Language-Affirming Social-Emotional Learning: Adapting a Commercial SEL Curriculum for Multilingual Learners

This qualitative case study examines how a third-grade teacher in Hawaiʻi adapted a widely used social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum through a transformative social-emotional learning (tSEL) framework to support multilingual learners (MLs). The study explores how adapting SEL through a language justice lens can create culturally sustaining learning experiences for MLs. Three gratitude-focused SEL lessons were intentionally adapted using tSEL principles, including translanguaging, cultural inclusion, and critical reflection, while one lesson was implemented as written from the original curriculum without intentional language-affirming adaptations. The study focused on six MLs in the same third-grade classroom. Data sources included lesson plans, classroom observations, student work, exit slips, and teacher reflections, which were analyzed using iterative qualitative coding. Findings suggest that language-affirming instructional practices created opportunities for belonging through cultural and linguistic recognition, supported students’ agency by positioning MLs as contributors of cultural and linguistic knowledge, and provided opportunities for collaborative problem-solving through shared meaning-making. The study highlights translanguaging as a social-emotional practice and offers implications for educators, teacher educators, and policymakers seeking to adapt existing SEL curricula in ways that affirm MLs’ languages, identities, and lived experiences.