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Social Emotional Learning for Equity and Civic Teaching (SEL-E-CT) Program

The SEL-E-CT Dialogic Pedagogy Fellows Program is a cohort-based, interdisciplinary, university-wide program. Each semester-long cohort includes faculty and staff (with student-facing roles) from schools (departments and programs) across Tufts. During the program, fellows explore approaches for building and sustaining dialogic practices in classrooms and other learning environments. The program begins with two full-day workshops (held on consecutive Fridays and facilitated in partnership with Essential Partners) at the start of each semester, followed by monthly 90-minute meetings that provide ongoing coaching and peer learning opportunities. Each cohort has access to a Canvas site for asynchronous learning and connecting each semester (and beyond).

Overarching Goals

The program aims to:

  • Cultivate and leverage transformative social and emotional learning (TSEL) skills to support authentic dialogue and dialogic practice.
  • Establish the conditions for dialogic classrooms by fostering trust, belonging, curiosity, psychological safety, and meaningful engagement across differences.
  • Strengthen connections and trust in classrooms and other learning spaces, particularly when engaging difficult or emotionally charged topics, through an understanding of the relational and neurobiological dynamics that shape classroom interactions.
  • Differentiate between structured dialogue and broader dialogic approaches and apply each intentionally to promote narrative exchange, values-based discussion, and nuanced thinking.
  • Design dialogue prompts and questions that encourage storytelling, reflection, inquiry, and perspective-taking, to help students deepen their understanding of themselves, others, and course content.
  • Use dialogue as a pedagogical tool to foster reflection, deepen engagement with academic content, cultivate intellectual humility, and strengthen students' ability to articulate and examine their own beliefs and perspectives.

What Is Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (TSEL)?

Social emotional learning (SEL) is broadly defined as the “process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions” (CASEL, n.d.).  SEL is a key lever for wellbeing, belonging, equity, and inclusive excellence in higher education. To prepare postsecondary students to navigate an increasingly complex and polarized world in values-aligned, purpose-driven ways, faculty, staff, and institutional leaders must recognize the interconnected nature of emotion and cognition. Higher education can play a critical role in cultivating SEL skills that support transformative learning, intergenerational co-learning, and meaningful civic engagement (Conley & Donahue-Keegan, 2025).

Transformative SEL (TSEL) offers a particularly relevant approach for higher education settings. Building on traditional SEL, TSEL emphasizes critical reflection on the individual and systemic factors that contribute to inequities while fostering collaborative action to advance personal, community, and societal wellbeing (CASEL, n.d.). This approach is grounded in five focal construct lenses: identity, agency, belonging, collaborative problem-solving, and curiosity. These lenses intersect with and enrich the development of the five core SEL competencies:

  • Self-Awareness (Identity): Understanding emotions, thoughts, and values in relation to one’s multifaceted self and positionality across situations and contexts, and in relation to others; engaging in ongoing reflection on how experiences, identities, and positionalities shape perspectives and behavior.
  • Self-Management (Agency): Regulating emotions, thoughts, stressors, and impulses in ways that support personal and collective well-being; recognizing the relationship between aspirations, actions, and outcomes and adjusting behaviors accordingly.
  • Social Awareness (Belonging): Experiencing relational trust, respect, and connectedness within groups and communities; extending respect for and encouragement of others within diverse communities, in ways that foster equity and inclusion.
  • Relationship Skills (Collaborative Problem-Solving): Establishing and maintaining mutually respectful, trusting, and co-regulating relationships in order to collaboratively address and solve problems - across diverse contexts - with emotional agility, social perspective-taking, empathy, racial literacy, and cultural humility.
  • Responsible Decision-Making (Curiosity): Continuously engaging in open-minded curious exploration of oneself in relation to others and the world; practicing informed, socially responsible decision-making, individually and collectively, through active listening, and consideration of multiple perspectives.

The SEL Initiative at Tufts 

The Tufts SEL Initiative was launched in January 2017 thanks to a generous gift from David T. Zussman, A53, J80P , and his family through the Zussman Fund for Social and Emotional Learning. It is now housed in the Office of Institutional Inclusive Excellence (OVPIIE). This initiative seeks to advance social and emotional learning, wellbeing, inclusion, and transformative learning across the Tufts University community. The Tufts SEL Initiative’s signature project is the Social Emotional Learning for Equity and Civic Teaching (SEL-E-CT) program. Dr. Deborah Donahue-Keegan (Education Department Lecturer and OVPIIE Faculty Fellow) has led the initiative since its inception.

Our Generous Funders

We are deeply grateful to our funders for their enduring support. The SEL Initiative was established in 2017 through a generous gift from David T. Zussman, A53, J80P, and his family through the Zussman Fund for Social and Emotional Learning. The Omidyar Group has provided ongoing support for this work, most recently helping to expand efforts that promote social and emotional learning, well-being, and dialogic practices as pathways to fostering connection and bridging differences at Tufts and beyond.

Learn More: “Teaching Toward Equity: The Social-Emotional Dynamic of the Classroom” (Tufts Now, 9/17/2021) This article explores how attending to both thinking and feeling in the classroom can foster more inclusive and equitable learning experiences.

For more information about the SEL Initiative at Tufts and the SEL-E-CT program, email Dr. Deborah Donahue-Keegan at deborah.donahue_keegan@tufts.edu.

References

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (n.d.). Fundamentals of SEL. CASEL. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (n.d.). Transformative SEL. CASEL. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/how-does-sel-support-educational-equity-and-excellence/transformative-sel/

Conley, C. & Donahue-Keegan, D. (2024). Social Emotional Learning for Wellbeing and Equity in Higher Education. In J. A. Durlak, C. E. Domitrovich, & J.L. Mahoney (Eds.), Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning (2nd Edition). (pp. 3-15). New York: Guilford.

Ragovin, H. (2021, September 17). The social-emotional dynamic of the classroom: Negotiating the balance between "thinking" and "feeling" can make for more inclusive experiences. Tufts Now. https://now.tufts.edu/2021/09/17/social-emotional-dynamic-classroom