Schools in numerous countries around the world have become key sites for interventions designed to enhance the emotional well-being of children and young people, offering new forms of pedagogy and curriculum knowledge informed in ad hoc and eclectic ways by various strands of psychology, counselling and therapy.

Responding to C. Wright Mills’ famous injunction for a ‘sociological imagination’, this unique inter-disciplinary collection of papers explores ideologies and imperatives that frame contemporary education policy and practice around emotional well-being, ideas and assumptions about the state of childhood today, and the changing nature of the curriculum subject and associated forms of knowledge.

In bringing together British and American advocates of behavioural interventions in social and emotional learning alongside critics who draw on historical, philosophical and sociological perspectives, it highlights new and important debates for policy makers, the designers, implementers and evaluators of interventions and those who participate in them.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Research Papers in Education.

Kathryn Ecclestone is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research, teaching and publications explore the impact of education policy on everyday teaching, assessment practices and curriculum knowledge, with a particular interest in the effects of wider ‘therapeutic culture’ and concerns about emotional well-being on education policy and practice in Britain and internationally.