Interrupting the hegemony of Social Emotional Learning (SEL): the productive potential of anger in Young Adult Literature

ABSTRACT

Drawing on feminist and critical theories of politics and emotions, this paper attends to the hegemony of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for multiply-marginalized students and explores what exemplary Young Adult (YA) novels can teach scholars, educators, and students about the productive use of anger in the face of injustice. Two acclaimed young adult novels are examined using Critical Content Analysis to illustrate the potential for using such books to critically discuss what anger does in the face of injustice related to race and gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Social-emotional learning
• anger
• young adult literature
• hegemony

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. What SEL entails varies, but it is most often rooted in the 5 competencies as defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotion Learning (CASEL 2017), a SEL think tank based in Chicago, IL: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making.

2. Focalization is when some part of the story, perhaps a scene, event, or character, is described through the point of view of a character, who has unique beliefs and values which shape his or her interpretation and thus representation of the story. A character might be focalizing, that is, representing the scene, event, or character; or a character might be focalized, that is, represented through the eyes of a different character (McCallum 1999).