This study aimed to investigate elementary physical education (PE) teachers’ personal and professional beliefs about social and emotional learning (SEL) and teaching SEL in the United States. The main research questions were: (1) What are elementary PE teachers’ interpretations of SEL as an educational concept within their own teaching contexts? and (2) What pedagogical approach do elementary PE teachers think is important to teach SEL within their own teaching contexts? Adopting a qualitative case study design, 22 elementary PE teachers were recruited across the United States. Semistructured interviews with an interview guide were implemented on a video-conferencing system called “Zoom.” Inductive qualitative analysis was conducted with open coding and axial coding. Five themes were generated from the data analysis: Teaching empathy has to be intentional, Recognizing and managing emotions, Creative teachable moments, Play is underrated, and It’s all about the context. We claim more empirical research should be conducted to gain a more comprehensive understanding of SEL implementation in elementary PE classes across a broad range of sociocultural contexts.
Dyson et al. (Wed,) studied this question.