[Opening Article] Educational policy and the responsibility of the school for promoting students' social-emotional, character, and moral development and preventing bullying: Introduction to the special issue

• Published in: KEDI journal of educational policy 2013, 10(0), , pp.3-6
• Main Author: Elias, Maurice J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavior Problems; Child Development; Educational Development; Educational Environment; Educational Needs; Educational Policy; Student Development; 교육학
• ISSN: 1739-4341
• DOI: 10.22804/kjep.2013.10..001

The reader will emerge from this Special Issue with an understanding of character education in many of its forms worldwide, why a focus on character education, social-emotional learning, and their variants are essential in any future vision of education in democratic societies, and the reasons why progress in implementation and integration into educational policy has been slow and inconsistent. Every article explicitly addresses the policy implications of the ideas and practices they espouse. Certainly, the articles presented here are not exhaustive of the extensive work being done internationally on the topic. Much is being captured in web sites before seeing the light of day in print: www.CASEL.org, www.character.org, www.6Seconds.org, www.edutopia.org are among the most prominent resources with international reach. And some countries extensive work is best gleaned from their education ministry web sites, rather than from publications. This is certainly true in Israel, Australia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, though a research team led by Prof. Neil Humphreys at the University of Manchester has written extensively on the UK s SEAL (Social, Emotional and Academic Learning) approach. In the United States, where education is highly decentralized, individual states Education Departments are valuable sources of information, with Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Washington State, and New Jersey being among the most active. In some cases, individual school districts web sites are more advanced than those of their respective states. Anchorage, Alaska may be the best example of this. And in some cases, the terminology will vary: character education, social-emotional learning, school climate, positive youth development, and bullying prevention are among the most common themes.