Occasional Occasional
Paper Paper
Series Series
Volume 2020
Number 43
Possibilities and Problems in
Trauma-Based and Social Emotional Learning
Programs
Article 6
April 2020
Why Trouble SEL? The Need for Cultural Relevance in SEL Why Trouble SEL? The Need for Cultural Relevance in SEL
Julia Mahfouz
University of Idaho
Vanessa Anthony-Stevens
University of Idaho
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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Mahfouz, J., & Anthony-Stevens, V. (2020). Why Trouble SEL? The Need for Cultural Relevance in SEL.
Occasional Paper Series, 2020
(43). DOI: https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1354
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58 | BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Why Trouble SEL? The Need for Cultural Relevance
in SEL
Julia Mahfouz and Vanessa Anthony-Stevens
Recently, one of the authors sat in a kindergarten classroom in a public school in a sovereign tribal naon
in Idaho, alongside a half-dozen in-service and pre-service teachers. During this early morning professional
development session, commied, hardworking, and well-meaning teachers assessed students’ literacy
benchmarks and social and emoonal needs. In addion to mapping the curriculum, the teachers (who
were not members of the Indigenous
1
community they served) shared how their young students need
to learn “the basics” in academic skills, such as how to hold a pencil or write leers from le to right.
A lack of social and emoonal stability in households was described as an obstacle that students must
overcome in order to achieve “normal” school performance. These conversaons, while undoubtedly
well-intenoned, reected decit views of “culturally dierent” people and those impacted by poverty, a
phenomenon deeply embedded in the Eurocentric bias of foundaonal theories of learning and successful
school performance (Delpit, 2006).
The professional development goals of many K-12 schools in Idaho include aending to social and emoonal
learning (SEL) in the classroom. Teachers jusfy this goal with statements that aempt to recognize social and
emoonal stress in the lives of children, such as: “Our students are coming to school with so much trauma,”
“They come to school with few skills,” or “Our job as teachers is to help these kids become more resilient.”
Classroom features such as so lighng, yoga balls, and neatly decorated Pinterest-inspired word walls with
statements like “You are beauful” or “Believe in yourself” are marked displays of teachers aempng to
adopt SEL strategies to minimize stress and anxiety and elevate self-percepon among youth in school.
In Idaho’s Indian Country,
2
teachers serving the state’s ve federally recognized tribes serve some of
the region’s most economically and socially marginalized communies. High rates of poverty, signicant
disparies between Indigenous students and their non-Indigenous peers on standardized achievement
tests, and experiences of discriminaon paint an urgent picture of inequity and deprivaon (Dearien, 2016).
For example, Indigenous youth are 2.5 mes more likely to experience trauma than their non-Indigenous
peers (Naonal Indian Child Welfare Associaon, 2014). Poverty, family member incarceraon, and high
rates of substance abuse are disproporonately relevant in Indian Country. These contemporary traumas
are not accidental and cannot be isolated from colonialist policies of cultural and linguisc genocide, forced
family separaon, boarding schools, and the physical incarceraon and violent relocaon of Indigenous
peoples from their homelands. Nearly 250 years of intergeneraonal state-sanconed violence against
Indigenous peoples has played out in schools (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006).
These stascs are but a few of many reasons why there is an urgent need for educators to understand
the social and emoonal needs of Indigenous youth and their historical roots. Although narraves of
Indigenous trauma and school failure are widely available (Tuck, 2009), there is a relave silence in schools
1 The terms Indigenous and Nave are used interchangeably to refer to individuals and communies idenfying as originang
in the Americas. These terms recognize the unique polical and cultural relaonships between Indigenous peoples and their
homelands prior to colonizaon and in contemporary seler occupaon.
2 Indian Country is a term used in the United States to refer to lands, communies, and allotments recognized as held in trust
for Indian tribes through treaty and other intergovernmental agreements, by the federal government. See 18 U.S.C. § 1151
and 40 C.F.R. § 171.3. The term is also commonly used when discussing policy and pracce within the jurisdicon of sover-
eign tribal lands.
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES | 59
about ongoing colonial injusces and deprivaons maintained in state policy toward Indigenous peoples.
Economic displacement, connued land encroachment, and the undermining of Indigenous sovereignty
in educaon policy (Sabzalian, 2019) contribute to a decit narrave of Indigenous youth in “need of
intervenon.” This deep-seated structural racism is oen silenced by the so glow of lights, soothing
colors on the walls, and well-intenoned caring embedded in the design and delivery of social welfare
improvement schemes (Castagno, 2019; Dhillon, 2019).
As we contemplate the complexies of these urgent needs, we ask: Although many teachers care
deeply about the social and emoonal needs of their students, are they able to recognize the strengths
and knowledges Indigenous and other minorized youth bring with them to schools? In what ways do
teachers understand the unique know-how of Indigenous communies developed through centuries-
long relaonships with specic lands? Can teachers idenfy the sources of well-being and knowledge
pracced in specic cultural and linguisc ways of knowing? How oen is contemporary tribal knowledge
incorporated into curricula and school policies?
We believe lessons from Indian Country demonstrate that it is worth pausing to consider whether SEL is
eecve without situang educaonal programming within historical and polical contexts. Can social
and emoonal well-being be appropriately understood without aending to context and cultural ways
of knowing, parcularly in communies that have been minorized and marginalized by Eurocentric
educaonal and welfare policies?
Zooming out to consider diverse contexts and cultured ways of learning (Rogo, 2003), we recognize that
inequies based on race, socioeconomic status, and locaon signicantly impact student learning and
well-being. Diverse student populaons are commonly associated with urban areas; however, in the Inland
Northwest (Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, and Idaho), a quarter to a third of public schools are
located in rural regions (Showalter et al., 2017) and serve large populaons of culturally or linguiscally
minorized students, including Lanx and American Indian youth (Barley & Wegner, 2010).
The proporon of rural English language learners (ELLS) in Idaho and Washington is 3.5 percent above the
naonal average (Showalter et al., 2017). In Idaho, 18 percent of the public school populaon idenes
as Lanx, and enrollment for this group increased by 42 percent between 2011 and 2016 (The Hispanic
Prole, 2016).
Consistent with naonal trends, rural schools with many students of color and ELLs serve communies
with higher than average rates of poverty and lower than average rates of academic achievement (Barley
& Wegner, 2010). Rural students comprise roughly 20 percent of the U.S. K-12 public school populaon
(Showalter et al., 2017), and nearly half live at or below the poverty line (Showalter et al., 2017). Teachers
who aim to support SEL among rural students, especially Indigenous youth, need to develop capacies to
recognize the potenal impacts of these factors on student learning.
SEL programs create opportunies for schools to recognize and serve young people exposed to trauma, both
contemporary and historic. However, we are concerned that uncrical discussions of social and emoonal
well-being may pathologize trauma or mark marginalized youth as “damaged,” without consideraon of
the complex cognive, polical, and social ecologies dominated by Eurocentric bias. To confront these
limitaons, we propose adopng an interdisciplinary lens to integrate culturally relevant and culturally
sustaining pedagogy into SEL programs for marginalized and minorized students.
60 | BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
As teacher-researchers with backgrounds in classroom teaching (second author) and school leadership
(rst author), both in pluri-cultural and mullingual contexts of learning, our own experiences support
the noon that all learning is cultured. And as faculty members of a public university in the rural Inland
Northwest situated on the tradional homelands of Indigenous peoples, we see that the diversies of
our context are frequently silenced. Our work in curriculum and instrucon and educaonal leadership
aempts to navigate ways to achieve educaonal equity in diverse communies.
What is SEL?
Social-emoonal learning (SEL) is the capacity to recognize and manage emoons, solve problems
eecvely, and establish posive relaonships with others. In the mid-1990s, research on prevenon
and resilience showed the posive impacts of SEL programs in schools. Since then, a growing number
of educators, policymakers, and researchers have supported the implementaon of school-based SEL
programs (Jones & Kahn, 2017) to help build competencies essenal for student success.
SEL targets a combinaon of behaviors, cognions, and emoons. The Collaborave for Academic, Social,
and Emoonal Learning (CASEL, 2019) denes SEL as: acquiring and eecvely applying the knowledge,
atudes, and skills necessary to recognize and manage emoons; developing caring and concern for
others; making responsible decisions; establishing posive relaonships; and handling challenging
situaons capably. CASEL’s (2019) SEL framework is based on ve core social-emoonal competencies
(SECs): self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relaonship skills, and responsible decision-
making. Students are encouraged to learn, pracce, and apply social-emoonal skills by engaging in
posive acvies both inside and outside the classroom.
Many SEL programs have been developed over the last two decades; increasing research evidence
shows that such programs can support development of the whole child and lead to improved academic
achievement, employment, health, and well-being. However, because student learning and identy are
shaped by cultural pracce(s), situated life experiences, and many other variables converging in any context
of social interacon (Guerrez & Rogo, 2003), the development and expression of social-emoonal skills
are aected by factors such as social-historic context, including epistemic beliefs (i.e., about the nature of
knowledge) and power dynamics (Bang & Medin, 2010).
This raises the queson: Do the guiding frameworks of SEL programs adequately promote the well-
being of diverse youth in an inequitable society such as the United States? Although evidence shows SEL
programs yield benets in mulple domains in the United States and elsewhere, most programs are based
on monolithic approaches (Was & Abdul-Adil, 1998) that typically do not consider dynamics of power and
oppression in social structures. Fur thermore, such approaches silence nuanced cultural, social, polical, and
geographic diversies relevant to dierent ways of knowing the world and the ways dierent communies
support intergeneraonal learning (Romero-Lile, 2010). Although many view SEL as the “missing piece”
in educaon because it addresses important aspects of student learning and oers signicant skills for
navigang complex worlds (Bridgeland, Bruce, & Hariharan, 2013), we believe it is important to recognize
that any SEL curriculum that does not deeply consider culture as the central framework through which
learning occurs likely perpetuates inequity. SEL programs need to call aenon to how complex social-
historical landscapes inuence learning and SEL implementaon.
To eecvely incorporate culture into SEL frameworks, we propose adopng an interdisciplinary lens—
specically, culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014) and culturally sustaining
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES | 61
pedagogy (CSP) (Paris & Alim, 2014). A deep cultural analysis can illuminate why standard approaches to SEL
are not suciently dierenated to address students’ diverse needs (Castro-Olivo, Preciado, Marciante,
& Garcia, 2018), especially those minorized on the basis of race and socioeconomic status. SEL programs
must create spaces for teachers and school leaders to engage in discussions of deep cultural analysis
(Pollock, 2008) that include the development of sociopolical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 2014).
Approaching SEL as a Cultured Pracce
As Indigenous educaon scholars point out, “all curricula and pedagogy are culturally based. The real
queson is, whose cultural knowledge and pracces are they based on?” (Lipka, Sharp, Brenner, Yanez, &
Sharp, 2005, p. 369). Sociocultural analysis of learning—for example, seeing culture as a pracce situated
in social interacon (González, Moll, & Aman, 2005)—enables schooling to be seen as a space of human
interacon laden with sociocultural beliefs, situated meaning, and power relaons. Changing the lens
through which educators assess culturally sustaining interacons is an essenal pracce for supporng
educaonal equity.
In the pursuit of educaonal equity, we believe biases must be acknowledged and inequitable pracces
must be eliminated; only then can school environments culvate the interests and talents of students
from diverse backgrounds. While helping students develop SECs may seem like a useful way to counteract
some of the eects of decit models of educaon, many SEL programs are delivered via a classroom-
based instrucon format that reinforces rather than challenges the decit paradigm by privileging ways of
thinking, feeling, and behaving embraced by the dominant culture.
Because psychological norms and constructs are frequently presented as universal, the eld of psychology
is plagued by ethnocentric biases, many of which go unrecognized (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015). Substanal
evidence associang dierences in social and emoonal development with cultural structures, funcons,
and processes has called this assumpon of universality into queson (Hecht & Shin, 2015).
Among the many psychological constructs shaped by cultural assumpons, “how the self is dened” is the
most fundamental (Hecht & Shin, 2015, p. 52; Taylor, Oberle, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2017). For example,
whereas individualist noons of self are pervasive in anglophone and other Eurocentric sociees, kinship
structures in Indigenous sociees support collecvist noons of self that are “inseparable from, and
embedded within, family and community” (Gee, Dudgeon, Schultz, Hart, & Kelly, 2014, p. 57). One’s
sense of self may also be shaped by connecons to land, cultural heritage, and language (Gee et al., 2014;
LeGrande et al., 2017). In many Indigenous communies, for example, oral stories, experienal learning,
and mul-age ceremonies are mechanisms of knowledge transfer that frame understandings of the self in
relaon to others, both human and non-human communies (Poroch et al., 2009; Romero-Lile, 2010).
Cultural dierences emerge as a result of fundamentally dierent understandings of the self, inuenced
by specic pracces of social engagement and communicaon. Thus, it is crically important to consider
cultural dierences when developing and implemenng SEL programs for marginalized students. Hecht
and Shin (2015) showed how culturally dierent understandings of the self aect all ve of the SEL
competencies promoted by CASEL (2019). Jager, Randall-Garner, and Ausdal (2018) anchored the ve
SEL competences in a cultural equity lens, elaborang how each competency could be ulized to promote
eq uit y. Th e o r ie s of s it u ate d cogni o n and le ar ni n g consi de r the in u e n c e of s oc i all y conte x tu a lize d pr a c ces
(Wortham, 2001), interacons inuenced by larger polical and historical contexts. These theories place
individuals and learning within contexts of parcipaon in socially situated pracces (Wortham, 2001),
62 | BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
to which we can also add are shaped by polical and historical contexts. Studies of social interacon and
learning nd students’ idenes and atudes toward schools to be co-created through interacons with
peers, instuons, policies, and discourses. What occurs at schools, both academic and non-academic
interacons, play crical roles in youth identy formaon.
Despite signicant eorts to recognize the value of diverse cultural perspecves, “whiteness” connues to
be the lens through which educaonal goals and iniaves are refracted. Here, the term “whiteness” refers
to both a socially constructed racialized category and a system of privileges based on racial dominance
(Leonardo & Grubb, 2018). Whiteness is pervasive in mainstream instuons and oen juses dominaon
over others as being in the collecve best interest (Castagno, 2013). Although psychologists have found
a strong cultural and ethnic identy to be associated with emoonal well-being (Dobia & Roey, 2017),
whiteness and the structural racism it produces negates these benets for students of color (Paradies &
Cunningham, 2012).
Language and socializaon research reveals that children begin parcipang in racializing processes and
hierarchies at a young age, and that school sengs are signicant reinforcers of racial inequies through
situaonal cues, discourses, and curricular inclusion/omission (Fontenella-Nothom, 2019). The implicaons
of whiteness are signicant, not only for students’ educaonal outcomes but for their social-emoonal
well-being. Systemic decit thinking about Black female students, for example, lowers expectaons,
movaon, self-ecacy and self-worth, all of which typically lead to negave emoons and behaviors
(Watson, 2018).
Moreover, when teachers who work with marginalized students fail to consider cultural dierences in the
rules governing social interacon, miscommunicaon and conicng behavioral expectaons may cause
some acons to be interpreted as willful misconduct or lack of cooperaon, mering punive measures
(Yeatman, 2000). All too oen, a lack of cultural understanding and the failure to place learning models—
including SEL pracces—within their historical and polical contexts fuel inequitable or discriminatory
pracces that disproporonately aect marginalized students.
Culturally Relevant and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Educaonal anthropologist Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995, 2014) sparked a mul-decade conversaon on
how to transform teacher pedagogy away from framing students of color, mullingual youth, and/or
students impacted by poverty as decient, at-risk, or culturally disadvantaged. Like others before her,
Ladson-Billings ipped the script on the culture of poverty by examining the strengths minorized youth
bring to school to support learning and by studying contexts in which teachers experienced pedagogical
success with marginalized youth.
Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) shis pedagogical orientaons away from pathologizing minorized
students as decient versions of dominant youth, and instead focuses on recognizing and building upon
the assets and strengths of working-class and mullingual individuals and people of color (González, Moll,
& Aman, 2005). Teachers who pracce CRP: (a) support students’ intellectual growth through relevant
classroom instrucon and learning experiences; (b) help students appreciate and celebrate their cultures
of origin while gaining knowledge of and uency in at least one other culture; and (c) pracce sociopolical
consciousness by using school knowledge and skills to idenfy, analyze, and solve real world problems
(Ladson-Billings, 2014). When educaonal pedagogies and programs fail to deeply consider culture,
the situaon is oen overgeneralized and misapplied to explain “problem” behaviors and school failure
(Ladson-Billings, 2006).
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES | 63
Paris (2012) pushed educators to deeply conceptualize how relevance is determined, and to what end
educaon should be relevant. For her, learning environments must support or sustain students’ cultural and
linguisc repertoires and relaonships to be “relevant” (Paris, 2012). Such environments strive to maintain
and “value cultural and linguisc sharing across dierence, to sustain and support bi- and mullingualism
and bi- and mulculturalism” (Paris, 2012, p.95). Developing pedagogies and programs that support children
and youth in sustaining their own cultural and linguisc competencies while oering access to dominant
cultural competencies is a complex task, to say the least. We believe this task to be fundamental to social-
emoonal well-being.
In the psychology eld, many researchers have begun to draw aenon to the importance of integrang
a culturally relevant paradigm to SEL programs and grounding SEL in a focus on equity (Jagers, Rivas-
Drake, & Borowski, 2018; Simmons, Bracke, & Adler, 2018). For example, Kuperminc and colleagues
(2009) proposed a cultural-ecological-transaconal model for studying resilience among Lanx and other
ethnic minority groups in the United States. Jagers and colleagues (2018) described how SEL programs
reect a prevenon science approach that usually does not take into consideraon students’ cultural assets
in these programs and called for cultural adaptaons of SEL programs to foster opmal growth among
African-American youth. CASEL has released several reports and briefs that apply an equity lens to social,
emoonal, and academic development and aim to help educators leverage SEL to promote equity. The
reports highlight the need to support cultural competence development for teachers (Jagers et al., 2018).
A few SEL programs have been adapted to aend to specic groups of students. An Aboriginal Girls
Circle iniave yielded tangible posive outcomes by increasing social connecon, parcipaon, and
self-condence among Aboriginal girls aending secondary schools (Dobia & Roey, 2017). However, a
systemac review showed that only 12.5 percent of all SEL intervenons had been culturally adapted
(DeLuca, Kelman, & Waelde, 2018). In addion, “adaptaon” may not be enough to account for the factors
that contribute to healthy and/or problem behaviors in non-dominant communies, or to culvate and
sustain healthy social, cultural, and linguisc interacons. Again, we advocate using a culturally and socially
situated lens to assess student interacons within wider social structures, such as instuons, policies,
and economies. Drawing from the framework of culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogy, we
are acutely aware that SEL’s widespread appeal for supporng student needs must interface with socially
situated cultural paradigms of wellness.
Cultural, Contextual, Social, and Emoonal Learning
For many Indigenous communies in the United States, schools have been sites of struggle and resistance
in the face of missionary and government aempts to “civilize,” assimilate, and Americanize Nave life,
ways, and languages through physical violence and intellectual warfare (Cleary & Peacock, 1998; Deyhle
& Swisher, 1997; Schachner, 2019; Sarivaara, Määä, & Uusiau, 2019). The direct eects of colonizaon
and persistent seler colonial structures stymie the well-being of many Indigenous communies, and
contribute to the denial of linguisc and cultural inclusion in schools.
Indigenous students in K-12 schools rarely have access to Indigenous teachers and frequently experience
low teacher expectaons, inappropriate tracking into special educaon, and unfair disciplinary pracces
(McCarty & Lee, 2014). The misalignment of teacher experience and perspecve limits opportunies for
Indigenous youth to experience success in K-12 and postsecondary educaon (Brayboy & Maaka, 2015).
SEL programs are growing in schools with high Indigenous populaons and are intended to address crical
64 | BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
social-emoonal needs and the impacts of intergeneraonal trauma. However, these programs struggle to
address the complexity of historical-polical processes that contribute to contemporary struggles.
Applying a cultural lens enables educators to recognize that the social-emoonal needs of Indigenous
youth are intertwined with social-historical context and require community collaboraon. Culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) constutes a specic approach to supporng the unique social
and polical needs of Indigenous youth (McCarty & Lee, 2014). It is an expression of sovereignty that
priorizes local communies’ expressed interests, resources, and needs and embraces community-driven
Indigenous language and culture educaon pracces. CSRP is also an applied framework for instruconal
design, curriculum, and student/family services that recognizes “asymmetrical power relaons and legacies
of colonizaon” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 8).
Crical examinaon of ethno-historic contexts reveals how school discourses pathologize the emoonal
well-being and physical and social behaviors of Indigenous youth and communies (Lomawaima & McCarty,
2006). Deep aenon to cultural pracce, at both the micro and macro levels, enables educators to develop
a beer understanding of the nuances of Indigenous cultural and linguisc pracces (which have been ed
to the land for centuries) and to center Indigenous knowledge as sources of well-being and healing. This
requires recognion of the disnct epistemologies and histories that dene our dierences and equitable
partnership with Indigenous educators and leaders.
Similarly, educators and school leaders must seek to understand the diversies of cultural pracce within
geographies by adopng lenses and pedagogies that crically aend to space and place. In the Inland
Northwest, contemplang well-being in relaonship to space and place helps educators to challenge deep-
seated either/or binaries that posion place and identy as stac categories, such as rural or urban, White
or cultural “other.” These common identy tropes oversimplify diverse idenes within geographies and
the social and emoonal needs of students with them.
Anthony-Stevens and Langford (2019) proposed the concept of “diverse ruralies” in an aempt to highlight
the interseconal inequies with and across rural communies and schools. To eect change, teachers
and school leaders must examine their assumpons and beliefs to purposefully aend to rural students’
social, emoonal, and academic needs (Turnbull, Turnbull, Erwin, & Soodak, 2006). Aending to social and
emoonal well-being is dynamic and should be approached with an ability to recognize students’ cultural
and linguisc repertoires and value cultural and linguisc sharing across dierence (Paris, 2012). Just as
CSRP encourages pedagogies to sustain and revitalize Indigenous lifeways through schooling, culturally
responsive and sustaining approaches to the social and academic needs of students in rurality should
consider pracces unique to rural communies in interseconal and social jusce-oriented ways.
Placing SEL in Dialogue With CRP and CSP
A growing body of evidence reveals that cultural identy plays a crically important role in the social-
emoonal well-being of marginalized students (Gee et al., 2014). Thus, eecvely engaging SEL in diverse
contexts requires interrogang the cultural assumpons that underpin psychoeducaonal pracces. As
suggested, applying a cultural lens to SEL will “produce richer theory and pracce” (Hecht & Shin, 2015, p.
62). Here are some pathways to explore the cross-pollinaon of culturally revitalizing pedagogy (CRP) and
culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) with SEL programs.
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES | 65
An-Colonial Stances
Ethnocentric biases and damaging decit orientaons can be traced to societal arrangements established
during colonizaon and maintained by seler colonialism. Calling out the historical structures that created
hierarches of privilege and oppression are necessary to reimagine relaonships within and beyond
classrooms and schools (Patel, 2014). Crical, culturally conscious approaches that arm the histories,
experiences, and disncve cultural values of those whose needs are being served must replace tradional
(e.g., colonial) approaches rooted in whiteness (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015). Furthermore, educator’s
need pre-service and in-service spaces to idenfy, reect, and unpack their own stereotypes, biases,
microagressions, etc. and where these ideas come from.
The myth of universal behaviors must be challenged. Any assumpons of superiority or aempts to establish
authoritarian dominance must be examined and decentered in eorts to support diverse communies,
especially those marginalized by race, class, and language. In addion to increasing inclusivity in classrooms
and schools, entrenched issues of race and ethnicity must be explicitly considered in the development
and delivery of SEL programs to truly address systemic inequies in the educaon system. SEL program
developers must dedicate material resources to supporng a crically culturally conscious approach to
student learning.
Cultural Integraon
Achieving cultural integraon requires implemenng culturally responsive teaching and a CRP. These two
pracces are rooted in sociocultural strategies that emphasize constuent involvement by connecng
academic concepts with students’ cultural knowledge, creang space for students to reect on their
own lives and society on their terms, supporng cultural competence by invesng me and resources to
support students to learn about their own and other cultures, and pursuing social jusce through criques
of discourses of oppression.
Many studies reveal how educators can employ culturally relevant educaon across academic content
areas. Thus, SECs need to be intertwined with cultural competencies in order to be able to address the SEL
of the whole child. In addion, culturally relevant approaches involve tailoring SEL delivery to the cultural
norms of local communies and families, the current generaon of youth, specic races/ethnicies, and the
social/polical climate. Paradoxically, scholars have consistently recommended taking a non-dierenated
approach to SEL program implementaon. This needs to change if SEL programs are to eecvely address
the social-emoonal needs of marginalized students. More youth benet when school professionals
integrate SEL in culturally relevant ways.
Implemenng SEL Programs for Teachers and School Leaders
The SECs of teachers and school leaders play a pivotal role in advancing transformave SEL programs in
schools. Recent evidence shows that teachers and their students both derive benets from mindfulness
intervenons (Elreda, Jennings, DeMauro, Mischenko, & Brown, 2019; Jennings, 2015). However, these
benets might be limited by teachers’ lack of cultural awareness and their culture- and class-related
assumpons and preferences; oen, teachers have less producve relaonships with lower-income
students and students of color than with White students from beer-resourced backgrounds. As such,
teachers’ cultural awareness and sensibilies warrant systemac aenon. Such awareness would help
66 | BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
prevent teachers from embracing false noons of color-blindness, power-blindness, and humanist-caring
that obscure sociopolical realies. We assume that these competencies would support equitable pracces
and facilitate empowerment among marginalized students. Pre- and in-service training acvies (e.g.,
home visits, service learning) that reect authenc interest in students’ lived experiences best support the
development of cultural awareness.
Adopng a Crically Conscious Approach
Students can learn to recognize how social and polical contexts may contribute to their marginalizaon
in the educaon system. Crically conscious principles can be applied to develop dierent types of SEL
intervenons aimed at changing school pracces. Students and parents could engage in small group
discussions about how race-, class-, and gender-related issues aect their school experiences. For example,
to contextualize violence, curricula should uncover the histories and policies that contribute to poverty
and marginalizaon in students’ communies. Understanding these histories enables students to reect
on their reacons to circumstances and to recognize violence as perpetuang oppression and lack of
well-being across generaons. School professionals could intenonally dialogue with students to idenfy
specic strengths and resources that enable them to remain engaged in the educaonal system despite
signicant oppression and obstacles.
SEL Informed by Students’ Lived Experiences
Transforming the educaonal system is an endeavor that requires persistent collecve eort over the long
haul. Teachers and school administrators can determine how the implementaon of SEL at their schools
is informed by the lived experiences of their students. Returning to the situaon in the opening vignee,
educators in Idaho’s Indian Country could beer serve Indigenous youth by being willing to conceptualize
social and emoonal well-being from the cultural and historical perspecve of tribal communies. This
would include consideraon of the complexity of sociopolical and economic terrains and structures that
warrant the modicaon of SEL approaches.
Educators must have the courage to engage in honest self-reecon about personal biases, which may elicit
uncomfortable emoons about inequity. When implemenng SEL programs, the historical legacy of racism
and exclusion in our public educaon system must be acknowledged. An equity lens must be applied to our
collecve work; we must queson our fundamental assumpons about educaonal pracces. Although the
path forward may be challenging, the potenal to create inclusive, joyful, liberang learning environments
in which all students can thrive and discover their unique gis and talents is tremendous.
OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES | 67
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Julia Mahfouz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Educaonal Leadership
Program, Department of Leadership and Counseling at the University of Idaho.
Mahfouz’s research interests include exploring the social and emoonal dynamics
of educaonal sengs and their eect on school climate. Her work seeks to
deepen our understanding of social-emoonal learning (SEL) through lenses of
intervenon implementaon, school improvement eorts, and preparaon of
school leaders. She also focuses on enhancing the principals’ social-emoonal
competencies and their capacity to culvate a supporve learning environment
for improved student outcomes and overall school improvement.
Vanessa Anthony-Stevens, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural
Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instrucon, University of Idaho.
As an educaonal anthropologist, Vanessa is interested in discourse, identy,
and power negoaons in contexts of educaon, parcularly Indigenous
educaon. Current research analyzes equity and de-colonial trajectories of
teacher preparaon, K-12 instrucon, and higher educaon. She is the Principal
Invesgator and Director of Indigenous Knowledge for Eecve Educaon
Program (IKEEP) at the University of Idaho. Vanessa is a mother, a former K-8
classroom teacher, and a scholar-educator.
About the Authors
