The top three student challenges educators say they count on social-emotional learning to address are struggles developing friendships, keeping up motivation/work ethic, and engaging in school, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey.
That meshes with the big-picture, long-term goal of using SEL to teach students important social skills that will help them succeed in school and life.
The survey—which featured responses from 499 teachers, principals, and district leaders and was conducted in December and January of 2026—found that the fourth and fifth most common problems that educators use SEL practices to address are bullying and mental health challenges.
One striking finding in the results: Two of the biggest challenges related to student behavior and well-being that school districts are wrestling with—the use of cellphones in school and the overuse of technology in classrooms—did not rank high.
“Excessive screen time” and “cellphones in class” ended up near the bottom of the 18 categories in the survey.
The survey findings generally align with how most educators view social-emotional learning, said David Adams, the CEO of the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that works with schools around the country to improve social-emotional learning, college readiness and success, and instruction.
Educators tend to see SEL as a strategy for improving students’ academic performance, more so than building students’ social-emotional skills for their own sake, he said, so it makes sense they would focus on boosting students’ motivation and engagement.
Adams said that’s why many teachers focus on teaching students a few specific and more discreet SEL skills. “Teachers tend to latch on to self-management, which predicts outcomes in the classroom,” he said.
“The notion of SEL for academic excellence and for classroom ease is something that’s been pitched to support the adoption of SEL.”
But Adams cautions against focusing too much on using SEL to fix more discrete challenges. Concentrating on emotional management so students perform well on tests, for example, obscures the larger purpose of social emotional learning, which is to develop students into socially competent and well-rounded adults.
Adams makes the case that schools should view social-emotional learning as a universal support, teaching a broad range of skills and giving students opportunities to transfer and practice those skills in real-world environments. That means providing ample chances for project-based learning, working in groups, and participating in sports or other extra-curricular activities, he said.
