This study explores the development of social emotional learning (SEL) in small and rural schools, an underrepresented educational context often marked by geographic isolation, limited infrastructure, and unique classroom dynamics. These settings present both challenges and opportunities for fostering students’ social emotional growth, particularly in the areas of social awareness and interpersonal relationships.

The project was conducted through collaboration between the Department of Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome and the National Institute of Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), Italy. It focused on third- to fifth-grade students in mountain and insular regions of Northern and Central Italy, where multi-grade classrooms, limited peer networks, and strong community ties shape the educational experience.

A mixed-methods approach was used to investigate how children develop and express core social emotional skills. The qualitative component involved classroom-based sessions with a small group of educators and students. Observations revealed high levels of engagement during activities designed to enhance empathy, collaboration, and conflict resolution. Teachers noted improvements in students' social interactions, cooperative behavior, and self-expression. These findings suggest the importance of further examining these SEL-related characteristics through a quantitative lens, in order to better understand their generalizability and strengthen evidence-based practices. Such cross-validation is critical to inform educational policies and ensure interventions are anchored in both context and empirical reliability.

In the quantitative component, students and their teachers completed questionnaires assessing children’s social awareness, interpersonal relationships, and prosocial behaviors. Results showed strong positive associations between teacher and child reports, and between the examined social emotional competencies and prosocial tendencies. However, students tended to rate their abilities more highly than teachers did, revealing a consistent overestimation of their social competencies. This finding underscores the value of including multiple informants in assessments and highlights the importance of supporting students' metacognitive accuracy in evaluating their own social behaviors.

Overall, the results of this study contribute to highlight the significance of collaborative planning phases among educators, the selection of cooperative methodologies and laboratory-based pedagogical approaches, and the implementation of appropriate didactic mediators and age-specific stimuli, including animated short films and illustrated picture books. Moreover, the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches allowed for a richer, more nuanced understanding of SEL development in rural schools. This collaborative, interdisciplinary effort not only enhanced methodological rigor, but also ensured that insights were meaningfully grounded in classroom realities. Together, these results point to the importance of context-sensitive, empirically informed SEL strategies that support all learners, particularly those in geographically and socially distinctive communities.

Keywords: Social emotional learning, rural schools, education.