Teaching Social and Emotional Skills to Students in Vietnam: Challenges and Opportunities

This study explores the challenges and opportunities of teaching social-emotional skills in classroomsettings in Vietnam. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with middle school students and teachers involved in the Ephata Summer Program in Ho Chi Minh city. This program promotes on social-emotional learning in primary and secondary school students. In this study, we focus on learning about emotion and empathy, important aspects of social- emotional learning (SEL). The results indicate that students and teachers have been recognized the importance and helpfulness of social-emotional learning taught in school settings. However, student's assessment of their empathy was relatively low. They realized that there were difficulties and obstacles from themselves and others, and proposed their own ways to overcome it. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the critical role of SEL in student's social life and academics in non-occidental social and cultural country, and the needs to implement it in school curricula.