The shouting started over a toy. In the past, kindergarten teacher Lavinia might have watched helplessly as the quarrel escalated into tears and pushing.

This time, she paused, took a breath and asked each child to explain how they felt. Within minutes, the two 4-year-olds at her kindergarten in Suva, Fiji’s capital, had listened, apologized and gone back to playing together.

Conflicts like these are familiar in early childhood classrooms everywhere. But in Asia-Pacific, where teachers often face large class sizes, limited resources and the added stresses their learners bring from home, the challenges are magnified.

Few educators receive training in how to address children’s social and emotional development or how to protect their own well-being. Over 80% of students in the Pacific Islands are taught by teachers who frequently report stress, for example.

And while the 2023 OECD survey on SEL asserts that “emotional regulation skills, energy and trust are the strongest predictors of life satisfaction,” only just over half of the countries in East Asia and the Pacific have integrated social-emotional learning into their national or sub-national curricula, UNICEF reports.

Embedding social and emotional learning in teacher practices

Lavinia is one of 153 teachers in Fiji—and many more across the region—now applying newly acquired social and emotional learning (SEL) strategies in their classrooms.

With UNESCO’s support and funding from Japan, teachers in Fiji, Cambodia and Viet Nam are being trained to build empathy, resilience and cooperation alongside literacy and numeracy.

The aim is to make classrooms places where both children and teachers feel supported to learn and grow, drawing on strategies from the Asia-Pacific Early Childhood Care and Education Teacher Training Handbook for Social and Emotional Learning (APETT-SEL).

Back in Lavinia’s classroom, the kindergarteners now start the day in a circle, sharing stories and naming feelings.

A new “Feelings Chart” hangs on the wall. One morning, a child sobbed after misplacing a favorite toy. Instead of breaking down further, the girl pointed to “sad” on the chart, talked through her feelings and calmed herself with deep breaths.

It was not only her students who benefited. Lavinia says she began using deep breathing techniques and acknowledging her own stress. She found she could model the resilience she wanted her students to learn.

Between May and September 2025, UNESCO supported SEL training initiatives in Cambodia and Viet Nam and the impact is beginning to show in daily classroom practice.

In Viet Nam, teachers use interactive role-plays to move from correcting behavior to nurturing empathy and cooperation through play.

In Cambodia, Mrs. Chhim Callyan, a teacher under the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports’ Department of Early Childhood Education, says that starting school days with a 'feeling check-in' “balances the entire classroom and helps my children concentrate better on their activities.”

Flexibility ensures new techniques are adopted for good

Across the region, teachers are adapting modules from the UNESCO APETT-SEL Handbook, showing how SEL can be flexible enough to respond to local cultures while advancing global goals.

In doing so, teachers are advancing the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 agenda, particularly SDG 4.2 and 4.7, by fostering inclusive, equitable and quality education that promotes lifelong learning and the skills needed for peaceful and sustainable societies, starting from the earliest years of learning.

In Fiji, the approach resonates with longstanding cultural traditions, reflecting the values of veiwekani (relationships), veidokai (respect) and veilomani (caring for one another) says Laiyakini Lutu Marasaya, Senior Curriculum Specialist for Early Childhood Education at the Ministry of Education.

He notes that it also supports the country’s longterm goals under Fiji Vision 2050 and the Denarau Declaration, Fiji’s National Education Policy Framework.

UNESCO's 2024 policy guide on SEL highlights that integrating SEL into education systems not only helps improve classroom behavior, but also enhances academic achievement and longterm well-being, including reducing distress, anxiety and depression.

A global meta-analysis of more than 200 programs found that students in school-based SEL teaching and learning interventions achieved academic results 11 percentile points higher than their peers—a finding confirmed by later studies and supported by decades of research evidence (See here for an analysis of factors impacting the success of SEL programs).

For Lavinia, the change is already visible. One recent morning, she watched as two children who once would have fought over blocks calmly negotiated turns.