A qualitative exploration of black children’s emotional literacy: Scope and sources of emotion knowledge

Black children’s emotions are often misinterpreted or dismissed in social and emotional learning (SEL) research, reinforcing deficit-based narratives that depict them as having limited emotional capacity and an inability to regulate their emotions and behaviors. This study challenges these assumptions by exploring how 20 Black students (eleven girls and nine boys) in transitional kindergarten through 4th grade understand and engage with emotions through storytelling. Among these students, many have been labeled as “emotionally disturbed,” a designation disproportionately applied to Black students ascribed with emotional “misbehaviors” in school. Such labels can obscure the contextual complexity of Black children’s emotional lives and overlook their capacity for emotional understanding. To counter this, the current study explores three questions: (a) What do Black children (diagnosed as “emotionally disturbed”) know about emotions? (b) From whom and where do they learn about emotions? (c) How can their emotional knowledge and sources of learning inform SEL programming? The findings reveal (a) the scope of Black children’s emotional knowledge, and (b) the sources and experiences that shape their emotion knowledge. The Discussion focuses on implications for SEL scholarship and practices that advocate for and center the reality (rather than pathologize) of Black children’s emotional lives.