Promoting children's social-emotional skills in classrooms: Exploring the role of collaborative learning and teacher scaffolding

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has been shown to promote children's academic success and positive social experiences in schools. Less is known, however, about how teachers can integrate SEL into instruction. To fill this gap, we examined whether Collaborative Reasoning, a peer-led discussion approach to collaborative learning, can be used in classrooms to facilitate children's development of social-emotional skills. We also investigated the role of teacher scaffolding on the development of such skills. Seventy-six 4th grade students and three teachers participated in a series of eight Collaborative Reasoning discussions. Using mixed-methods, we first coded children's social-emotional skills through summative content analysis of discussion transcripts and post-discussion interviews. Quantitative results showed that, of the five categories of social-emotional skills, children demonstrated decision-making, relationship building, and social-awareness skills; and over time, there was a significant increase in the decision-making and social-awareness skills. Using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA), we then identified the pattern of association between teachers' scaffolding types and students' social-emotional skills. The ENA model showed that teachers' cognitive scaffolding is associated with students' decision-making while teachers' metacognitive scaffolding is linked with students' social awareness. This study demonstrated the potential of integrating Collaborative Reasoning into classroom instruction to promote children's social-emotional skills.