State of the SEL Field 2025: Skills That Last, Impact That Endures

Key Points

• In the 2025 State of the Field webinar, thought leaders Aaliyah Samuel and Timothy Shriver discussed how social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical not only to this moment, but also to helping young people navigate future career and life success. Samuel shared four key areas to focus on as we look to the road ahead.
• They reflected on the durability of social and emotional skills in rapidly changing times, including in a workforce that is continuously evolving with technology and AI.
• Samuel and Shriver also outlined key strategies for making the SEL field durable, even as trends and leadership change.

The education landscape is evolving rapidly in 2025, and education leaders continue to grapple with urgent priorities around students’ academic learning, well-being, and future readiness.

In this moment of change, how do we cultivate durable skills that young people need to thrive throughout their lives and careers? How do we foster durable innovations in schools that last beyond fleeting trends or changes in leadership? And how do we ensure the durability of our field, as a unifying anchor even in divisive times?

CASEL President and CEO Dr. Aaliyah A. Samuel and CASEL co-founder and board chair Dr. Timothy P. Shriver hosted the 2025 State of the Field webinar to reflect on these essential questions, share the latest data and insights, and outline a compelling vision for advancing SEL as the foundation for a future-ready generation.

Watch the full webinar below, or read on for key takeaways from the conversation.

SEL Is Critical to This Moment

Social and emotional skills are critical to supporting students’ well-being, academic recovery, and ability to navigate modern challenges like the prevalence of social media and smartphones.

“We are still dealing with academic recovery, chronic absenteeism, and the mental health of our young people. There are still a lot of ever-present challenges in front of us, and we need to continue to put students at the center. Recently, the National Implementation Study showed record-high levels of SEL implementation. This shows the relevance of SEL now and its critical importance as we continue to address some of these challenges that have gripped education. Decades of research around SEL shows just how positive it is in the development of not just the social and emotional needs of our young people, but academics as well. Overall, we know that SEL can absolutely serve as an anchor.” -Samuel

“The data suggests that the country—educators, parents, kids—see [SEL] as something that is pervasive in their schools, something that is positive in their schools, and something that is powerful for improving learning and climate and mental health in their schools.”–Shriver

“With the rise of social media, there’s a need to teach children to self-regulate, not just their emotions but their intake of information on social media. … Some teachers are now modifying some of the old frameworks we have around self-monitoring skills: watching how I’m behaving, checking in on my mood, checking in on my emotions, checking in on my experiences, checking in on my social media intake and starting to watch the way it affects my capacity to learn and my capacity to connect.”–Shriver

“Schools want to help children focus on building positive relationships. How can we use the time during the school day to foster positive interactions with and between students, rather than them being on their devices? Students need to build positive relationships and practice those skills at the time when they’re most together, which is at school. That self-regulation, that self-awareness of the decisions that kids are making every day, is essential.”–Samuel

Four Key Questions for the Road Ahead

Aaliyah Samuel shared four critical areas to focus on as we prepare our young people for this fast-changing environment:

• Student Engagement: “How do we foster student engagement? Not just engagement to improve academic achievement, but how do we improve the creativity, the joy, the meaning of learning, which we know is part of the reason that kids come to school?”
• Technology: “How do we harness AI and technology in ways that don’t block out opportunities for all, but really expand them?”
• Wellness: “We need to continue to think about how we promote the mental health and well-being of our young people, both for academics and for future readiness. We need young people who are happy and whole and healthy.”
• Learning Pathways: “How can we make sure young people are connected in different ways—career goals, civic and life engagement, and lifelong growth?”

Durability of Social and Emotional Skills

Social and emotional skills are lifelong skills that we as adults use every day. According to organizations like Google and Deloitte, they are also essential in the workplace, and their importance will continue to increase as AI and technology advance.

Skills for Life

“A colleague said that the skill he really needs right now is the skill of help-seeking. Help-seeking is a strength, not a weakness; it’s a sign of resilience, not a sign of failure. Help-seeking skills are critical to continued mental health, both for adults and for children.”–Shriver

“Two social and emotional skills that continue to be critical for me right now are adaptability and resilience. I’m always learning new technology and how to integrate it into my life in meaningful ways. Also a sense of resiliency—things are changing and life is happening. How can I take a step back to self-evaluate and consider how to navigate this particular challenge in my life? Those two skills are so paramount in my day-to-day life right now, and they are critical skills that our kids need.”–Samuel

Skills for the Workforce

“One of the VPs from Google pointed out that Google is looking for social and emotional skills. Businesses want more employees who display these skills. They want schools to teach more of it so that their employees are prepared for the workforce. So when we talk about the durability of these skills, it’s not just for academic success; we can point directly to how this plays out in adult life and in life success. … These SEL skills will be the skills that transcend politics and transcend this moment in time.”–Samuel

“These are just not nice-to-have skills. They are durable, lifelong, employability-related skills that can strengthen our kids and their futures.”–Shriver

“Deloitte predicts that these durable skill-intensive jobs will account for two-thirds of jobs by 2030. … When we talk about jobs and occupations that will require these durable skills, those jobs are growing at 2.5 times the average rate. So for preparedness for the workforce and for life, for the next generation, we need to be talking about these [social and emotional] skills.”–Samuel

Durability of SEL Field

SEL was built to be a durable field that can endure through changing trends and leadership in schools. Samuel and Shriver shared several key elements of durability, including systemic integration, community support, and professional development.

“You can teach SEL strategies in the classroom, and you can also teach them at home, or at the Boys and Girls club, or faith-based organizations, or the Parks and Recreation where students spend time. Durability is being explicitly built into the implementation strategy so it’s not dependent on one teacher, or one principal, or one mayor, or one superintendent. These are being built as sustainable pieces of the puzzle that can help kids regardless of who’s in charge in any given year.”–Shriver

“We know it’s going to take a collective commitment of our educators, our policymakers, our researchers, communities, us as leaders, really coming together to continue to invest in social and emotional learning as a lasting solution for our students and our schools. And also really thinking about the integration of SEL, that it can’t be a stand-alone thing or a box to check, but how it needs to be really thoroughly integrated. And then how do we invest in our educators? We know that a teacher is one of the most critical change agents in a students’ life, so how can we support our educators on this journey?”–Samuel

“One thing we’ve thought about here when we’ve thought about durable interventions is taking seriously the need that teachers have to be able to learn SEL themselves. And we’ve seen examples of this in some districts where they put a huge premium on making sure the teachers on the frontline were the first people to get even up to a year of planning and strategy work, so they would feel comfortable being able to teach these skills because they’ve learned them themselves.”–Shriver

“I’d love to give a couple of examples from our Collaborating Districts Initiative. We were able to see how, over time, high-quality implementation utilizing evidence-based programs and focusing on teacher professional development really improved academic outcomes for students. We also see that classroom engagement was higher for students in districts that really focused on implementing evidence-based programs and including input from families, communities, and teachers.”–Samuel

Related Posts

• 30 Years In, SEL Is More Essential Than Ever—And the Field Is Ready to Meet the Moment
• How to Create Effective SEL Professional Learning
• How to Create an Agenda for Parent and Caregiver Roundtables

Related Resources

• The CASEL Guide to Schoolwide Social and Emotional Learning
• SEL 3 Signature Practices Playbook
• CASEL Program Guide

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