Social-emotional competencies are increasingly recognized as vital for children’s positive development, for their well-being, positive relationships, academic and future career success, and ability to cope with changes and related challenges (Lang et al., 2017). Consequently, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) efforts are increasingly entering classrooms (CASEL, 2013), with positive impacts increasingly noted (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009).

Similarly, social-emotional skills have been recognized to be highly important for teachers (Nias, 1996; Anastasiou, 2020), contributing to teachers’ overall professional effectiveness (Mérida-López & Extremera, 2017); wellbeing;  their ability to cope with work-related stress (Fernández-Molina et al., 2019) and with classroom challenges (Poulou, Bassett & Dunham, 2018); positive teacher-student relationships (Brackett et al., 2011); and a positive and psychologically-safe classroom climate (Harvey et al., 2012). These, in turn, impact students’ emotions, behaviors, learning capabilities, academic outcomes (Lang et al., 2020) and social-emotional skill development.

Teachers can cultivate social-emotional skills in their students both informally, by establishing positive teacher-student relationships (Brackett et al., 2011), promoting a supportive classroom climate (Harvey et al., 2012), modeling emotionally intelligent behaviors,  and using daily interactions and everyday classroom events as learning opportunities (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Morris et al., 2013), and formally, through SEL programs.

It follows that teachers, and in particular pre-service teachers, should be provided with suitable SEL training and with opportunities to practice newly-gained SEL knowledge, skills and tools in real educational settings, in order to improve learning and internalization processes.

In particular, most SEL programs to date do not take into consideration cultural diversity among students )Jagers et al., 2018). Yet the complex task of developing pedagogies and programs that support and sustain individual cultural competencies while offering access to dominant  ones is fundamental to the social and emotional well-being of children and youth in the education system (Mahfouz & Anthony-Stevens, 2020). In order to implement and facilitate effective SEL programs within diverse and multicultural settings, policies and practices related to SEL school programs need to consider the backgrounds and needs of the children, families, and communities that are being served (Hayashi et al., 2022).
In the absence of culturally sensitive SEL programs in Israel and given the diversity and multi-cultural nature of Israeli society, guided SEL practice may allow students to better implement SEL in diverse cultural settings.

The current qualitative study followed education students of diverse backgrounds who  participated in a semester-long SEL training program, as part of their third-year academic studies. The program was aimed at developing students’ social-emotional skills as well as their ability to integrate  EI into their educational work. In line with this latter goal, the students were asked  to practice their newly-acquired SEL knowledge, skills and tools  as they engaged in  a year-long internship program in their respective communities, in parallel with their academic studies.   

Ways by which  they applied their newly-acquired SEL knowledge to their work in diverse cultural backgrounds were examined.  

Participants: The cohort included 35 third year education students, both Jewish and Arab, in one college in Israel. All were enrolled in a semester long (13 sessions) SEL training program, as well as in a year-long (96 hours) internship program, which was run in parallel to the academic courses. All but three of the participants were women, in line with the known gender ratio among education students in Israel. Ages of participants ranged from 21 to 50 years. Procedures: The SEL training program took place during the first semester of the 2022 academic year. The program was loosely structured, enabling participants to be exposed to a wide variety of SEL tools and pedagogic approaches. Parallel to the academic program, participants took part in a year-long internship program in which they could put their newly-acquired SEL knowledge into practice. Internship placements included schools and/or afternoon programs with children of different ages, and from a wide variety of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, including many from communities where SEL education is rare. Participants were free to decide how much SEL instruction to provide and/or incorporate into the classroom/group. They were also encouraged to adapt various SEL tools to their own specific needs, and were supported in this by their academic instructors. Finally, participants were asked to submit accounts of their reflections, regarding their SEL experiences, at two points in time: At the end of the SEL course (i.e. the end of the first academic semester, February, 2022), and at the end of their internship program (July 2022). In order to preserve participants’ anonymity, coded identification numbers were assigned to all reflection accounts prior to their thematic analysis. Analysis: The two sets of reflections (at the end of the SEL training program and at the end of the internship program, respectively), were organized into dyads, based on their assigned identification numbers, which were then analyzed in tandem. Thematic, deductive analysis (Weber, 1990) and the Narralizer qualitative analysis software (http://www.narralizer.com) were used. Categories and themes were identified separately for each of the two programs (academic course and internship). This enabled the authors to examine the impacts of participants’ training on their encounters with children and schools from diverse cultural backgrounds; the degree by which academic knowledge was internalized; and the level of retention of learned material and of newly-acquired SEL skills among participants.

Analysis of participants’ reflections revealed that the SEL training program at the center of the present study was well-received, positively evaluated, and perceived by all participants to be interesting, engaging, relevant and important, for both their professional and personal lives. Participants further felt that their awareness and knowledge of SEL and of its importance had been developed, that they improved their social-emotional skills and related behaviors, and had gained practical tools to further engage with SEL in the future. A majority of participants noted subsequent and related impacts on their ability to work with children during the internship program. Furthermore, a majority of participants began implementing SEL in their classrooms/groups in the course of their internship, in parallel with their study of SEL, and continued to do so in the second semester (after completing the SEL academic program). Main SEL topics to be implemented were self-awareness, impulse control, growth mindset and well-being. Participants noted the need to adapt tools and materials they had acquired during the SEL training program to the diverse settings of their internship programs. Main diversity dimensions that were noted to prompt such adaptations included age, system and group characteristics, general day-to-day challenges, and culture. In particular, participants discussed the need for culturally-sensitive translations of materials; variations in levels of readiness to engage in social-emotional learning; gender stereotypes and their impacts on the ability to engage in social-emotional learning; and conformity levels and their impacts on group work, authority patterns and role modeling. An increased sensitivity to diversity among participants and progression in their ability to choose SEL topics and materials that are suitable for their students and adapt them to individual and diverse needs, in the time interval between the two sets of reflections, were both detected.

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