Social-Emotional Learning for Development Practice

SEL spans several frameworks, and this course draws on several of them.

Most Indian SEL training collapses the field into CASEL's five competencies. That framing is well-validated globally, but it is one framework among several, and the others matter especially in Indian contexts.

• CASEL: Collaborative for Academic, Social & Emotional Learning. Five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making. The dominant US framework; most cited in global research.
• SEE Learning (Social, Emotional & Ethical Learning): developed at Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics. Extends CASEL with an explicit ethical dimension grounded in compassion, interdependence, and systems-awareness. India-translated; used in several urban progressive schools. Travels better cross-culturally than pure CASEL.
• WHO Life Skills (1997): Ten core skills (decision-making, problem-solving, creative + critical thinking, communication, interpersonal, self-awareness, empathy, coping with emotions, coping with stress). This is the framework NCERT's Adolescence Education Programme and most state-board life-skills curricula are actually built on.
• Delhi Happiness Curriculum (classes Nursery–8) + Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum / EMC (classes 9–12): India's largest functioning state-system SEL programmes, reported at roughly 8 to 10 lakh students in about 1,000 Delhi government schools, with a daily class (the Delhi government put the Happiness Curriculum alone at 10 lakh students at its 2018 launch, as reported by The Tribune). The Happiness Curriculum centres mindfulness, gratitude, and reflection; EMC centres agency, problem-solving, and self-confidence.
• Indian indigenous traditions: Tagore's Santiniketan (art, nature, the inner life), J. Krishnamurti (freedom from conditioning, self-knowledge), Sri Aurobindo & The Mother (Integral Education: physical, vital, mental, psychic, spiritual), M.K. Gandhi's Nai Talim (work, community, character as inseparable from learning). Predate "SEL" by a century; rarely cited in modern Indian SEL programming but conceptually richer.
• NEP 2020 (both halves matter: the child-facing provisions (Sections 4.6, 4.7, 5.7 on SEL/life skills/mental health) and the teacher-development provisions (NPST) National Professional Standards for Teachers; an expectation that every teacher takes at least 50 hours of CPD a year; 4-year integrated B.Ed.; teacher autonomy in classroom decisions). SEL programmes without the teacher-development half do not have the skilled adults to actually deliver the child-facing half.

This course's stance: frame-pluralism. Each module draws on whichever framework illuminates the question best. The strongest practitioners we know hold all of these lightly, choose what fits, and build their own integration.

See also: SEL Simulation Game (Five Lenses) · Deep Dive: SEL Evaluation in India