Teaching social-emotional skills to children with visual impairments: Content validation of the Visual Impairment – Social Emotional Learning curriculum through a Delphi Study

Social-emotional skills (SESs) are typically acquired through observation and imitation, processes heavily reliant on the visual system. Children and adolescents with visual impairments (VI) may face challenges in developing these skills and may adopt compensatory strategies to overcome these difficulties. General curricula for students with VI, such as the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) and the Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (CFVI), consider these skills a specific learning area, while the scientific literature recommends SESs assessment and explicit teaching. However, it seems that a specific curriculum for social-emotional learning (SEL) tailored to students with VI may not yet exist. Thus, the Visual Impairment – Social Emotional Learning (VI-SEL) curriculum was developed to fill this gap. This study, conducted in Switzerland, evaluates its content validity using a two-round Delphi study with a group of experts in the field of VI ( N = 15). Consensus was evaluated using a 14-item questionnaire, with experts providing feedback to refine the curriculum. Across both rounds, expert ratings exceeded the consensus threshold, with mean scores of 4.58 ( SD = 0.78) in the first round and 4.70 ( SD = 0.54) in the second. Qualitative feedback led to further refinements. Experts rated the VI-SEL curriculum content favourably, which suggested it fills an existing gap in practitioner resources with the potential to be integrated into general curricula for students with VI (e.g., the ECC and CFVI). While the findings should be interpreted cautiously, the VI-SEL curriculum may be a valuable tool for practitioners supporting SESs development in children and adolescents with VI. Further research is needed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of the curriculum.