Goal: The goal of the Committee is to promote the psychological rights and quality of life of children.

Purpose: To provide and coordinate resource support in ISPA`s effort to better understand and serve the long term best interests of young people.

The Committee has as current goals:

Goal1: To promote the development and implementation of innovative school psychology practices, by finding new promising approaches to work with children, schools and families.

The Committee has identified practices at the 2002 Colloquium at Nyborg, Denmark.

Goal 2: Encouraging networking (e-mailing ) among Committee members regarding Emotional and Social Learning in Schools.

We have established a network (e-mailing ) among Committee members regarding Emotional and Social Learning at Schools.

We held a symposium session at the Nyborg Colloquium, where many members took an active part.

Ilse Schlegel, Chair of the Child Development/Services Committee.

Emotional and Social Learning in Schools  - an informal session during the Colloquium at Nyborg. 

The Child Development and Child Services Committee has been working with different school psychological practices for the past years and at present is focusing on social and emotional learning in schools all over the world.

The Child Development/Services Committee finds it important that school psychologists help to establish a social environment where all children can develop in a positive and healthy way.

At last year's colloquium in Dinan, the Committee arranged a symposium about Social and Emotional Learning in Schools in different countries. Afterwards at the Committee meeting we decided to arrange an informal session at the colloquium in Denmark. We know that many school psychologists work with the problem or are interested in it. Therefore, the Committee invited participants at the Colloquium this summer at Nyborg, Denmark, who were interested in Emotional and Social Learning, to attend an informal session.

The session was very well attended. There were about 60 participants, and several projects were discussed.

Bonnie Nastasi, from the Institute for Community Research, Hartford, USA told us about facilitators and barriers to integrating social-emotional learning into classroom setting. She raised several questions:

Are teachers prepared to facilitate social-emotional learning?
When does social-emotional instruction become health intervention?
Do teachers see social-emotional learning as a part of their domain?
Are there adequate opportunities for training and support?
Do the teachers have a choice?
Do they have freedom to choose how they promote social-emotional learning?

Bonnie also raised the question about whether social-emotional learning should be  viewed as a separate “lesson” or integrated into the classroom curriculum? And whether students have opportunities to practice social-emotional learning?

For a PowerPoint version of Bonnie's presentation, click here.
For further information, contact: bonnastasi@yahoo.com 

Lone Gregersen, from the Educational University in Copenhagen, explained about  the Danish program called “Trin for Trin," which is based on the American program “Second Step,“ and how it is used in schools in Denmark. It is a prevention program used in classrooms to integrate social-emotional competencies across the curriculum.