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CASEL 5

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Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 4 studies (3 quant-synthesis, 1 review), q3–q4 · 2 of 4 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description

A framework developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) that organizes social and emotional competence into five interrelated areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Components

  • CASEL five-competence-cluster framework for social and emotional learning: The report describes the CASEL framework as the most influential SEL framework, organizing immediate SEL outcomes around "five competence clusters": self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Each cluster is substantively defined — for example, self-management "requires skills to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations". Approximately two thirds of U.S. states with SEL standards base their standards on this framework, and it is embedded in the report's conceptual model (Figure 1) linking competencies to short- and long-term student outcomes. (Greenberg (2023))
  • CASEL's five-competency framework for social and emotional learning: The report adopts CASEL's widely used definition of SEL as "the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions." Figure 1 presents five competencies—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making—nested within classrooms, schools, homes, and communities. The report uses "competencies" as an umbrella covering skills, mindsets, and habits. (Melnick et al. (2017))
  • CASEL 5 framework of social and emotional competencies: The review organises social and emotional competencies using the CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) 5 framework, "which includes five broad and interrelated areas of competence: i) self-awareness; ii) self-management; iii) social awareness; iv) relationship skills; and v) responsible decision-making". The model holds that changing these five areas positively impacts proximal outcomes and contexts, and thereby more distal outcomes: SECs directly affect school achievement and indirectly increase student engagement and decrease mental health difficulties. The review uses these five domains as its coding categories for SEC variables across the 91 studies. (Anabela Caetano Santos et al. (2023))
  • CASEL five-domain framework of social-emotional competence as the review's organizing taxonomy: The review adopts the CASEL framework as its multidimensional conceptual model for classifying teachers' and students' SEC. The article states that "The CASEL framework conceptualises SEC as five distinct yet interrelated domains (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making; CASEL, 2020)." Constructs were coded as domain-specific or broad/mixed SEC based on definitions and measurement content rather than authors' labels, with interrater reliability of κ = 0.87 for teacher codes and κ = 0.85 for student codes. The framework enabled domain-specific meta-analytic models of teacher-student SEC associations. (Nguyen et al. (2026))

Claims

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Key Sources

  • Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). (2020). What Is SEL? https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/
Page metadata
Field Value
type product
id casel-5
title CASEL 5
description A framework developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) that organizes social and emotional competence into five interrelated areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
status review
moved_from theory/casel-5-competency-taxonomy
product_kind framework
generated by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — collaborative-for-academic-2020

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