Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in preschools and schools both in Europe and North America today. Programmes for socio-emotional training and the rise of what is labelled therapeutic education have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In this article, a manual-based programme used for SEL in a Swedish school context is analysed from perspectives rooted in childhood sociology and post-structural studies. The aim of this study is to analyse the discursive constructions of a context of risk and the instilment of specific corporeal regimes. The main issue concerns the meaning and use of the body in the discursive construction of the social competent child within this context of risk. The analysis shows that the socially competent child is shaped and cultivated through self-regulating techniques aiming at creating a docile body, a body that will be a good citizen, a pliant member of the social order.
Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in preschools and schools both in Europe and North America today. Programmes for socio-emotional learning and what is labelled therapeutic education (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2007; Furedi, 2009) have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In Sweden, schools often justify their use of these programmes as a way of organizing their value-based education (von Br mssen, 2011), that is, as a way of realizing the democratic ambitions expressed in educational policy documents, such as the national curriculum.