Teacher as a potential implementor of social and emotional learning programmes in elementary school

This master's thesis explores the attitude of Slovenian elementary school teachers towards social and emotional learning and in what ways this is currently implemented in Slovenian elementary schools. The theoretical part is divided into three sections. The first section presents the individual concepts of social and emotional learning in elementary school. The second section focuses on the interpretation of social and emotional learning programmes, and the third section presents the teacher as a possible provider of social and emotional learning in elementary school. The empirical part describes the results of quantitative and qualitative research, in which participated teachers of the first and the third triad of different Slovenian elementary schools. The data was obtained through an online questionnaire that included closed-ended and openended questions. Closed-ended questions were analyzed on the basis of the quantitative approach and open-ended questions were analyzed on the basis of the qualitative approach. The answers from the quantitative research have shown that teachers perceive social and emotional learning as important, but lack the knowledge to implement the content, as well as the time, due to being overburdened with the other learning material. Teachers believe that at present there is not enough planned content in the elementary school in the field of social and emotional learning, but it also appears that with appropriate knowledgewithmore involved social and emotional learning in the curriculum and with additional support, teachers would be ready to implement the mentioned contents. Qualitative research have shown that there are some programmes in Slovenian elementary schools that encourage the development of social and emotional competences for a school year or two, but none of these programmes cover the entire elementary education. Responses have also shown that in schools where there are no such programmes, teachers are willing to integrate social and emotional learning content into their work with students on their own initiative, but how often, if at all, and in what ways, this is then of course up to each individual teacher. The conducted research complements some of the findings on social and emotional learning in Slovenian elementary schools, as it shows what attitude teachers have towars this and what could be done to make social and emotional learning in elementary schools more frequent and planned