they think and feel about what they learn or other matters. Talking is a key aspect through which children learn to engage in various actions as well as the normative ways of connecting emotions with what is learned, both formally in school as well as informally through their immersion within society. In summary, the paper therefore offers a thought piece or critical commentary on SEL as a discourse both of, and for, the times.