Developmental guidance and student acquisition of social competence.

Abstract

In a changing world, it is increasingly important to articulate what are the social emotional competencies that students leaving secondary schools need to acquire in order to be effective learners and citizens and how schools can facilitate the acquisition of such competencies. There is an emerging consensus that CASEL [1] has identified five of those core competencies. They are a) self-awareness, b) self-management, c) social awareness, d) relationship skills and e) responsible decision-making. There is not, however, a consensus as to how schools can facilitate the acquisition of these competencies. This paper will argue that each community needs to articulate the competencies they expect from their children and ensure that their schools implement a program of developmental guidance that helps them acquire these competencies. Developmental guidance is a combination of curriculum that teaches these competencies, experiences through which students can put them into practice, a systematic approach to developing and implementing a post-secondary plan for each student, and a way to assess the success of such an approach. In the same way that competence in literacy and numeracy is developed over a child’s career in school through a series of increasingly complex coursework, we need to implement systematic developmental guidance in all schools so that we more effectively prepare our children to take their place in a world that is changing as a result of technological and social developments. There are several barriers to implementing effective developmental guidance programs. One is the lack of consensus as to the role of schools in providing such training. Another is the lack of consensus as to what are those desired competencies. A third is the lack of resources made available to support such implementation.