This three-paper session reports on the first year of cross-cultural research designed to evaluate educator perspectives regarding Social Emotional Learning (SEL). The research is being conducted by 34 career development investigators from 20 countries. SEL skills are becoming increasingly critical to helping youth develop the competencies needed to become employable within the emergent 4th Industrial Revolution. Today’s youth must articulate how their competencies align to multiple career opportunities. They need social skills and social awareness to interact with different managers and work environments. Youth need self-management skills to engage in lifelong learning. For this study, educators were asked to provide written responses to a series of open-ended questions about their understanding of SEL, their perspective on SEL’s relevance to their own effectiveness as educators, and whether and how they perceive SEL as relevant to classroom teaching. Three presentations will report on different aspects of the results of the study. Paper 1 titled “Intersection of Social Emotional Learning Skills and Career Development” will describe the rationale for the research program. Paper 2 titled “Qualitative Methodology for a Cross-Cultural Study of Educator Beliefs Regarding the Nature and Value of SEL” will discuss the methods used to collect and analyze the qualitative results. Paper 3 titled “From the Voice of Educators: Identification of the Cross-Cultural Dimensions of SEL” will describe the Year 1 results of the study. The results will be presented in terms of the cross-cultural coding themes that emerged with an emphasis on common themes as well as themes and descriptions that are unique to different countries. The results will also be described in terms of the axial coding results that will describe the broad SEL categories that emerged and that will include SEL categories that are shared across cultures as well as those that appear unique to specific cultures.
