The Promotion of Social Reproduction Through Social and Emotional Learning in U.S. Schools

• In Event: How Race Matters in School and Community Contexts

Abstract

This paper explores how skills and values emphasized in commonly used Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) frameworks reinforce social reproduction within U.S. schools. Using SEL frameworks identified by Harvard’s Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning Laboratory, we conducted a thematic analysis of 13 SEL frameworks to identify repeating themes relating to social reproduction. Our findings suggest that SEL curricula are likely to promote changing students’ behavior more strongly than changing systems through the use of language that accepts existing power structures as the norm. We argue that in order to disrupt systems of oppression, we must expose and confront how SEL has operated, and continues to operate, as a tool to reinforce existing hierarchies of power in society.

Authors

• Kate Somerville, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Jose Ortiz, SUNY - Cortland
  Presenting Author