Developing social-emotional skills through imaginative teaching methods in elementary education

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this preliminary pilot study is to identify how imaginative teaching methods and low-technology prototyping promote social-emotional (SE) skills development in elementary school students. Particularly, two are the objectives of the study, firstly to test the research desigńs feasibility and validate the research tools and secondly, to explore the relationships between the employed teaching methods and social-emotional skills development. The study is based on mixed methods-grounded theory methodology involving the collection of qualitative and quantitative data from 104 participants. Based on grounded theory methodology, we have developed a pedagogical approach illustrating age-appropriate teaching practices for developing SE skills. Further research needs to be carried out to gain greater insight into the cross-curricular infusion of these methods and skills across different grades. The added value of this work is the exploration of imaginative teaching methods exploiting age responsiveness so that children gain social-emotional benefits within low-technology learning situations.

KEYWORDS:

• social-emotional skills
• imagination
• low-technology prototyping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Open University of Catalonia.

Notes on contributors

Xanthippi Tsortanidou

Xanthippi Tsortanidou is a PhD candidate at Open University of Catalonia. She holds a Master in Curriculum Development from the University of Thessaly in Greece. Her research interests include Learning Design and Pedagogies, ICT and Collaborative Learning.

Thanasis Daradoumis

Thanasis Daradoumis holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He combines his role as Associate Professor at the University of the Aegean, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication with his collaboration at the Open University of Catalonia within the Department of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications. He is also researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) as well as at the eLearn Center (eLC). His research interests are: Emotional Intelligence, Alternative (Holistic) Education, Learning Analytics, E-learning, Collaborative, Affective and Adaptive Systems, CSCL. He has been advisor of over 20 MSc theses and 8 PhD already completed. He has published over 110 Scopus-indexed papers, from which over 20 are articles in ISI-JCR journals. He is a member of the editorial board of several international conferences and journals, whereas he has coordinated or participated in various National and European R&D projects.

Elena Barberá

Elena Barberá holds a PhD in Psychology (1995) and doctorate extraordinary award for the University of Barcelona (Spain). She is currently director of the Education and Technology PhD programme and she is full professor at the Department of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia. Her research activity is focused on learning regulation and assessment, learning strategies and processes of teaching and learning in virtual contexts.