At Trubar Literature House, the Educational Research Institute (ERI) organised a panel discussion on the topic of social and emotional learning, which took place as part of the monthly “ERI Talks”.

“Our best long term investment is human capital investment in the form of emotional, social and cognitive education. To date, we are failing the first two areas of development in our educational systems. An important lesson to draw from the entire literature on successful early interventions is that it is the social skills and motivation of the child that are more easily altered – not IQ. These social and emotional skills affect performance in school and in the workplace. We too often have a bias toward believing that only cognitive skills are of fundamental importance to success in life.”

(James J. Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2000)

The significance of the above insight by the Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman for fostering the academic achievement of Slovenian youths was at the Educational Research Institute investigated throughout the past year as part of the project “Raising Awareness and Opportunities of Lifelong Learning for Low Achievers”. During the project the topicality of this issue within the educational space of Slovenia has been shed light on by providing answers to the following questions:

• What is social and emotional learning and how does it affect student achievement?
• Is social and emotional learning present within the educational space of Slovenia to a sufficient extent?
• How can the social and emotional learning programmes, which have been proven to be effective, be successfully integrated into Slovenian schools?

The “ERI Talks” panellists were dr. Ana Kozina, a Scientific Associate at the Educational Research Institute and an Assistant Professor of psychology at the University of Maribor, dr. Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič, Professor at the Faculty of Social Work of the University of Ljubljana, and Marjan Gorup, the head teacher of Prežihov Voranc Primary School in Ljubljana. The talk was moderated by dr. Urška Štremfel, a Scientific Associate at the Educational Research Institute and the project leader of the project “Raising Awareness and Opportunities of Lifelong Learning for Low Achievers”.