Addressing Social and Emotional Learning Roles in EFL Teaching and Learning: A Contextually Rooted Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) can improve EFL learners’ emotional well-being, social competence and language engagement. However, the existing evidence is still fragmented and lacks a unified ecological explanation of how SEL processes play a role in diverse instructional contexts. This study is guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (EST) and follows a PRISMA-aligned theory-building synthesis and analyzes 25 international empirical studies to build an integrated ecological SEL framework for multilingual EFL education. The framework contains five interrelated domains: contextual conditions, teacher SEL pedagogy, learner SEL development, SEL-oriented assessment and technology-enabled SEL support. This framework transcends the decontextualized competency-based approaches and regards learner SEL as a relational process: it is through this process that classroom practices may relate to language outcomes, and multiple contextual layers shape these interactions. As context-specific extensions embedded in this overarching ecological architecture, the resilience of teachers in crisis, translanguaging-driven SEL growth and AI-mediated emotional regulation have further broadened the framework’s applicability across multicultural, crisis-affected and digitally mediated EFL environments. By integrating past fragmented strands of EFL SEL research into a coherent EST-grounded explanatory structure, the study promotes the process of SEL theorization for foreign language education and provides insights for research, pedagogy and policy.