Introduction

Promoting social and emotional learning (SEL) is widely recommended in literature, because it promotes good relationships. It also helps to foster supportive and student-engaging instruction and to design learning environments accordingly. Through SEL students learn to become more autonomous and active in their own learning processes, which often leads them to improved academic performance (Zins, 2004). However, there are many challenges influencing the implementation of the social and emotional learning in the school context. It is important to understand various processes of the development of SEL and how it works in various cultural contexts.

The present volume explores the ways how social and emotional learning are conducted in different parts of the world. We hope that the chapters of this book help the reader to understand, how SEL can be applied in different cultural contexts, serving for varying needs. This is especially interesting because, as Humphrey (2020) suggests, SEL has become a dominant approach in education systems around the world.