College of Public Health and Human Sciences

President Barack Obama's call for universal preschool comes at a time when research supporting the importance of early care and education is expanding rapidly (Samuelsson & Wagner, 2012Samuelsson , I. P. , & Wagner , J. P. ( 2012 ).

His statements also reflect a growing public awareness that high-quality early childhood education is critical for later success. An important component of high-quality early childhood education programs is developing the social and emotional skills of young children (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2009National Association for the Education of Young Children . ( 2009 ).

These skills predict school readiness and academic success (Fabes, Gaertner, Popp, McCartney, & Phillips, 2006; Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004Zins , J. E. , Weissberg , R. P. , Wang , M. C. , & Walberg , H. J. ( 2004 ).

Social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to programming that is deliberately designed to teach social and emotional skills within existing school curricula in ways that contribute to better social and emotional adjustment and higher academic achievement (Elias et al., 1997Elias , M. J. , Zins , J. E. , Weissberg , R. P. , Frey , K. S. , Greenberg , M. T. , Haynes , N. M. , … Shriver , T. P. ( 1997 ).

This special issue includes a compilation of articles that examine the factors predicting social and emotional development and how SEL programming can promote the development of these skills.