Educators around the world see well-being as an engine of cognition and learning.
Schools have long recognized the importance of emotional well-being in their students, but primarily as a form of pastoral care, in reaction to trauma or distress. A growing network of teachers, pedagogy researchers, and psychologists now call for a more foundational integration of social and emotional learning that recognizes how mindsets and moods shape children’s ability to acquire knowledge and understand themselves and the fast-changing world around them. In the 21st century, with artificial intelligence (AI) and automation reshaping work and life, there is growing fear that process-driven jobs will be done by robots, with increasing unemployment affecting the humans that once carried them out. Skills centered in the interpersonal, empathic, and creative realms could become the key human differential in the labor market of tomorrow, and those with strengths in these domains—innate or acquired—will be best placed to prosper. How do educators view social and emotional learning? Are they putting in place policies and programs to support well-being and the development of psychosocial assets such as resilience, autonomy and self-regulation? And what forms do these policies and program stake? This report, informed by an expert advisory panel and a global survey, explores the integration of emotional well-being, social learning and cognition in education systems across the continents.
