Where Social-Emotional Learning Meets Culture

As classrooms become increasingly culturally diverse, the social-emotional learning (SEL) field must reconsider standard models of emotional competence—particularly for educators. This article focuses on educators’ social and emotional competence, reconceiving it as a culturally grounded domain of equity and belonging. Drawing on the Prosocial Classroom model and cross-cultural emotion research, we argue that educator SEL and programming cannot rely solely on Western-normative emotional models but must engage with the multiple, culturally embedded ways of experiencing, expressing, regulating, and interpreting emotions. We review evidence showing that the emotional processes relevant to SEL frameworks, vary qualitatively across cultural, ethnic, and racial contexts. From this foundation, we propose a new agenda for educator SEL professional learning—centered on cultural attunement, reflective “not-knowing,” and inclusive emotional competence. We outline implications for research, practice, and policy—highlighting the need for culturally responsive educator SEL models and measurement tools, reflective professional learning that builds intercultural emotional competence, and SEL frameworks and assessments that account for cultural diversity. By positioning educator emotional competence as culturally situated rather than universally defined, this work contributes to a transformative vision of educator SEL in globally diverse settings.