A Qualitative Examination of Adaptations in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become a wide-ranging topic in the field of education. Although the field of SEL has experienced rapid growth in the past two decades, research on the ways in which SEL programs are implemented has often lagged behind. Researchers in the field have begun to examine some aspects of implementation in detail, such as fidelity and dosage, but other aspects — particularly adaptation — have gone unexplored despite scholarly recommendations to probe this salient component of implementation. Using secondary qualitative data from two randomized controlled trials of SEL programs implemented with elementary and middle school students, this study examined the ways teachers adapted the SEL lessons and the reasons they made adaptations. Findings revealed that teachers made a variety of adaptations, including structural adaptations (i.e., changes to content, sequencing, and timing) and process adaptations (i.e., adaptations made to how the lesson was delivered and experienced). Teachers also described reasons for adapting that were broadly due to student factors, program factors, and contextual factors. Differences between the two programs are also addressed. These results shed light on the numerous ways in which teachers adapt SEL programs and the array of complex reasons that lead to adaptation of lessons within these types of programs. Given that adaptation is vastly understudied in SEL interventions, this study lays the groundwork for future work to build upon.