Learning to stand in someone else's shoes
HGSE Professor Robert Selman
As young people navigate the social world, their awareness of others and their ability to resolve conflicts take on great importance. But in a "back to basics" climate fueled by high-stakes testing, it is difficult to find ways to foster such social skills in the classroom. Facing this challenge head-on, HGSE Larsen Professor Robert Selman has worked over the years to connect social perspective taking with the development of basic literacy skills.
In the first video clip, Robert Selman describes the evolution of his approach to promoting social awareness in the classroom: linking children's literature with instruction around perspective-taking. Insights from research and practice are intimately connected in this curricular innovation.
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In the second video clip, we watch one teacher implement Selman's approach to perspective-taking in a fifth-grade classroom. Angela Burgos helps two girls develop a more sophisticated understanding of conflicting values and paths to resolution, as they take the perspectives of characters in a children's book called Felita. Selman introduces this documentary sequence, and analyzes how the classroom interactions illustrate his social awareness theory in practice.
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Scenes from "The Power of Peers" are included by kind permission of the co-producers, Robert L. Selman and Cindy McKeown.
Read more about Robert Selman's strategy for promoting social perspective-taking through literature in his book, The Promotion of Social Awareness: Powerful Lessons from the Partnership of Developmental Theory and Classroom Practice (Russell Sage Foundation, 2003).
By Maria Fusaro, doctoral student in Human Development and Psychology at HGSE
For further reading on the theory and practice of promoting social awareness, Robert Selman recommends the following:
"Linking literacy with living" an interview in the Harvard University Gazette
"Teaching social awareness through reading," in Education Week, 23, number 3 (2003), pp. 30, 32
