Visual Impairment – Social Emotional Learning Curriculum (VI-SEL)

The Visual Impairment - Social Emotional Learning Curriculum (VI-SEL) is a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum for practitioners teaching Social-Emotional Skills (SES) to children with visual impairments (VI) aged 6 to 12. It includes an overview of SES development in children with VI, assessment and teaching guides, instruction for the use, and 10 SEL lessons (e.g., expressing your emotions, staying calm with others, taking turns, resolving disagreements calmly). Its implementation is structured in two phases. First, assessment phase uses the French version of the Social Skills Improvement System Social-Emotional Learning Edition Rating Forms (SSIS-SEL RF) (Elliott & Gresham, 2021; Gresham & Elliott, 2017) and the Social Skills Assessment Tool for Children with Visual Impairments : Revised (SSAT-VI : R) (Sacks, 2014) for general SES assessment, as well as summative and formative grids for SES assessment within the VI-SEL curriculum. Second, intervention phase involves 10 lessons with explicit instruction delivered individually or in small groups. Each lesson follows five structured phases (Tardif, 1999): Say (introduce the skill, e.g., express your emotions), Try (explore the skill independently, e.g. try to express your emotions in a role play), Learn (guided strategy understanding ; e.g. learn the strategy to express your emotions), Do (skill practice ; e.g. do the strategy in a role play), and Discuss (metacognitive discussion on the strategy and learning).