Citation: Qadan, E.; Chaleila, W.A. Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Goals: Toward Pro-SEL Pedagogy. Sustainability 2022, 14, 15493. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142315493 Academic Editor: Rosabel Roig-Vila Received: 19 October 2022 Accepted: 4 November 2022 Published: 22 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Goals: Toward Pro-SEL Pedagogy Enas Qadan * and Wisam A. Chaleila Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, Al-Qasemi Academic College, Baqa-El-Gharbia 3010000, Israel * Correspondence: enasq@qsm.ac.il Abstract: The switch to online teaching that the global COVID-19 crisis necessitated has been discussed in many studies. Few papers, however, have investigated teachers’ perceptions and the self-initiated changes they made due to such a transition. This study adopted a mixed methods design to determine the perceptions of teachers and the changes they made during the crisis. For this undertaking, a purposive snowball sampling of thirty in-service teachers in Israel was used. The study revealed that considerable changes were made in the participants’ pedagogical practices, and there was a significant correlation between these changes and teachers’ perceptions of their teaching profession. The changes essentially applied to two main categories: teaching goals and teaching strategies. In addition, the findings showed that the revised teaching goals and strategies were executed to the teachers’ own volition and were consistent with Social Emotional Learning (SEL) pedagogy. To enhance the social-emotional competence and well-being of teachers and students, the researchers recommend elevating and enhancing the teaching profession by establishing SEL pedagogy in all schools, not only in times of crisis but as a policy empowered by advocacy. Keywords: SEL; teaching goals; teaching strategies; e-learning; COVID-19; teaching profession 1. Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has generated global detrimental impacts and unprecedented shifts in education worldwide. As a result, education systems were imme- diately geared to address the new reality. COVID-19 caused unmatched disruptions and massive changes to education [1]. Contrary to popular belief, numerous researchers assume that lockdowns trigger creativity, and managing stress boosts one’s positive emotions during pandemics [2,3]. Similarly, COVID-19 outbreak opened door to matchless and real changes in education. Due to the pandemic wide-ranging and ubiquitous effects, educators were urged to reconsider the prevailing obsolete and rigid education systems [4]. In this respect, Kamanetz argued that these systems acted immediately, advocating online teach- ing to address students’ emotional and social needs despite the fact that teachers lacked relevant digital competencies and even more, they were poorly equipped in terms of peda- gogical resources and unprepared in terms of the rigorous demands placed on them [5]. The rapid changes and disruptions imposed by COVID-19 created uncertainties and confusion, but simultaneously necessitated rapid responsiveness of schools to reorganise their plans and teaching strategies, reassign their resources, enhance their digital skills, and upgrade their technological know-how. Despite such drawbacks prompted by COVID-19, Gibbs [6] asserted that the pandemic paved the way to positive results refurbishing and rejuvenating the curricula and integrating psychological care as a means to nurture students’ well-being. Along these lines, this study aimed to examine teachers’ perceptions and the changes they introduced due to the transition to online teaching mandated by the COVID-19 crisis which served as a catalyst for such changes. 2. Change in Policymakers’ Attitudes In an attempt to harness the deleterious repercussions of the pandemic for education, numerous ministries of education around the world pushed for reforms revamping and Sustainability 2022, 14, 15493. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315493 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability