Social-Emotional Learning for Development Practice

SEL is not one framework. We draw on several.

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) — Emory University + Dalai Lama Center. 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, reaching ~800K children daily across 1,000+ government schools. 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; mandatory 50-hour annual CPD; 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