Does Racism Color Black Youths' Social-Emotional Learning? The Roles of Teachers, Identity, and Measurement

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

While social-emotional learning (SEL) has gained significance over the last three decades, too little attention has been paid to the salience of racism in Black youths’ schooling experiences or its impact on the efficacy of SEL for Black students. Drawing from critical race theory, this symposium views racism as a permanent feature of American society. As such, decolonization and abolition are necessary contemporary justice imperatives. Yet, SEL research, on the whole, has not considered racism or the dehumanization of Black students. The papers in this session utilize multiple research methods to characterize shortcomings of SEL discourse with respect to Black Education, and promising pathways towards more precise understandings of SEL for countering Black students’ experiences of racism and racial discrimination.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research Focus on Black Education

Chair

• Chezare A. Warren, Vanderbilt University

Papers

• Teachers' Social-Emotional Learning: Benefits for Black Children? - Kamilah B. Legette, University of Denver; Amy Halberstadt, North Carolina State University; Elan Hope, North Carolina State University; Johari Harris, University of Virginia

• Does Coping and Racial Identity Promote Self-Regulated Learning? Using an Equity-Elaborated Social-Emotional Learning Lens - Charity Brown Griffin, Winston-Salem State University; DeLeon Gray, Black and Belonging; Elan Hope, North Carolina State University; Isha W. Metzger, University of Georgia; Dawn X Henderson, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• It's Time to Reinvent the Wheel: Examining Cross-Cultural Conceptual Equivalence of Social Emotional Competencies - Shereen El Mallah, University of Virginia

Discussant

• Onnie Rogers, Northwestern University