The urgency of social emotional development of elementary school children in improving character education

Abstract

Children’s learning process does not depend only on the aspect of intelligence or cognitiveabilities, but also influenced by other aspects such as emotional and social aspects ofdevelopment. The emotional and social aspects have big influence on the child behaviortoward himself, others and the environment. In early childhood social emotional aspects canbe developed through social emotional learning. Social emotional learning is the process ofdeveloping skills, attitudes, and values necessary to acquire social and emotional competenceas a capital of children in interacting with himself, others and the environment. Emotionalsocial learning can serve as the beginning and foundation in plantings character education toearly childhood. There are four key competencies in social emotional development of children;self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision making, andrelationship management. These four competencies are important to be developed sinceearly age to build and instill social skills of children. By developing the four social and emotionalaspects of children, the good nature or excellent characters will be internalized within thechildren. Methods to be used in developing the four characters can be as follow: playing,modelling, story telling, drama, etc.