Class divided: Social-emotional learning and the erosion of solidarity

This Viewpoint article addresses the implications of social-emotional learning (SEL) for development education as an educational process concerned with illuminating the structural and political dimensions of social and global injustices. Recent years have witnessed a growing policy preoccupation with SEL-a movement that stresses the learnability and malleability of non-cognitive skills such as ‘achievement motivation’, ‘well-being’, ‘curiosity’, ‘empathy’, ‘compassion’, ‘self-regulation’, ‘grit’ and ‘resilience’. Having briefly traced the economisitic, productivist, and human capital underpinnings of SEL, we then draw on the OECD’s recent assessment of social-emotional skills to demonstrate how the framing of ‘disadvantaged’ students as lacking in social-emotional skills has a dehumanising and solidarity-eroding effect that positions them as undeserving and a threat to society. We urge those working in the development education sector to actively resist SEL and the wider neuro-affective turn that is increasingly evident in global citizenship education policy and practice. Copyright © 2025 Centre for Global Education.