Social-emotional learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in an Indonesian EFL teacher education context Available to Purchase

The educational system in Indonesia puts a high concern on character education programs that have a positive effect on character development and academic ability. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the education field both in positive and negative ways, including the aspects related to character education. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) implemented during the classroom learning context can be one way to enhance students’ positive character. This study aimed to find out the implementation of SEL practice during the online learning context in a university in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic era. The subjects in this mixed-method study were one lecturer and 119 students from two departments in the school of teacher education. The data were collected from SEL Practice Questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation. The results revealed that the students believed that they experienced high SEL implementation practice from their lecturers during their online learning process, ‘Teacher Language’ was the most dominant social-emotional learning practice used by lecturers, and the COVID-19 pandemic had put higher concern for lecturers to cope with students’ challenges during their online learning. Therefore, higher education should focus more on social-emotional skill-based learning practices for the students in their online classroom learning context to shape students’ positive characters during the COVID-19 pandemic era.