Social-Emotional and Cognitive Learning: Debunking Either/Or False Choices about Pre-K Curricula

Preschool classrooms are abuzz with activity, with children and adults talking, moving, playing, and singing nearly constantly. Outside adults may observe such a classroom and question when and how learning is taking place among the hubbub. Early childhood educators know that young children’s brains are much more flexible than ours and grab opportunities for learning at every chance, constantly fielding stimuli to make neural connections that make sense of the world. Educators not only have to know how to teach children at this stage of development, but what content, or curriculum, to teach them so that students have foundational education skills to draw upon in kindergarten and beyond. An evidence-based curriculum is a key component in successful early learning programs, and a pre-K teacher uses a variety of strategies to teach it. Program leaders, funding requirements, and other factors can influence these strategies. There is sometimes a public misconception that teachers must choose one method over the other to effectively teach; but in reality, the way in which children learn curricula is not dichotomous, but rather dynamic and complex. Here we will examine the false dichotomy of social-emotional versus cognitive learning.

Social-emotional skills (e.g., sharing; recognizing emotions) and cognitive skills (e.g., understanding cause and effect; remembering) are important foundations for lifelong learning. Each skill set supports the development of the other. As children’s social-emotional skills strengthen, their cognitive abilities strengthen, and vice versa. Educators weave both types of these skills into activities throughout the school day to promote this interactive effect. A high-quality preschool curriculum gives children opportunities to build both social-emotional and cognitive skills as they learn.

Imagine morning circle time at a preschool. Four-year-old children are sitting or kneeling in a semicircle facing their teacher, who is saying hello one-by-one to each student, while an assistant teacher sits among the students. The teacher tells the children it’s time to sing “The Good Morning Song,” which prompts the students to sing along and do the corresponding hand motions they’ve learned throughout the year. Next, the teacher guides the students in saying “good morning” or high-fiving (their choice) the children sitting on either side of them. Then, the teacher asks one student to come up and pick the day, color, and shape of the week out of a basket and stick them on an easel. Next, she reads a book about a child who is caught in a rainstorm and has a gigantic umbrella that can fit everyone underneath it. Finally, children each take turns telling the class one thing they did over the weekend.

To an untrained eye, it may look as though many (false) dichotomies are at play. In fact, circle time encompasses a world of different types of learning simultaneously, including social-emotional and cognitive learning. Though it may seem like the children are just sitting idly or giggling with one another, if we could see into their brains, we’d see neurons firing off constantly as circle time progressed. A trained educator knows how to present these opportunities for learning during circle time so that they connect to a high-quality curriculum. Let’s look at some examples from this classroom scenario.

The false dichotomy of social-emotional versus cognitive learning assumes that children can either learn social-emotional skills or cognitive skills in a given lesson, but not both together. In fact, high-quality early learning experiences weave the two together. Circle time is highly demanding of social-emotional skills: Children are supposed to sit in their spot, give the children on either side of them space, speak and stop speaking when appropriate, talk and sing even if they are tired, and converse with their peers. The students hearing their friends tell stories about their weekends not only helps them understand their friends better, but helps them hear a variety of stories, words, and perspectives that they can add to their language and cultural knowledge. Students strengthen their cognitive skills through building understanding about the way days of the week progress, learning how to label different shapes and colors, recalling the past weekend and determining what language to use to describe it, and how to sequence receiving and giving greetings to their peers.

The teacher asks students questions about the book she reads to them that prompt them to consider and remember characters’ emotions, conflicts, and consequences of their actions. They will later make connections back to the story when their teacher takes them on a midday science walk where they observe clouds in the sky and learn about water cycles. The teacher will ask the children to remember which shape they picked at circle time for the shape of the day, and instruct them to compare that shape to the shapes of the clouds. Skilled educators synthesize opportunities for social-emotional and cognitive learning so that children evolve in both domains throughout the year.

There are many examples of the ways in which educators create learning environments that tap both sides of these dichotomies simultaneously to teach a high-quality curriculum. High-quality early childhood education honors the complexity of how children learn by connecting learners to the curriculum in multiple ways, building on their existing knowledge and skills, and giving them opportunities to make connections throughout their world.

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