Enhancing social‐emotional well‐being in young children through improving teachers’ social‐emotional competence and curriculum design in Hong Kong

Background It has long been recognised that social competence is an important aspect for human development, particularly for early childhood development, and it has been considered as a construct in developmental theory (Waters and Sroufe 1983). Different views have been put forward on the definition of social competence over the past two decades. These different perspectives range from the innate tendency of prosocial or inappropriate behaviour; personal ability in social adaptability; and the ability for demonstrating appropriate behaviour in different social situations (Dirks et al. 1977). Some scholars have defined social competence as the ability of the individual to function as appropriate Abstract