Date

12-4-2025

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Education (PhD)

Chair

Sherrita Rogers

Keywords

SEL, urban education, poverty, trauma, teacher perspectives, Bandura’s social cognitive theory

Disciplines

Educational Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand teachers' perspectives on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) as a mitigating factor for poverty, violence, and trauma for high school students in West Tennessee. At this stage in the research, SEL implementation was generally defined as the strategies and practices teachers used to integrate cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of learning to address the unique challenges faced by students in high-stress urban environments. The theory guiding this study was the social cognitive theory, which emphasized the reciprocal interaction between personal, behavioral, and environmental factors in learning and development. The central research question was how do urban high school teachers perceive and implement SEL strategies to address the impacts of poverty, violence, and trauma on their students? The research was a transcendental phenomenological study, involving 10-15 high-school teachers from an urban high school in West Tennessee. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, a focus group and a survey. The research focus relied on Moustakas's phenomenological approaches such as epoché, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and synthesis. Such a protocol enabled rich, qualitative reflections on how teachers themselves experienced SEL implementation in urban West Tennessee high schools and may have contributed to more comprehensive and culturally relevant SEL implementation strategies for urban high schools facing similar problems.

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