A Critical Analysis of the Racialized Stereotypes Within the Language of Social Emotional Learning

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Race, Misformed Practices of Emotions, and the Politics of Tracking

Abstract

As regional Equity Assistance Center staff, we draw from praxis we engage in via technical assistance (TA) partnerships with state departments of education and public K-12 districts to conduct a critical discourse analysis of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s (CASEL) website. We elucidate how Social Emotional Learning (SEL) inflicts trauma onto historically marginalized youth by relying on racialized stereotypes based on controlling and curing students for the purpose of creating “good” citizens. As TA providers, we analyze the function of SEL as means for measuring “normal” along a continuum of whiteness and dis/ability, and thereby acting as a mechanism by which students, particularly working class students of Color, can be made aberrant, irrational, and emotionally disturbed.

Authors

• Kathleen King Thorius, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Maureen Negrelli Coomer, Colorado College

• Erin Sanborn, Indiana University - IUPUI