Our current era is characterized, in part, by crises in education. Research reveals high rates of students dropping out of school, disengagement from education, and behaviors that can interfere with school performance and, potentially, with later success in life. Furthermore, among school-age youths, experiences of mental health problems and significant depression are not rare. Responding to these situations requires us to focus on the holistic development of children, promoting experiences in schools that allow children to acquire skills that are necessary for success in life. Several areas of research demonstrate that social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions are effective in addressing interpersonal and intrapersonal growth and development in students. However, the authors believe that social-emotional education, by itself, is not sufficient and that ethics education should be added to SEL
initiatives in order to educate the whole child. Starting from these premises, in this paper we present two ethics education and SEL projects: Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood (PEECh), promoted by the Kegley Institute of Ethics (California State University, Bakersfield, USA) and the Rock Ethics Institute (Pennsylvania State University, USA) and implemented in several American Preschool classrooms; and MelArete, promoted by CRED (Center of Educational and Didactic Research) of the University of Verona (Italy) in several Italian primary schools.
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