From freedom dreams to realities: Adopting Transformative Abolitionist Social Emotional Learning (TASEL) in schools

ABSTRACT

Schools are adopting social emotional learning (SEL) programs, intending to provide students with intrapersonal and interpersonal skills to better prepare them for life. Transformative SEL is designed to promote the building of relationships between diverse students and educators to build more just schools and society. Because SEL models are heavily adopted, this paper addresses the inequities present within them. That is, traditional and transformative SEL fail BIPOC: Traditional SEL perpetuates the status quo by further marginalizing BIPOC and transformative SEL is too conceptual for successful adoption in PreK-12 schools. This article provides a brief discussion of traditional SEL, transformative SEL, and abolitionist teaching frameworks, then highlights educational practitioner narratives that discuss SEL adoptions that have proven harmful. We assert that we must (re)imagine and formulate a transformative SEL based on abolitionist teaching structures, which requires fully engaging the voices of our educators by presenting Transformative Abolitionist Social Emotional Learning (TASEL) framework, a practitioner-friendly SEL alternative framed by the tenets of equity and justice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional resources

1. Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.

Based on her life’s work as an educator and researcher, Bettina Love presents her powerful framework for abolitionist teaching where she contends that students should be taught about racial tensions, oppression, and how to become active civic young adults in order to make sustainable change in their communities.

2. Teaching Tolerance. Let’s talk: A guide to facilitating critical conversations with students. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/lets-talk

Because educators play a crucial role in helping students understand and talk openly about the historical and contemporary manifestations of social injustices, this guide offers practitioner-friendly strategies to plan and facilitate these critical discussions with your students.

3. Teaching Tolerance. (2016, May 25). Let’s talk! Discussing whiteness [Webinar]. https://www.learningforjustice.org/professional-development/webinars/whiteness

This webinar serves as a guide to assist with reflecting on and defining white privilege and discussing whiteness as a racial identity, acknowledging whiteness as privilege and power, and working toward equity and racial justice.