Elaboration of the Course on Social and Emotional Learning for Younger Adolescents

At the moment, it is scientifically proven that the programs for the development of social and emotional skills affect the quality of life and academic achievement in both short and long term stages. This trend raises the issue of strategies and methods for developing such skills in the educational process, which is currently not resolved. This work is intended to contribute to the development of methods applicable to the development of such skills. This work is an implemented project of developing an educational course on the development of social and emotional skills for younger adolescents. The project was commissioned by the charity Foundation "Shalash", which is engaged in adapting children from foster families to school by educational courses. To create this course, a wide range of theoretical and practical material was analyzed. First, approaches to classifying social and emotional skills were analyzed to determine the theoretical framework of the course. Secondly, to take into account the characteristics of the group of prospective participants in the course development, an analysis of the characteristics of young adolescents and the characteristics of cognitive and non-cognitive development of children from foster families was conducted. Third, there was a review of methods and techniques of pedagogical design of courses on the development of social and emotional skills, analysis of research on the effectiveness of programs for the development of social and emotional skills, and analysis of foreign and Russian courses on the development of social and emotional skills for young adolescents. Finally, since the educational course was supposed to be part of an already implemented educational program, it was analyzed in terms of the accepted principles for developing educational courses in the Foundation's program and existing methods for developing social and emotional skills. The developed educational course is aimed at developing specific, based on a theoretical framework, social and emotional skills that are consistently developed in each exercise of the course. The course consists of 14 classes, the thematic plan and pedagogical techniques and methods of which are also based on the collected analyzed theoretical and empirical material. Also, educational materials were created for the educational course, including author's illustrations, materials for crafts, texts, presentations, diagrams, etc. In addition to the project development, the first pilot study of the course's effectiveness was also carried out. After testing the course in September-December 2019, an interview was conducted with its host and quantitative monitoring of skills formation during the implementation of the educational course. As a result of the interview, significant changes were made to the educational course and pedagogical materials were adjusted. Quantitative results of testing are also presented in this paper. Based on the results of preliminary testing, it was concluded that the course can be used in practice and be the object of further experimental research of effectiveness. Currently, the course has become part of the educational program Of the charity Foundation "Shalash", which is supposed to be further scaled up.