Teaching the Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence

September 21, 2017

The launch of the Housman Institute comes amid growing awareness of the importance of teaching the building blocks of emotional intelligence from birth. Supported through our ongoing research and teacher training, our flagship program begin to ECSEL promotes the growth in early childhood of critical developmental constructs, namely emotional competence, self-regulation, and associated pro-social skills such as empathy. As common in academia and in early childhood literature, we use the term emotional competence rather than emotional intelligence in our lexicon as competence can be taught and learned whereas intelligence is traditionally considered fixed.

Through our lab school, Beginnings, we’ve educated thousands of students and trained hundreds of teachers in our emotional, cognitive and social early learning approach. Analysis of student program data shows that our evidenced-based and research-informed approach yields quantifiable and significant improvement in these critical constructs in children aged three months to six years (greater detail on these studies will be forthcoming).

The importance of these constructs in early childhood education cannot be overstated. In addition to their long-administered PISA assessment for fifteen year olds to rank the education of countries globally, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently added a PISA for five-year-olds that will measure not only pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills, but also self-regulation and empathy. Meantime countries throughout the world are looking not only how to better integrate social and emotional learning in grade school, but also how early childhood education can become more accessible and effective in this area.

Our hope is that the Housman Institute can help in these important efforts to improve early childhood education for the lifelong health, success, and welling of children globally. We invite you to join us in our mission by learning more about what we do and how you and young children can benefit.

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