Pixel International Conferences

More than in the past teachers and educators are requested to cope with the many challenges that came from a technological and globalized world. Resilient educators able to meet their students’ needs and prepare them to be ready to successfully enter the future world of work require educators highly equipped. Accordingly, the framework to which CASEL has given substance in more than twenty years of research to the promotion of a series of skills that allow the development of resources and strengths as well as to prevent counterproductive behavior and unsatisfactory results appears to be crucial. With this in mind, an international research network (IRN) was launched in 2018 to examine first, the educator perspective on the nature and  value of social emotional learning, and secondly, to outline an educator SEL self-efficacy measure. Researchers from 20 countries, among which China, Finland, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, South Africa, Turkey, Uganda, Singapore, and United States collected data with a research protocol that included three open questions. They met for the first time at the university of Padova, Italy, on July 2019 to discuss the first preliminary results. Using NVivo, a coding booklet was, in fact, developed for analyzing answers provided by participants. The experience of this international collaboration will be presented and cross-cultural reflections on these results will be discussed. Some insights will be also provided on the second phase that aims to establish a new, cross-cultural SEL measure and help educators access to research-based positive development resources.

Keywords: Socioemotional learning; career development.