There are several reasons for our choice of the topic of “pedagogies of social emotional development” as the theme for this guest-edited issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education. From its beginnings, early childhood education emphasized children’s social emotional development. This was true both for the nursery and play schools attended by children of the wealthy and the settlement house preschool programs intended to give children of immigrants and the poor proper (that is, white middle class) emotional dispositions and values. Later in the 20th century, the core of the preschool curriculum became play and social interaction, with an emphasis on making friends, sharing, and self-expression. However, this tradition of emphasizing the role early childhood education can play in children’s social and emotional development is at risk in the contemporary era, where investment in preschools is increasingly justified in terms of its contribution to academic success and longer term economic payoffs.