“Out of love and caring for our students”: Mexican pre-service elementary teachers' views of social-emotional learning

Despite Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) being part of the Mexican pre-service teacher preparation since 2018, the outcome of such training, in terms of how pre-service teachers value and conceptualize SEL’s aims, has not been explored. This paper examines such outcomes, seeking which characteristics of pre-service teachers’ environmental and individual levels moderate their perspectives. By utilizing a qualitative approach, this paper reveals that Mexican elementary pre-service teachers conceptualize SEL as a tool to improve students’ self-awareness
and self-regulation competencies, as well as the high value they place on SEL in the Mexican elementary context. My analysis reveals that these perspectives are highly influenced by pre-service teachers’ environmental levels in terms of violence prevention and relational pedagogic lens; it also reveals how the individual level fosters the high value given to SEL by seeing the subject as a tool to impact students’ life beyond academics.