Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons^™

Creating The Emotionally Competent Child: The Education Of Feelings In American Public Schools, Kathleen E. Hulton

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation provides a historical and cultural analysis of a school-based approach social and emotional learning (SEL) in the United States. Over the past two decades, SEL has risen from relative obscurity to become a formidable educational movement in the United States and around the world. Its core claim, that schools should be actively involved in the cultivation of children’s emotional selves, has gained tremendous currency. I draw on popular and social scientific writing, state social and emotional learning standards, and SEL curricula to demonstrate the reconfiguration of emotion as central to the competence schools are supposed to develop. While …