Social and Emotional Needs and Learning Processes: Section Introduction

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest and research focus over the past years on meeting the social and emotional needs of diverse learners, including high ability or gifted and talented children (Freeman J, The emotional development of the gifted and talented. In: Wallace B, Sisk DA, Senior J (eds) The SAGE handbook of gifted and talented education. SAGE, New York, pp 169–183, 2018). Social and emotional learning (SEL) has been linked to an overall improvement in academic performance, lower levels of emotional distress, and an increase in prosocial behaviour among students (Mahoney JL, Durlak JA, Weissberg RP, An update on social and emotional learning outcome research. Phi Delta Kappan 100(4):18–23, 2018; Zins JE, Weissberg RP, Wang MC, Walberg HJ, Building academic success on social and emotional learning: What does research say? Teachers College Press, New York, 2004). The chapters in this section roughly address the broad topics mentioned above as they deal with: (a) motivation, growth mindset, and self-regulated learning training leading to academic performance and achievement; (b) overexcitabilities which heighten one’s physiological experience of the world, thereby increasing one’s vulnerabilities to emotional distress; (c) the impact of ability grouping and acceleration to a gifted students’ self-esteem and well-being; (d) experiences of twice exceptional students in regular classrooms; (e) the intersectional experiences of risk and resilience among gifted young people who are socio-economically disadvantaged and who belong to ethnic minorities and indigenous communities; (f) how explicitly teaching SEL and coping skills can help inhibit inappropriate behaviours, and (g) how the introduction of multicultural literature can help develop prosocial behaviours among gifted students.