Developing the Emotionally Literate School

Katherine Weare

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781446226513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

`As someone with an interest in emotional literacy and in developing emotional literacy work in schools, I found this book an impressive resource. I would recommend it for those interested in this area, those working within schools on emotional literacy, and for school staff interested in developing their schools as emotionally literature organizations? - Debate

`This is an authoritative and scholarly book that does not attempt to offer a simple fix-it solution but one that should lead to an informed and workable approach that will address the needs and circumstances of individual schools as such. I would recommend it as an essential read for anyone contemplating the research or promotion of emotional literacy in school? - Special Children

`There is much to encourage exploration by schools, educators and managers in an informed way. Helpful appendices list experienced agencies schools may approach in their work on emotional well-being?- Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties

`The book provides a useful guide to ways in which school policies for promoting emotional wellbeing can be developed? - Times Educational Supplement, Teacher

`This book is written in a refreshingly well-balanced style and it deserves a similarly even-handed review. Katherine Weare never exaggerates a point or pretends to have found the Holy Grail. Instead; each argument is carefully counter pointed by a caveat? - Nurturing Potential

`This is a handbook for teachers and LEAs with clearly headed sections, useful tables and list of resources and contacts. There are helpful suggestions for auditing emotional literacy in schools, deciding whether to use off-the-shelf programmes, tailoring programmes to the school?s own needs, and working with the wider community? - The Psychology of Education Review

?Visionary and easy to read. This vision resides in the authors? convictions about the vital role schools can play in developing and widening the literacy of emotions... worth reading... opens up a picture of what can achieved in schools in the best interests of the children? - Young Minds Magazine

`Katherine Weare brings a good track record to this useful handbook. The full list of contacts, sources of support and resources and the useful bibliography are clearly a product of her comprehensive knowledge of the field in UK and beyond. They provide a solid platform for future researches? - Journal of In-Service Education

Emotional literacy refers to our ability to understand and use information about our own and others? emotional states, with skill and competence. It is increasingly accepted in schools, and this book shows how it is central to mainstream education.

The author defines concepts and terms in ways that make sense to practitioners, outlines the scientific evidence behind the concept, explores ways in which schools can become more emotionally literate, and demonstrates the educational benefits. The book is a practical and up-to-date account of ways in which schools can use emotional literacy to realize their goals of school improvement and effectiveness, increased learning, more efficient management of teaching and learning and improved relationships.

Katherine Weare shows how emotional literacy can help address persistent educational problems, such as emotional and behavioural disturbance, school exclusion, and teacher stress and disaffection. Emotional literacy is relevant to mainstream education, is most effective when it permeates the whole school culture, ethos, relationships and management. It is as relevant for secondary as it is for primary students, and applies to teachers and parents as well as to students.

CHAPTER ONE

What Is Emotional Literacy and Why Is It Important to Schools?

GOALS OF THIS CHAPTER

By the end of this chapter you will:

• be clearer about what is meant by ‘emotional literacy’
• be clearer about what is meant by other commonly used terms in this field (such as ‘emotional intelligence’) and how these terms, and the work they cover, relate to emotional literacy
• be more aware of what you already know, and are working on, which relates to emotional literacy
• have explored some of the current reasons why many feel emotional literacy is increasingly important in education
• have gained a broad idea of the benefits of working on emotional literacy, for students, school staff, schools and communities.

SOME KEY CONCEPTS AND TERMS

Before we launch into a book on emotional literacy it may be helpful to clarify what exactly we are talking about. The whole area of work on emotional and social issues has developed with enormous rapidity over the last decade or so, and some of the words now being used to describe such work can seem off-putting and opaque to those who work in education. This section will explore some key terms often used in this area, and look at their advantages and disadvantages. The area is something of a linguistic minefield.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘EMOTIONAL LITERACY?’

‘Emotional literacy’ is the key term that will be used in this book, although there are many others that mean more or less the same thing or overlap with it considerably, as we shall shortly see. The term ‘emotional literacy’ is usually attributed to Steiner (Steiner and Perry, 1997) and was popularized by various ‘movers and shakers’ in the 1990s.

This book will define emotional literacy for the individual as the ability to understand ourselves and other people, and in particular to be aware of, understand, and use information about the emotional states of ourselves and others with competence. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, and respond to the emotions of others, in ways that are helpful to ourselves and others.

Organizations, such as schools and local education authorities clearly have a key role in promoting the emotional literacy of their members and helping them to become more emotionally literate. There is also at least a metaphoical sense in which an organization itself can be said to be more or less ‘emotionally literate’. The level of emotional literacy in an organization might be defined as the extent to which the organization takes into account the role of emotion in dealing with the people who are its members, and in planning, making and implementing decisions, and takes positive steps to promote the emotional and social well-being of its members. This book will have a good deal to say about how schools, and also those who support them such as local authorities and voluntary agencies, can become more emotionally literate organizations.

TABLE 1.1 USING THE TERM ‘EMOTIONAL LITERACY’

Advantages	Disadvantages
Popular especially in the UK: has produced a wealth of publications, projects, work in schools, conferences, etc.	Not so well known or used outside the UK
The term is meaningful in an educational context, and is now very popular with educational psychologists, schools and local education authorities	The metaphor implied in the word ‘literacy’ can be confusing for some people, and feel like jargon to those outside the educational sector
For those familiar with the concept of literacy (for example, teachers in primary schools and teachers of English) it can readily bring to mind ideas on how emotional and social competences can be broken down, defined, taught and encouraged, in the same ways as verbal literacycan	‘Literacy’ can have negative connotations for some who have negative feelings about the word, for example, some in UK schools who have experienced the ‘literacy hour’ (an hour a day which primary schools are required to spend on literacy, working within some very tight parameters) and who fear the onset of the ‘emotional literacy hour’
It reminds us that emotional literacy can be learned rather than being a fixed, innate quality, that we all have degrees of literacy, and that the pursuit of literacy is a journey, not an end point	It can focus attention on the individual and their capacities, and make us forget to also look at the surrounding context and underlying determinants of emotional and social well-being
	It can make it sound as if we are looking at ‘one thing’ rather than the loose cluster of competences many think it is in practice
	It does not, in the minds of some, include social competences, but focuses only on emotional aspects.

No term is perfect, and at this point we will briefly explore the advantages and disadvantages of using the term ‘emotional literacy’, outlined in Table 1.1. We will make the same exploration for the other key terms that we will discuss as we go.

This book will generally use the term ‘emotional literacy’, but there are others that it will use from time to time, and others that perhaps could have been used. None of the terms are perfect, and all have advantages and disadvantages. The book will draw heavily on work that has taken place under a variety of other terms which will be discussed in this chapter.

WHAT COMPETENCES DOES EMOTIONAL LITERACY INCLUDE?

To clarify what we mean by emotional literacy, at least at an individual level, we will next outline some of key emotional and social competences: they will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2.

SELF-UNDERSTANDING

• Having an accurate and positive view of ourselves.
• Having a sense of optimism about the world and ourselves.
• Having a coherent and continuous life story.

UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING EMOTIONS

• Experiencing the whole range of emotions.
• Understanding the causes of our emotions.
• Expressing our emotions appropriately.
• Managing our responses to our emotions effectively, for example managing our anger, controlling our impulses.
• Knowing how to feel good more often and for longer.
• Using information about the emotions to plan and solve problems.
• Resilience – processing, and bouncing back from, difficult experiences.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL SITUATIONS AND MAKING RELATIONSHIPS

• Forming attachments to other people.
• Experiencing empathy for others.
• Communicating and responding effectively to others.
• Managing our relationships effectively.
• Being autonomous: independent and self-reliant.

‘EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE’

‘Emotional Intelligence’ is a term that is used particularly in the USA to describe more or less the same competences as emotional literacy. The popularity of the word ‘intelligence’ is partly due to the influence of Gardner, Kornhaber and Wake, (1995) who have worked on the whole concept of intelligence. Gardner sees intelligence as being much wider than is generally supposed, and as plural ‘intelligences’ rather than just one, all of which cover rather difference capacities. His precise categorization of the various intelligences is constantly evolving, but basically he sees them as including what he calls ‘conventional intelligence’, the logical, rational, mathematical and linguistic capacities that are familiar to us through intelligence tests. He has added a further group of what he called ‘specialist intelligences’ such as musical, spatial and kinaesthetic intelligences. Most relevant to our purposes here, he suggests that there are also two types of what he terms ‘personal intelligences’ – ‘intra-personal intelligence’, or self-understanding, and ‘inter-personal intelligence’, or understanding other people.

The umbrella term, which brings together these two intelligences, ‘emotional intelligence’, was supposedly coined by Mayer and Salovey, who defined it as:

the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings which facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. (Mayer and Salovey, 1997: 10)

Goleman (1996) popularized the term ‘emotional intelligence’ in his book of the same name. This book brought together a wealth of data, and concluded that what he called ‘emotional intelligence’ is more influential than conventional intelligence for all kinds of personal, career and scholastic success. It has been suggested that Goleman overstated the case, and that if we look at the population as a whole, conventional intelligence is still very influential (Sternberg, 2001). However, it appears to be true that, if we look at those who do well educationally, the differences in work outcomes and personal success are more dependent on their emotional and social abilities than on their IQ: emotional intelligence gives them an ‘edge’ over their equally conventionally intelligent but less emotionally intelligent counterparts. So to this extent there is no doubt about how influential emotional intelligence is.

The idea of ‘emotional intelligence’ triggered an explosion of interest in scientific work on how the brain works and in particular on the central role that the emotional side of the brain plays in the process. It focused attention on links between social and emotional intelligence and educational outcomes, such as learning, cognitive development, school attendance and job success. It helped emotional and social education to be seen as important for all students, including bright ones and older ones. It meant that emotional education was no longer ‘touchy-feely’; there was a new emphasis on hard-edged aspects, and an increased focus on the development of techniques and instruments to measure of emotional and social competences (although the latter aspect is seen by many as a mixed blessing as we shall see in Chapter 6). See Table 1.2.

‘COMPETENCE’/‘LEARNING’

Rather than use the specialist and, to some, rather jargon-laden terms ‘literacy’ or ‘intelligence’, some use the term ‘competence’, usually with the words ‘emotional’ and/or ‘social’ attached. The phrases are often turned into the acronyms ‘SEC’ or ‘ESC’. Some also use the broad ‘social and emotional learning’ instead or in addition, and use the acronym ‘SEL’. A powerful example is the major US network CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) which brings together a large number of practitioners and researchers under this heading: this group tends to use the terms ‘competence’ and ‘learning’.

In practice, definitions of social and emotional competence and learning again overlap with emotional literacy:

Social and emotional competence is the ability to understand, manage and express the social and emotional aspects of one’s life in ways that enable the successful management of life tasks such as learning, forming relationships, solving everyday problems, and adapting to the complex demands of growth and development. (Elias et al., 1997: 2)

TABLE 1.2 USING THE IDEA OF ‘EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE’

Advantages	Disadvantages
Very popular in the USA, and in business contexts	Not so popular outside the USA, and in educational contexts
It has produced a wealth of useful and inspiring work on how emotional intelligence may best be developed, especially in business, and to a lesser extent in education, the family and the community	Using the term tends to focus the attention on measurement rather than on teaching and learning
It has provoked serious work on analysing whether there is such a thing as emotional and social intelligence. The findings are promising in terms of distinct and measurable attributes, and their effects on social behaviour, life chances and learning	The scientific connotations and expectations raised by the word ‘intelligence’ have aroused a great deal of controversy and some hostility, for example among some psychologists who dispute whether there is really such a thing as ‘emotional intelligence’ or ‘social intelligence’ in the strict sense of the word. These debates can undermine the credibility of all work on emotional and social development, whether or not it uses the term ‘intelligence’, and use up a good deal of energy and resource Calling emotional and social capacities ‘intelligence’ can suggest they are innate and fixed, not teachable
Using this term has linked work in the field with research on hard science, for example with work on the physiology of the brain, the neurological development of young children, and learning styles	If we use the term in a looser way, we overcome some of these problems, but then it comes to mean the same as other softer terms such as ‘literacy’ and ‘competence’, and ceases to have any precise or specialist meaning, or to add anything particular to the debate

TABLE 1.3 USING THE IDEAS OF ‘COMPETENCE’ AND ‘LEARNING’

Advantages	Disadvantages
Used in the USA, and to some extent elsewhere	Not so popular outside the USA
Familiar terms to those who work in education	Not so inviting to those who come to this area from other sectors than education, such as the health service
They are straightforward, non-specialist and loosely used terms that feel like ‘common sense’ and are non-threatening in most contexts	The word ‘competence’ can alienate some, including those from education, who object to the logical corollary that people can be ‘emotionally incompetent’
Emotional literacy and emotional intelligence are usually defined in terms of specific competences anyway in practice, to make the very general overall definitions more specific, teachable and assessable	Looking at separate competences can fragment a holistic concept
Learning is absolutely central to the whole area, both in terms of specific learning and teaching programmes on emotional competences, and in terms of the impact on learning in general - there is, as we will see in Chapter 2, a highly beneficial link between emotional literacy and all types of learning	Like ‘literacy’ and ‘intelligence’ the terms ‘competence’ and ‘learning’ can focus attention on the individual and their capacities and not on the surrounding context and underlying determinants of emotional and social competence and well-being

This book will use the term ‘emotional and social competence’ when looking at the skills, attitudes and behaviours that ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What is emotional literacy and why is it important to schools?
• 2 What are we aiming at? What competences are we trying to develop? In what key ways can schools help develop these competences?
• 3 Some key principles for developing emotional literacy in schools
• 4 Emotional literacy and learning
• 5 What kind of schools promote emotional literacy?
• 6 Profiling, assessing and evaluating emotional literacy
• 7 Wider support for the emotionally literate school: the role of local education authorities and Healthy School approaches
• Overview: key steps in becoming a more emotionally literate school
• Contacts for developing emotional literacy and emotional well-being in schools
• References
• Index